OpManager best prac ces

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 5

LATEST VERSION 6

HARDWARE & SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS 6

HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS 6

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS 6

CONFIGURING OPMANAGER FOR PERFORMANCE 7

DISCOVERY CONFIGURATION 7

PRE-REQUISITES FOR NETWORK DISCOVERY 7

DISCOVER ADD-ON DEVICES 7

a. Enable dedicated 'add-on devices' inventory page 7

b. Push devices to their respec ve modules when added to OpManager 7

DISCOVERY CRITERIA 7

DISCOVERY FILTER 8

LOGICAL GROUPING 8

SCHEDULE DISCOVERY 8

DISCOVERY RULE ENGINE 8

INTERFACE DISCOVERY 8

LAYER 2 MAP BASED DISCOVERY 8

DEVICE/INTERFACE REDISCOVERY PROPERTIES 8

a. Interface property update scheduler 8

b. Device property update 9

VISUALIZATION FEATURES FOR ENHANCED VISIBILITY 10

BUSINESS VIEW 10

LAYER 2 MAPS 10

GOOGLE/ZOHO MAPS 10

RACK AND FLOOR VIEW 10

2
OpManager best prac ces

DASHBOARD AND NOC VIEW 10

MONITORING & DATA-COLLECTION CONFIGURATION: 10

AVAILABILITY MONITORING: 10

Device Availability Monitoring Protocol Preference 10

Ping preference 11

Configuring Ping Parameters 11

Disabling Unnecessary Polling During scheduled maintenance 11

Device Dependencies 11

Monitoring Intervals 11

a. Specifying Polling Intervals for Devices 11

b. Disabling status polling: 12

Disabling polling for a device category 12

Disable status polling for an interface status 12

DATA COLLECTION: 12

SNMP Data-collec on 12

WMI Data-collec on 13

ADDRESSING TIMEOUT ISSUE 13

DATABASE CONNECTION POOL 13

THRESHOLD SETTINGS 14

Specifying Monitoring Intervals for Performance Monitors (CPU, Memory, Disk etc) 14

IMPLEMENTATION AND PRODUCT STARTUP 14

Security and Authen ca on Installing and Star ng 14

Enabling SSL 14

Securing Admin Account 14

Restric ng Users Scope 14

Proxy-se ngs 14

ALERTING 15

a. SNMP Traps 15

3
OpManager best prac ces

b. No fica on Profiles 15

DATABASE TUNING 15

CONFIGURING REMOTE PGSQL PARAMETERS 15

CONFIGURING MSSQL PARAMETERS 15

DISTRIBUTING DATABASE FOR SCALABILITY 15

INCREASING JAVA HEAP SIZE 15

DATABASE MAINTENANCE 16

INTUITIVE REPORTS 16

4
OpManager best prac ces

Introduction
Manageengine OpManager is a network monitoring & management solu on that helps monitor your
network in a seamless and robust manner. OpManager allows you to monitor various types of network
devices such as routers, switches, servers, virtual machines, storage devices etc. and also provides alerts /
no fica ons whenever the devices in your network crosses pre-defined threshold values. This helps avert
any network disasters that may otherwise cost your business.

This document lists the best prac ces for installing and running OpManager to help you get the most out
of your network monitoring solu on. For further assistance, please feel free to drop an email to
[email protected] - our support personnel will be more than happy to assist you.

5
OpManager best prac ces

Latest version
The latest version of OpManager ( at the me of wri ng this document ( July 2020 ) ) is v12.5. You can
download the professional / enterprise edi on from here.

Hardware & Software Requirements
The following are the minimum hardware & so ware requirements that are essen al for op mal running
of OpManager. Please note that these requirements may increase / decrease based on your network size
and usage.

Hardware requirements

Software requirements

For more detailed hardware and so ware requirements, checkout the following link:
h ps://www.manageengine.com/network-monitoring/help/hardware-and-so ware-requirements.html

6
OpManager best prac ces

Configuring OpManager for Performance  
Certain parameters can be fine-tuned depending on the environment. While most configura ons are
exposed via the user interface, few other changes are effected in the configura on files and some database
tables manually. Module-wise configura ons and recommended values are listed below:

Discovery Configuration

Pre-requisites for Network Discovery
OpManager relies on communica on protocols such as SNMP (v1/v2,v3), SSH, CLI, WMI, VMware, Citrix,
Nutanix, UCS, and SMI or NetApp for classifica on and monitoring. So make sure the following
configura ons are completed before triggering discovery.

