You want to record important information such as physical locations, contact names, and serial numbers for later SNMP access.
To record important physical information regarding the router, use the following commands:
Router#configure terminal Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z. Router(config)#snmp-server contact Ian Brown 416-555-2943 Router(config)#snmp-server location 999 Queen St. W., Toronto, Ont. Router(config)#snmp-server chassis-id JAX123456789 Router(config)#end Router#
It is an extremely good network management practice to add useful information such as contact names, router locations, and serial numbers directly into the router configuration. This information can be extracted later using snmpget requests, either directly or invoked from scripts that make output easier to understand. This is true not only for Cisco routers—it's good practice to configure serial numbers and locations on all equipment so that they can be read with SNMP. When a field technician swaps or moves a piece of equipment, they can update this information. This makes it easy to verify the information stored in your central equipment inventory database.
When you save the contact name, router location, and serial number in the router configuration, it is also easy to extract from the command line and configuration files:
Router#show snmp
Chassis: JAX123456789
Contact: Ian Brown 416-555-2943
Location: 999 Queen St. W., Toronto, Ontario
417 SNMP packets input
0 Bad SNMP version errors
141 Unknown community name
3 Illegal operation for community name supplied
0 Encoding errors
224 Number of requested variables
49 Number of altered variables
224 Get-request PDUs
0 Get-next PDUs
52 Set-request PDUs
299 SNMP packets output
0 Too big errors (Maximum packet size 1500)
3 No such name errors
0 Bad values errors
0 General errors
276 Response PDUs
23 Trap PDUs
SNMP logging: enabled
Logging to 172.25.1.1.162, 0/10, 21 sent, 2 dropped.
Router#
You can also extract individual pieces of information using the following commands:
Router#show snmp contact Ian Brown 416-555-2943 Router#show snmp location 999 Queen St. W., Toronto, Ontario Router#show snmp chassis JAX123456789 Router#
It is also useful to extract this information from a backup of the router's configuration file. It is a good network management practice to keep a backup copy of every router's configuration on a central server such as the NMS. Then you can extract vital information such as the router's serial number. You will often need this information for service and support when a device fails and you can't reach it through SNMP. On a Unix server, you can use the grep utility to easily extract the required information:
Freebsd% grep snmp-server Router.confg
snmp-server community ORARO RO
snmp-server community ORARW RW
snmp-server location 999 Queen St. W., Toronto, Ontario
snmp-server contact Ian Brown 416-555-2943
snmp-server chassis-id JAX123456789
snmp-server host 172.25.1.1 ORATRAP
Freebsd%
If the router is reachable, you can also extract this information via SNMP:
Freebsd% snmpget -v1 -c ORARO Router .1.3.6.1.2.1.1.6.0 system.sysLocation.0 = 999 Queen St. W., Toronto, Ontario Freebsd% snmpget -v1 -c ORARO Router .1.3.6.1.2.1.1.4.0 system.sysContact.0 = Ian Brown 416-555-2943 Freebsd% snmpget -v1 -c ORARO Router .1.3.6.1.4.1.9.3.6.3.0 enterprises.9.3.6.3.0 = "JAX123456789" Freebsd%
Recipe 17.4 uses this information to construct a summary inventory report for all of the routers in a network.
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