Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: NV Default Tweaks

To go along with my post about the default tweaks that I do to a vanilla SuperAgent (ADA) installation, I decided to go ahead and document my default tweaks for NetVoyant. Note the disclaimer at the bottom of this page. All of these tweaks should be done before the first discovery cycle begins.

Add discovery scopes by network, not individual IP address. This is a hot topic, but I maintain that using networks is better than individual IP addresses, if only for the sake of administration. If you've configured DNS and discovery properly (see point 5 below) IP address changes won't require any intervention. If you'd rather keep a super tight grip on your stack, go right ahead.
Enable daily Periodic Discover: just a checkbox under discovery
Tweak SNMP Timeout: Change the timeout from 5 seconds to 2. If it hasn't responded after 2 seconds, it's not going to respond after 5.
Enable Reachability Only Monitoring: If you want to monitor devices in scope but not SNMP capable, you can by only using ICMP. Enable this by unchecking the box that says 'Ignore Non-SNMP Devices'. You'll also need to go to Config>>Discovery>>Device Models and check the 'Enabled' checkbox on the 'NonSNMP Devices' model.
Update Device Naming: This one takes some thinking. If you know you will have DNS entries for all of your devices, the best would be to let NV poll via FQDN (vs. polling by IP address). That way, if your discovery scopes include networks instead of individual IP addresses you won't have to change anything in NV when the IP address of a device changes. Since NV will be polling via FQDN and the new IP address is still in scope, NV won't know any different. Set Default device name to 'DNS Name'. If there isn't one, NV will poll via IP address.
Give NV more resources: Slide the resource usage slider up to its max. If NV isn't the only thing on the server, do this carefully.
Disable Undesired Classes: Under Discovery>>Device Classes disable any device classes you won't want to monitor. This is one way you can prevent NV from monitoring everything on your network even though you've added scopes by network. I typically disable Printers and workstations. You will need to keep an eye on any SNMP capable devices that show up in the other group. This means NV doesn't know what class the device belongs to. Right click the device and click change classification. If you need a new class, come to Config>>Discovery>>Device Classes and create it. After you make a classification change, make sure your undesired classes still say "No Device Models Enabled Upon Discovery'.
Tip: when you're reclassifying devices, you can set the icon that gets used by the NV console when displaying the device. This is only for the console, but it can make things easier to troubleshoot. You can either use one of the built in images (found at D:\netqos\netvoyant\classes\redpoint\images) or store your own there (keep it to less than 20x20 pixels) by entering the image name (without the .gif) in the change classification dialog box.
Disable polling of the System Idle Process: If the Host Resources Software Performance (hrswrun) dataset is going to be used, setup a discovery rule called 'Default' with expression:
```
hrSWRunName <> 'System Idle Process'
```
It's also a good idea to go ahead and set the poll event severity to none. Otherwise you'll get an alarm every time a process fails to poll. This can be a good thing, since it indicates that a process has gone down. However, if NV is polling a process that is being run by a user, when the user logs off, the process will disappear. In fact, I usually go through and disable poll events for all datasets. This should be done understanding what is lost when not getting poll events.
Disable Host Resource Device Table (hrdevice): Create a discovery rule called 'None' with expression:
```
1==2
```
If you've already discovered some/all of your devices, set the poll instance expiration to 0 and enable the 'None' discovery rule. Then run a full rediscovery. After that's done, disable polling and periodic discovery on that dataset.
Disable VMware datasets: You will only get data for these datasets if you own CA Virtual Assurance. If you do, skip this step. If you don't, disable polling and periodic discovery for VMware Datacenter Element (aimdc), VMware Host (aimhost), and VMware Virtual Machine (aimvm).
Disable NBAR and RMON2: if you have NBAR or RMON2 probes and want to poll them from NV, skip this step. Otherwise, disable polling and periodic discovery for Protocol Distribution (NBAR) (nbarstats) and Protocol Distribution (RMON2) (protodist).
Disable polling of optical, removable, and floppy drives: Add a discovery rule to the Host Resource Storage (hrstorage) dataset called 'Default' with expression:
```
hrStorageType NOT IN ('1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.1.7','1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.1.5')
```
If you've already discovered some/all of your devices, set the poll instance expiration to 0 and enable the 'Default' discovery rule. Then run a full rediscovery. After that's done, set the poll instance expiration back to something reasonable like 28.
Disable polling of various interface types: Add a discovery rule called 'Default' with expression:
```
ifInOctets+ifOutOctets<>0 AND ifType NOT IN (1, 18, 24, 134, 37, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104) AND ifSpeed<>0
```
If you're curious about which interface types this excludes, look on the Config tab under Discovery>>Interface Types.
Enable Verbosity on the Topology service: Go to Services>>Topology and change the drop down from 'Normal' to 'Normal (Verbose)'. There's no save button. Turn this back to 'Normal' after NV is up and running and stable in production.
Disable Traps: If NV isn't going to be your trap handler, prevent stray traps from getting logged into the database by going to Services>>Traps and setting start mode to 'Manual'. Then click 'Stop' to stop the service.
Configure your view options: Under the View menu, make sure everything is enabled.