● Configure the relevant creden als.

● Define Device Templates and monitors. If your device type is not found in the supported devices
list, please reachout to our support.
● Configure mail server in case of emailing discovery reports.

Note: Avoid adding unnecessary monitors to the devices to improve their monitoring efficiency.
Note: Add devices from their dedicated Discovery op on. (applicable to Virtual devices, Nutanix, UCS,
WLC, Storage)

Discover Add-on Devices
a. Enable dedicated 'add-on devices' inventory page 

Devices discovered in OpManager's add-on modules will be added to inventory and listed as 'Unmanaged
devices'. This can be prevented by configuring these devices to be listed under "Discover Add-on Devices
page" under Quick Configura on Wizard. To configure this, follow the below steps

1. Stop the OpManager service.

2. Open the discovery.proper es file from \conf\OpManager.
3. Set the value of DISCOVER_EXTERNAL_NODE as 'true' and save the file.
4. Start the OpManager service.

b. Push devices to their respective modules when added to OpManager

Devices added to OpManager can be directly pushed to their respec ve modules. Enable this op on from
Discovery > Discovery se ngs > Add to NCM/IPAM

Discovery Criteria
OpManager relies on ICMP/NMap protocol to discover devices and SNMP protocol to discover interfaces.
Device discovery can be performed from one of the mul ple discovery criteria such as Device Name/IP, IP
Range, CIDR, and CSV File Import. Hasten discovery process by choosing the discovery format that best
suits your requirement.

7
OpManager best prac ces

Discovery Filter 
During discovery, reduce me consumed by choosing to add or ignore specific devices using the Discovery
filters op on.

Logical Grouping
Create groups to push bulky configura ons, set filters in Reports, Widget, No fica on Profile, URL
Templates, Down me schedule, Alarm suppression, Device template, Interface template, Test creden als
and Workflow.

Note: Business Views can also be treated as a Logical Group and used as a filter, Dashboard and NOC
op ons.

Schedule Discovery
Run Scheduled Discovery to periodically update your devices and interfaces. Select rediscovery rule
op ons to customize OpManager's behaviour when a device/interface is newly added or removed.

Discovery Rule Engine
OpManager helps reduce post discovery manual efforts with Discovery Rule Engine. It can be used to
configuring ac vi es such as adding monitors, adding devices to business view, associate event log rule,
associate no fica on profile to devices upon successful discovery.

Steps:

● Create new rule from Se ngs > Discovery > Discovery Rule Engine.
● Select required rule during 'Rules' stage of Discovery process.

Interface Discovery
Opmanager allows you to directly discover interfaces and their proper es in bulk by specifying the criteria
and condi on for devices and their associated interfaces. Go to Se ngs > Discovery > Interface Discovery.
Note: This is available only on OpManager v12.5.174 and above.
Note: Using the new interface discovery, discovery only the interfaces that you want to monitor and ignore
the rest.

Layer 2 Map based Discovery
If the IP range of devices in the network is unknown, Discovery can be ini ated with Layer 2 Maps. By using
the seed router as reference. OpManager discovers all the devices connected to the seed router and
creates a topology Map.

Device/Interface rediscovery properties
a. Interface property update scheduler

Automa cally update Interface proper es men oned in the table by running a scheduler. Please contact
our support team for further assistance on enabling this op on and its proper es.
Note: Available for versions 12.4.162 and above

8
OpManager best prac ces

Property Descrip on Default value

MONITORINGINTERVAL Period at which the scheduler updates the interface 86400
proper es.
IFALIAS An 'alias' name for the interface as specified by the TRUE
network manager.
IFDESCRIPTION A textual string containing the product name, TRUE
manufacturer name, and the version of the interface
hardware/so ware.
IFNAME Holds the name of the interface as assigned by the TRUE
local device
DISPLAYNAME Display name of the interface as shown in the Interface TRUE
Snapshot page
ADMINSTATUS Admin status (ifAdminStatus) of the interface. FALSE
OPERATINGSTATUS The current opera onal state (ifOperStatus) of the FALSE
interface.
PHYSMEDIA This variable states the physical media of this interface FALSE
as reported by the SNMP agent.
HCTTRAFFIC Enable/Disable the 64-bit Traffic counter. TRUE
PHYSADDRESS Represents the media or physical-level address. FALSE
IPADDRESS Represents the IP address of the interface. TRUE
IFSPEED An es mate of the interface's current bandwidth in bits FALSE
per second.
IFSPEEDIN The 'In Speed' (Bandwidth) of the Interface. FALSE
IFSPEEDOUT The 'Out Speed' (Bandwidth) of the Interface. FALSE

b. Device property update

When device rediscovery is performed, all parameters are rediscovered. However, certain proper es
(Device type, Display name, Harddisk size) will not change frequently. So when device rediscovery is
performed, you can choose to skip upda ng said parameters.

