Team Leader - Nutanix Technology Champion - Nutanix NTC Storyteller

Julien DUMUR
Infrastructure in a Nutshell

supervision

Nutanix x Centreon: Monitoring a cluster with SNMP v3

Published: 19 June 2025
Written by Julien D.
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Categories: AHV, HowTo, HowTo-AHV, Nutanix, Supervision

In the previous blog post, I explained how to monitor your Centreon cluster using SNMP v2c.

In this new blog post, I’ll explain how to monitor your Nutanix cluster using Centreon using SNMP v3.

Prerequisites

There are a few prerequisites you must meet to add your Nutanix cluster to the Centreon solution. Here’s a list of what you need:

  • A Nutanix cluster with admin access to the web interface
  • A running Centreon server with the Nutanix connector installed
  • SSH access to the Centreon VM
  • Streams must be open in the firewall

Configuring SNMP v3 on the Nutanix Cluster

To configure SNMP on your Nutanix cluster, start by connecting to the Prism Element and then going to “Settings > SNMP”. Check “Enable SNMP” and click “+ New Transport” to add port 161 in UDP:

Then, in “Users” click on “New User”, enter a username as well as a private key pair in AES and authentication key in SHA:

In my case, I’ve entered the following information because it’s for lab purposes only, but I recommend you enter much more complex information:

  • Username: snmp-centreon
  • Priv Key: snmp-priv-key
  • Auth Key: snmp-auth-key

Make a note of the Username, Priv Key, and Auth Key; we’ll need them later. The configuration is complete on the Nutanix side; now let’s move on to the Centreon configuration..

Adding a Nutanix Cluster to Centreon

To add your Nutanix cluster to Centreon, log in to your monitoring system’s web interface, go to “Configuration > Hosts” and click “Add”:

On the page that appears, there is a first block of information to fill in:

  • 1: Cluster name
  • 2: Cluster IP address
  • 3: SNMP version 3
  • 4: The Centreon server that will monitor the cluster
  • 5: The time zone associated with your cluster
  • 6: The templates you wish to add
  • 7: Check “Yes” to ensure that all services associated with the previously added templates are automatically created

On the second part of the page, there are a few things to configure, including the amplitude and frequency of checks, and especially the “SNM” field.

The command line syntax to enter in SNMPEXTRAOPTIONS is:

--snmp-username='snmp-centreon' --authprotocol='SHA' --authpassphrase='snmp-auth-key' --privprotocol='AES'--privpassphrase='snmp-priv-key'

Remember to check the “Password” box to hide sensitive information:

Once all the information has been entered, confirm so that the new host is created on the server. You must then export the configuration to the pollers. To do this, click on “Pollers” in the top left corner, then on “Export configuration”:

Then click on “Export & Reload” in the small window that appears:

To check that your host is being taken into account, go to “Monitoring > Resources Status”, your first checks should start to come up:

If all goes as planned, you should have all your probes green within minutes!

Troubleshooting

If you unfortunately have a monitor that looks like this:

I recommend checking the following:

  • Open SNMP streams (port 161/UDP) in the firewall
  • Configure the AuthKey/PrivKey pair and username
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Nutanix AHV x Centreon : monitoring a cluster with SNMP v2c

Published: 11 June 2025
Written by Julien D.
No comments
Categories: AHV, Nutanix, Supervision

Continuously monitoring your cluster is the best option to ensure everything is running as you expect.

In this blog post, I’ll explain how to monitor your Nutanix cluster on Centreon using SNMP v2c.

Prerequisites

There are a few prerequisites you must meet to add your Nutanix cluster to the Centreon solution. Here’s a list of what you need:

  • A Nutanix cluster with admin access to the web interface
  • A running Centreon server with the Nutanix connector installed
  • SSH access to the Centreon VM
  • Flux must be open in the firewall

Configuring SNMP v2c on the Nutanix Cluster

To configure SNMP on your Nutanix cluster, start by connecting to the Prism Element and then going to “Settings > SNMP”. Check “Enable SNMP” and click “+ New Transport” to add port 161 in UDP:

Then, under “Traps,” click “+ New Trap Receiver” and fill in the following fields:

  • Receiver Name: The name you wish to assign to your Receiver
  • Check v2c
  • Community: Indicate the SNMP community you wish to use
  • Address: The address of your Centreon server
  • Port: 161
  • Transport protocol: UDP

Click “Save” to save the configuration.

Adding a Nutanix Cluster to Centreon

To add your Nutanix cluster to Centreon, log in to your monitoring system’s web interface, go to “Configuration > Hosts” and click “Add”:

On the page that appears, there is a first block of information to fill in:

  • 1: Cluster name
  • 2: Cluster IP address
  • 3: The community you specified on the trap receiver
  • 4: SNMP version 2c
  • 5: The Centreon server that will monitor the cluster
  • 6: The time zone associated with your cluster
  • 7: The templates you wish to add
  • 8: Check “Yes” to ensure that all services associated with the previously added templates are automatically created.

On the second part of the page, there are a few things to configure, including the amplitude and frequency of the checks:

Once all the information has been entered, confirm so that the new host is created on the server. You must then export the configuration to the pollers. To do this, click on “Pollers” in the top left corner, then on “Export configuration”:

Then click on “Export & Reload” in the small window that appears:

To check that your host is being taken into account, go to “Monitoring > Resources Status”, your first checks should start to come up:

If all goes as planned, you should have all your probes green within minutes!

Troubleshooting

If you unfortunately have a monitor that looks like this:

I recommend checking the following:

  • Opening SNMP streams (port 161/UDP) in the firewall
  • Configuring the Traps Receiver on the Nutanix cluster
  • Configuring the community on the Centreon server
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Supervision : Install and Configure Smokeping

Published: 14 November 2022
Written by Julien D.
No comments
Categories: Supervision

We often need to have long-term ping statistics on some of our equipment which does not always support SNMP or which is in an environment which does not allow us to set up SNMP.

I explain in this article how to proceed with the installation and configuration of Smokeping which is then an ideal ally to achieve availability stats of this equipment. Here are some prerequisites: – SSH server installed – Fixed IP

First of all, you have to start by updating the system :

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Then you need to install some dependencies: 

sudo apt install rrdtool fping

And finally Smokeping:

sudo apt install smokeping

Smokeping is now installed, you can access it via the IP address of the server it is installed on.

You can jump to the Targets configuration by editing the Targets file:

sudo vi /etc/smokeping/config.d/Targets

Inside, here is the syntax to follow:

++ SEPARATOR
menu = NAME_OF_MENU
title = TITLE_OF_THE_PAGE
host = IP_ADDRESS

Each uppercase element is to be personalized.

Here is an example if I want to monitor my Freebox for example:

++ Freebox
menu = Freebox
title=Freebox
host=192.168.1.1

Once your file is populated, you can close the editor and restart the Smokeping service:

sudo service smokeping restart

After a few minutes, the graphs will start appearing on the web interface.

smokeping
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