Alcatel Fans Test

Alcatel-Lucent switch houses a one or more fan trays, each consisting of one or more independently operating fans. Fans are crucial to maintaining the switch temperature and avoid any heating related issues.

Various parts of the switch like the power supply, Network Interface Controller, Chassis Management Module generate a lot of heat during switch operation, this heat can raise the temperature of the components and can cause harm to electronic circuits, leading to switch failure. The fan provides cooling airflow to the components and keeps the operating temperature within range. In case one or more fans fail, the rest of the fans may not be adequate to keep the switch going for a long period and the temperature may start rising slowly. This is why, administrator should continuously monitor the fans in the target switch to determine if any of the fans is operating abnormally so as to take corrective actions before it causes serious damage to the switch. This can be easily done using the Alcatel Fans Switch test.

This test auto-discovers the fans in the fan trays in the Alcatel-Lucent switch, and for each fan in each fan tray, reports the current status. Additionally, this test also reports the speed at which each fan is operating. Using these metrics, administrators can easily identify if the fans are working as per expectations by looking at status and speed for any abnormality.

Target of the test : An Alcatel-Lucent Switch

Agent deploying the test : An external agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each fan in each fan tray on the switch to be monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter Description

Test Period

How often should the test be executed.

Host

The IP address of the target server that is being monitored.

SNMPPort

The port at which the monitored target exposes its SNMP MIB;

Data Over TCP

By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic – for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components – to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG agent to conduct the SNMP data traffic related to the monitored target over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set this flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No.

Timeout

Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 10 seconds.

SNMPVersion

By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the SNMPversion list is v1. However, if a different SNMP framework is in use in your environment, say SNMP v2 or v3, then select the corresponding option from this list.

Context

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVERSION. An SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by an SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and an SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. A context is identified by the SNMPEngineID value of the entity hosting the management information (also called a contextEngineID) and a context name that identifies the specific context (also called a contextName). If the Username provided is associated with a context name, then the eG agent will be able to poll the MIB and collect metrics only if it is configured with the context name as well. In such cases therefore, specify the context name of the Username in the Context text box.  By default, this parameter is set to none.

Username

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3) is an extensible SNMP Framework which supplements the SNMPv2 Framework, by additionally supporting message security, access control, and remote SNMP configuration capabilities. To extract performance statistics from the MIB using the highly secure SNMP v3 protocol, the eG agent has to be configured with the required access privileges – in other words, the eG agent should connect to the MIB using the credentials of a user with access permissions to be MIB. Therefore, specify the name of such a user against this parameter. 

Authpass

Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned Username. This parameter once again appears only if the SNMPversion selected is v3.

Confirm Password

Confirm the AuthPass by retyping it here.

AuthType

This parameter too appears only if v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. From the AuthType list box, choose the authentication algorithm using which SNMP v3 converts the specified username and password into a 32-bit format to ensure security of SNMP transactions. You can choose between the following options:

  • MD5 - Message Digest Algorithm
  • SHA - Secure Hash Algorithm
  • SHA224 - Secure Hash Algorithm 224 bit
  • SHA256 - Secure Hash Algorithm 256 bit
  • SHA384 - Secure Hash Algorithm 384 bit
  • SHA512 - Secure Hash Algorithm 512 bit

EncryptFlag

This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, the this flag is set to No by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the Yes option. 

EncryptType

If the EncryptFlag is set to Yes, then you will have to mention the encryption type by selecting an option from the EncryptType list. SNMP v3 supports the following encryption types:

  • DES - Data Encryption Standard
  • 3DES - Triple Data Encryption Standard
  • AES - Advanced Encryption Standard
  • AES128 - Advanced Encryption Standard 128 bit
  • AES192 - Advanced Encryption Standard 192 bit
  • AES256 - Advanced Encryption Standard 256 bit

EncryptPassword

Specify the encryption password here.

Confirm Password

Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here.

EngineID

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. Sometimes, the test may not report metrics when AES192 or AES256 is chosen as the Encryption type. To ensure that the test report metrics consistently, administrators need to set this flag to Yes. By default, this parameter is set to No.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Status

Indicates the current status of this fan in this fan tray.

 

The values reported by this measure and its numeric equivalent are mentioned in the table below:

Measure value Numeric Value
Not Running 1
Running 2
Unknown 3

Note:

By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate the current status of this fan. The graph of this measure, however, represents the status of the fan using the numeric equivalents only .

Speed

Indicates the speed of this fan.

RPM