Update REDISCOVERYPROPERTIES set PROPVAL = 'true / false' where PROPNAME = <PropertyName>;

PROPNAME PROPVAL
DEVICETYPE True
DISPLAYNAME True
DNSNAME True
HARDDISKSIZE True
HARDWAREDETAILS True
IPADDRESS True
RAMSIZE True
Note: All values are set to True by default

9
OpManager best prac ces

Visualization features for enhanced visibility
Visual representa on of topology, device dependencies, and network connec ons help quickly iden fy
health and performance issues. List of visualiza on features of OpManager are listed below.

Business view
OpManager allows you to create custom graphical representa on of the devices according to the
businesses they are catering to. Go to Maps > Business View > Create New. When crea ng new business
views or infrastructure views , it is recommended that Business view names are created without special
characters like $, # etc.

Business views are created to logically group devices such as based on geography, or for assiging to a
par cular operator/technician. Infrastructure views are created to group devices of a new category, which
cannot be ideally classified into the exis ng infrastructure views. Example: Environment Sensors, IPPhones
etc.

Layer 2 Maps
Layer 2 Maps can be used to used to draw a visual representa on of the live informa on of all the devices
connected to your seed router.

Note: Make use of Layer 2 Maps periodic rediscovery op on to keep your topology map updated.

Google/Zoho Maps
OpManager allows both Google Maps and the free version Zoho Maps on which you can place your device
for be er distributed monitoring.

Rack and floor view
Create a visual representa on of your datacenter and monitor their health and availability round the clock.

Dashboard and NOC view
Gain real- me holis c picture of your network devices by placing them on custom Dashboards and NOC
view and share it with your network management team for quicker issue iden fica on and
troubleshoo ng.

Note: Avoid adding too many real- me widgets. Set their monitoring interval to 5 seconds and above to
increase dashboard performance

Monitoring & Data-collection Configuration:
Availability Monitoring:
Device Availability Monitoring Protocol Preference
OpManage performs availability of devices by using three different protocols - ICMP(default), TCP, and
SNMP. If you are present in a demilitarized zone where ICMP is prohibited, device availability monitoring
protocol can be changed to TCP for devices in bulk from Inventory > Select devices > Menu > monitor via
TCP.
Note: SNMP protocol based device availability monitoring can only be configured from individual device
snapshot page.

10
OpManager best prac ces

Ping preference
Choose ping preference between Sta c/Dynamic IP, from Se ngs > Monitoring > Monitor Se ngs > Poll
Using.

Configuring Ping Parameters

OpManager pings the devices for discovery and further for determining availability, and 4 ping packets are
sent by default. If there is network latency, it is possible that some devices are not discovered, or post
discovery, they are not polled for status. This can be addressed by configuring few ping parameters.

Steps:

●
From /opmanager/conf folder open the file ping.proper es.
●
Specify the successCount and failureCount. Maximum allowed is 4.
●
Uncomment (remove the # symbol) against the meout parameter and specify the ping meout
depending on the latency.
● Save the changes to the file.
● OpManager service requires a restart when changes are made to this file. So, restart OpManager
for the changes to be effected.
Note: The above configura on is recommended only if there is latency. Reducing the number of
ping packets will posi vely impact OpManager's performance.

Disabling Unnecessary Polling During scheduled maintenance

Whenever a maintenance is scheduled in the network for some devices, you can suspend polling for those
devices by scheduling down me in OpManager . This prevents unnecessary requests to network resources
resul ng in false alerts. There will be improved performance as the devices covered in the scheduled do
not use the data poll threads.

