Technion Institute of Technology, Haifa
SNMP Configuration Manager
Elad Dolev
Sagi Rodin
Supervisor – Zeev Schneider
Project Manager – Ilana David
The Main Problems
• In today’s complex IT infrastructures, networking and
security devices have become critical elements
• These elements enable today’s organization to help
provide both security and availability of mission critical
applications
• Complex configurations for these devices
• These products are not properly configured for backup
• Even single failure is of high severity, and can cause lot
of problems in the general system
• Solutions which supposed to help backup and restore of
configurations are expensive and over functional.
The Solution
• An SNMP (would be explained further) based
backup/restore application.
• Would allow managing a set of devices over the network.
• Would allow batch operations over a set of managed
devices.
• Would allow single invocation of operation over a
specific managed device.
• Would contain only the needed functionality,
without function and cost overhead.
The Main Player - SNMP
• SNMP is an Internet-standard protocol for
managing devices on IP networks
• Used mostly in network management
systems to monitor network-attached devices
• Allows to send/get any type of information
needed to/from the device and the manager.
• Supported by most of the development
environnements.
• Easy to use, free of charge, supported on most
of the devices.
The Main Player – SNMP - Diagram
System Overview - Development Environment
• Would be developed over LAMP architecture.
– Linux OS
– Apache Web Server
– MySQL Database
– PHP Server Side Framework
• LAMP because
– Free
– Supports SNMP API (build in)
– Easy to maintain and extend
– Academic restrictions
System Overview – High Level Design
• System would consist of three main inner
systems
1. Manager Server
2. Web Server
3. Database Storage
• Would serve two main players
1. System Administrator
2. SNMP Devices
System Overview – High Level Diagram
SNMP Managing System
Manager Server
1
Router Devices
*
SNMP
1
1
1
SQL
HTTP
1
1
1
Web Server
1
HTTP
*
Admin PC
SQL
Data
System Overview - Players
• Managed Devices (Switches)
– Would be defined in the system on initiation
– For which the data would be backed up
– To whom the data would be restored
• Administrator
– Would manage devices
– Would configure batch operations
– Would invoke single operations such as
• Backup a managed device
• Restore configuration into a device
System Overview – Main Components
• Database Storage
– MySQL Database
– Would store information regarding the devices
– Would store configurations
– Would allow version managing of backups
– Would store logs on the operations in the
system
System Overview – Database Diagram
System Overview – Main Components
• Manager Server
SNMP Managing System
– Would run all SNMP related
operations
– Would be configured for auto
batch operations
– Would serve as a web service
based web application
– Run over Apache web server
– Accept invocations from administrator through
Web server
Manager Server
1
Router Devices
*
SNMP
1
1
1
SQL
HTTP
1
1
Web Server
1
HTTP
*
Admin PC
1
SQL
Data
System Overview – Main Components
• Web Server
SNMP Managing System
– Web application design over
Apache web server
– Would allow administrator
interaction with the system
– Would contact Manager
Server to invoke single operation
requests from administrator
– Web user interface for managing devices and
invoking operations
Manager Server
1
Router Devices
*
SNMP
1
1
1
SQL
HTTP
1
1
Web Server
1
HTTP
*
Admin PC
1
SQL
Data
SNMP Manager – Current Stage
Design
Current state
Implementation
Testing and evaluation