ciscoworks question

[hellboy101]

Hello all-

Didn't know whether this forum was the proper one based on question but I'll attempt it.

I have a general understanding of what CiscoWorks can do but was wondering if it could handle alerting for our APC UPS appliances. I know that APC incorporates their own software but was looking for a one tier product to handle all.. Just curious and thanks for your support.

hb101

 

[ADB100]

No. CiscoWorks can be a standalone application or a plug-in to a generic SNMP Manager such as HP Openview. You can only manage Cisco products with CiscoWorks, there is no 'open' part of the various applications that allow you to add in MIB's or 3rd party app's to manage other vendors equipment. Whereas HP Openview is exactly for this.

APC have thier own NMS Appliance - InfrStruXure Manager that is quite good and relatively cheap for the hardware but licensing isn't cheap.

You can configure the APC SNMP cards to send Syslog and Traps to any IP address so with some generic Syslog & SNMP Packages you could easily get something going. What are you trying to achieve?

Andy

 

[hellboy101]

Hi and thx Andy,

Just on an overall scale the ability to manage our Servers, and layer 2/3 devices. Ciscoworks seems great but complex, so many snaps. then I'd like to having alerting for anything UPs oriented where UPS devices fail to go on standby or batteries die overall.

thanks again!
hb101

 

[Belushi]

As the other gentleman stated, CiscoWorks can be a repository for syslog messages from APC or any product for that matter.

As for APC specific management, don't they have a custom based application that will allow you to manage the product via SNMP? I know they used to have a product called power-chute, but I'm unaware if that is enough to meet your needs.

 

[rainman]

I manage a CiscoWorks 2000 server at my work place, and I will say it is a large product. There are many aspects that need to be supported for it to work properly.

I find CiscoWorks 2000 useful for a few things:
- mass configuration of devices
- audit history (see who made what changes and keeps prior configs)
- MAC address user tracking
- storing backup configurations via the "snmp-server enable traps config" configuration option

If your goal is to collect alarm messages from all of your APC UPS's, then I would install a free syslog/snmp receiver on a server, and then point your APC equipment to send syslog and SNMP traps to the service. CiscoWorks is geared towards only Cisco devices.


-Rainman

 

[sirroutesalot]

Ciscoworks is a bit overcomplicated for what it does, or at least what most people want to use it for. I'm sure with enough effort it will do great things, but I don't know anybody who has the time to devote to it. My former company had it and all we really used if for was to backup device configs and the like. An expensive tool for that. For general network monitoring, there are some free products and many cheap to moderate ones which don't required the level of adminstration that Ciscoworks does. I found Castlerock's SNMPC to be a nice program - it didn't cover all the bases, but it covered the fundamentals and which is really what most admins have time to work with. It can email and page on events and will take the APC traps you are talking about right out of the box.

 

[hellboy101]

Hello to all-

Thank you for your generous and researched replies. This narrows down my search and truly appreciate your responses. From everyone.


hb101