Device Dependencies

False alerts are triggered when a set of monitored devices are behind another device (a firewall, router
etc). The requests sent to the devices are routed through the firewall or router, and in the event of these
dependent devices being down, all devices behind this dependent devices are deemed as down.
Configuring device dependencies will prevent unncessary polling to the devices behind the dependent
device. (Benefit - prevents a lot of alerts from ge ng triggered)

Monitoring Intervals
OpManager allows you to set different monitoring intervals for different categories. You can also disable
polling for a device category like say, Desktops. Monitoring intervals can be varied for individual devices
too.

a. Specifying Polling Intervals for Devices
From Se ngs > Configura on > Quick Configura on Wizard > Monitoring Intervals, configure a smaller
monitoring interval for cri cal categories like servers or routers and space out for the other categories like

11
OpManager best prac ces

printers etc. The recommended interval for very cri cal devices is 5 minutes, while you can set a minimum
of 1 minute interval also for a very few devices.

b. Disabling status polling:

Disable status polling on the devices and interfaces that are not currently being opera onal.

Disabling polling for a device category

From Se ngs > Configura on > Quick Configura on Wizard > Monitoring Intervals, remove selec on for
the category for which you want to disable polling.

Disable status polling for an interface status

Interface polling can be disabled both locally and globally. Locally by selec ng a device from the inventory,
on its snapshot page, go to Interface > Menu > Availability Monitoring > Disable status polling. And globaly,
from Se ngs > Configura on > Interface template > Interface Types > Select an interface and > Disable
status polling.

Data Collection:
By default, OpManager uses 12 threads for SNMP polling and 12 threads for WMI polling.

SNMP Data-collection

The assump on is that each monitored device has a minuimum of 10 polleddata (monitored resources
such as cpu, memory, incoming traffic, out-going traffic, errors etc). Each Interface object has 11 polleddata
which include RxTraffic, TxTraffic, Bandwidth U liza on, Errors, Discards etc. Depending on the number of
polleddata, you can increase the number of datapoll threads.

Steps:

● From /opmanager/conf folder, open the filethreads.conf

● Increase the value of datapoll threads from 12 to the required number of threads for SNMPpolling.
● Save changes and restart OpManagerService.

Following is a reference table to increase the number of threads:

Number of  Hardware  Number of  Number of   Monitoring 

devices/interfac datapoll  SNMP Polled  Interval
e Threads Data

Upto 500 servers /  2*3.4GHz, 4GB 12 (default) Upto 50000 15 mins

5000 interfaces

      More than   
50000:
 Beyond the above  4*3.4GHz, 4GB    
numbers Additional 1 
to 8 GB 13 - 20 thread for  15 mins
every 5000 
polleddata

12
OpManager best prac ces

WMI Data-collection

(Includes Resource monitors, Windows Service Monitors, AD monitors, MSSQL monitors, Exchange
monitors. Assump on is around 50 polleddata per monitored Windows device)

Steps:
In the file /conf/threads.conf, increase the value of WMI_EXEC from 12 to the required number of threads
for WMI polling.

Number of devices Number of Threads Number of WMI PolledData Monitoring

Interval

100 12 Upto 5000 15

More than 100 13 - 18 Over 5000 15

Addressing Timeout Issue
The default SNMP query meout to variables in a device is 5 seconds. If there is a delay in the agent
response for some devices, you can globally increase the SNMP meout as follows:

Steps:

● From /opmanager/conf folder, open the fileNmsProcessesBE.conf

● Look for the following default entry in this file: PROCESScom.adventnet.nms.poll.Collector:

ARGS POLL_OBJECTS_IN_MEMORY 25 POLL_JDBC true MAX_OIDS_IN_ONE_POLL 15

AUTHORIZATION true DATA_COLLECTION_QUERY_INTERVAL 120000
PASS_THRO_ALL_POLLING_OBJECTS true CLEAN_DATA_INTERVAL 999999
● Include the addi onal parameter DATA_COLLECTION_SNMP_TIMEOUT 15 . Now the changed entry
will be as shownbelow:

PROCESS com.adventnet.nms.poll.Collector
ARGS POLL_OBJECTS_IN_MEMORY 25 POLL_JDBC true MAX_OIDS_IN_ONE_POLL 15
AUTHORIZATION true DATA_COLLECTION_QUERY_INTERVAL 120000
PASS_THRO_ALL_POLLING_OBJECTS true CLEAN_DATA_INTERVAL 999999
DATA_COLLECTION_SNMP_TIMEOUT 15

● Save the changes and restart OpManagerService.

Database Connection Pool
If the number of PolledData is over 50000, the number of non-transac on connec ons can be increased in
the range of 7 to 10 (default being 6 connec ons). Here is how you configure:

Steps:

1. From /opmanager/conf folder, open the filedatabase_params.conf.

2. Increase the value of NON_TRANS_CONNECTIONS parameter to the required number.
3. Save changes and restart OpManagerService.

