Overview
This site was born out of my experiences over the last 2 years (and counting) implementing OpenNMS in an enterprise IT environment. In my case, the term “enterprise” refers to: many geographically separate sites in multiple time zones; a heterogeneous network of nearly a 1000 monitored devices including: power, networking (LAN/MAN/DMZ/WAN), servers, databases, applications, and odd ball devices; a stove piped organization with several thousand staff each with their own requirements and limitations. I’ve learned many lessons while implementing OpenNMS and I’ve had to create a lot of custom scripts. This site tries to document the issues I faced and the solutions I found in the hope others can benefit from my experiences. You may ask why I haven’t posted this information on the opennms.org wiki or forums. The issue is that what’s documented here is one complete solution. Individual posts will not stand on there own but will build on previous posts.
Before going on, please keep in mind that this site assumes the reader is an experineced linux administor, is familiar with the bash shell and scripting, and is at least somewhat familar with OpenNMS. If you need help on the basics, I recommend http://tldp.org/ for Linux and http://opennms.org/ for OpenNMS.
The site contains two major categories of information. The first are patterns which document ways to use and configure OpenNMS beyond what is already documented on the opennms.org site. OpenNMS is very flexible which is one of its strengths in the enterprise, but it’s also a weakness. You need to be thoughtful and consistent with the way you use OpenNMS or it could become an unmanageable mess. I think the best metaphor is that OpenNMS will give you enough rope to hang yourself. See the patterns page for more information.
The second major category is scripts. While OpenNMS is very flexible, it can’t do everything. However, it does provide a well structured configuration, database, and web interface. This makes it relatively easy to write custom scripts that can either be used from the command line or accessed through a web page using CGIs or SHTML. My users tend to use a very small part of the OpenNMS interface. Customized web pages that meet specific needs make up most of the OpenNMS web traffic. See the scripts page for more information.
I hope you find this site useful but keep in mind that what’s documented here is what worked for me. Everything has been used in a production enterprise environment but I offer it without any warranty. You should read and understand everything before you implement it. You will most likely want to customize it for your own needs.
- Doug Bakewell
