Applies To:
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BIG-IQ Centralized Management
- 5.2.0
Health and event monitoring using SMTP and SNMP alerts
You can use F5® BIG-IQ® Centralized Management to easily monitor the health of your managed devices, as well as BIG-IQ itself, using the following tools:
- Simple Mail Transfer Protocol - SMTP is a standard for email transmission used for monitoring and alerting you to the health of devices in your network.
- Simple Network Management Protocol - SNMP is an industry standard protocol for monitoring devices on IP networks. Once configured, the SNMP agent sends data collected from BIG-IQ Device to your third-party SNMP manager. BIG-IQ is compatible with SNMPv1, SNMPv2c, and SNMPv3.
After you configure SMTP and/or SNMP (which you typically do when you initially set up BIG-IQ), you can specify email recipients to receive alerts when certain events occur. These alerts are configurable; you can enable and disable them, and, for some alerts, you can set specific thresholds to prompt an alert.
Specify an SMTP server to send email alerts
How do I set up BIG-IQ to work with SNMP?
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet-standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks. You can set up BIG-IQ® to work with SNMP so you can receive alerts when certain things happen on a managed device.
- Set up the SNMP Agent
- Configure SNMP Access
- Specify settings for the SNMP Trap
Before you configure SNMP
Gather the following information before you start your SNMP configuration.
CONFIGURATION COMPONENT | CONSIDERATIONS | FOR MY CONFIGURATION |
---|---|---|
SNMP administrator contact information | Find out or decide who is responsible for SNMP administration. The contact information is a MIB-II simple string variable. | |
Machine location | Find out the location of the BIG-IQ system. The location is a MIB-II simple string variable. | |
BIG-IQ client allow list | Gather the IP or network addresses (with netmasks) of the SNMP managers from which the SNMP agent will accept requests. | |
Access | Find the OID for the top-most node of the SNMP tree to provide access to. | |
Community | Get the v1 and v2c communities and the IP addresses of the SNMP managers you want to grant access to. | |
Users | Get the v3 users you want to grant access to SNMP data, along with the privacy protocols and passwords, Community, Destination, and Port. |
Configuring SNMP agent for sending alerts
This screen displays specified user addresses allowed to access your 3rd-party SNMP Manager BIG-IQ through the SNMP Agent. An agent can communicate with multiple managers, so you can configure BIG-IQ to support communications with one management station using the SNMP version1 protocol, one using the SNMP version 2C protocol, and another using SMNP version 3.
- At the top of the screen, click System.
- On the left, click .
- At the top of the screen, click the Download MIB button to download the F5-required MIBs.
- At the top of the screen, click Edit.
- Edit the Contact Information and Machine Location fields to reflect your SNMP agent settings and click the Save & Close button at the bottom of the screen.
- Click the Save & Close button at the bottom of the screen to save your changes.
- For the SNMP Access - Client Allowed List setting, click the Add button.
- In the Addresses/Networks and Mask fields, type the IP address and networks and the netmask (if applicable) that the SNMP manager is allowed to access.
- To add another address, click the plus ( + ) sign.
- At the bottom of the screen, click the Save & Close button.
Configure Access and Traps for SNMP version 3 to send alerts
Configuring Access and Traps for SNMP version 1 and 2C to send alerts
Add email recipients for SMTP and SNMP alerts
- At the top of the screen, click System.
- On the left, click .
- At the top left of the screen, click the Add button.
- In the Name the Email address fields, type the name and email address of the person you want to receive an alert.
- In the Description field, you can type an optional description to help identify this user.
- Select the check box next to each type of notification you want this user to receive an email about.
- To add another email recipient, click +.
- Click the Save & Close button at the bottom of the screen to save your changes.
How do I monitor SSL certificate expiration dates for my managed devices?
When you manage BIG-IP® devices that load balance SSL traffic, you must monitor their SSL traffic.
BIG-IQ® imports the certificates for every managed BIG-IP device you discover. This makes it easy to monitor the expiration dates all of your devices' SSL certificates from one location.
You can also:
- Set up alerts to let you know when a certain certificate is about to expire within a specified number of days.
- Download the data to a CSV file for reporting purposes.