13
OpManager best prac ces

Threshold Settings
OpManager allows crea ng mul ple levels of thresholds to monitor performance. This serves func ons
such as threshold based aler ng - which enables you to gain a be er understanding of your device's
performance. (eg: device monitor level threshold, interface monitor level threshold. mul ple severity
based interface threshold)

Specifying Monitoring Intervals for Performance Monitors (CPU, Memory, Disk etc)

The resources cri cal to a device's availability can be polled more frequently, with the mininum
configurable interval being 1 minute, while the other resources can be polled less frequently. Reducing the
polling frequency will lessen the opera ng load of OpManager conversely improving performance.

Note: Increase the monitoring interval of less cri cal devices. Only devices with the highest priority should
have a 1 minute monitoring interval.

Implementation and product startup
Security and Authentication Installing and Starting
The user account with which you install OpManager should have full permission on all folders/sub-folders
on the installa on directory. Make sure the account has a secure password. Also, you can run OpManager
only with the user account with which you installed the applica on.

Enabling SSL
OpManager supports enabling SSL for WebClient , securing the web access. Make sure you are on Build
No.7010 or higher.

Securing Admin Account

The default user created with full permission is admin with the password also as admin. Make sure you
change the password once you login.

Restricting Users Scope

You can create user accounts and restrict their scope by assigning full permission or read-only access for all
or part of the devices. This is done by crea ng business views and assigning users with relevant
permissions to the users.

Proxy-settings
When monitoring URLs for availability, the requests to the URLs are sent through a proxy. So, this mandates
proxy server se ngs configura on in OpManager. If the requests to certain URLs are direct and does not
require to go through a proxy, the hostnames, or the IP Address of the devices must be specified in the No
Proxy for field.

14
OpManager best prac ces

Alerting
OpManager sends SNMP, CLI, or WMI queries to devices for monitoring. So, ensure that the monitored
devices do not restrict requests coming in from OpManager. If the devices are behind a firewall, the
relevant ports must be opened, and also access lists on rou ng devices must be verified.

a. SNMP Traps
Trap Processors must be configured for new trap types. These traps are usually marked as unsolicited traps
under alarms in OpManager. Once parsers are configured, meaningful alerts are generated from the traps.

b. Notification Profiles

Make sure that correct mail server details and sms are configured to enable all email-based and sms based
no fica ons respec vely. The secondary mail-server se ngs must be configured if there is one. It is
recommended that when crea ng no fica on profiles, the profile names do not contain special characters,
space etc.

Database Tuning
OpManager runs on PGSQL and MSSQL. To ensure smooth opera on, there should be no connec vity
issues between OpManager and the Database server.

Configuring Remote pgSQL Parameters 
For versions 12.5 and above (PgSQL 10.10 or above) PGSQL comes bundled with OpManager, however, it
can also be run remotely.

Configuring MSSQL Parameters
MSSQL is usually preferred when the database transac on logs will be generated in large numbers. Learn
how to configure OpManager for MSSQL database.

Distributing Database for scalability
If the monitored devices are over 500 (or over 5000 interfaces), with more than 50000 polleddata, you can
consider migra ng the database onto another dedicated server as this promotes load distribu on and lag
free performance.

Increasing Java Heap Size 
OpManager Java Heap Size can be increased based on op miza on requirements by edi ng the value
of -Xms/-Xmx parameter in StartOpManagerServer.bat/sh script or by edi ng the file
/opmanager/conf/wrapper.conf (Ini al/Maximum Java Heap Size). The recommended JVM Heap Size is:
 
Hardware Initial Heap Size (-Xms) Maximum Heap Size (-Xmx)

1 GB RAM 100 200

2 GB RAM 200 512

4 GB RAM 512 1024

15
OpManager best prac ces

Database maintenance
OpManager collects data from devices at regular intervals. Limit the Database Maintenance values to its
default numbers. Increasing these values will cause delay in report genera on.

Intuitive Reports 
OpManager comes with over 100 out-of-the box Reports that help you quickly assess and report the
various metrics of your network. Custom reports can also be created, to access reports, go to Se ngs >
Reports.

To save me on genera ng reports periodically, they can also be scheduled ahead of me from Reports >
Schedule Reports.

Wish you a successful deployment. Feel free to checkout our support forums or reach out to
us for further technical assistance.

16