Reading and Collecting Performance Data Using SNMP

Abstract

Most devices that are connected to a network report their status using SNMP (the Simple Network Management Protocol). This protocol was designed primarily for managing and monitoring network-attached hardware devices, but some applications also expose their statistical data using this protocol. In this chapter we will look at how to access this information from your Python applications. We are going to store the obtained data in an RRD (round robin database), using RRDTool—a widely known and popular application and library, which is used to store and plot the performance data. Finally we’ll investigate the Jinja2 template system, which we’ll use to generate simple web pages for our application.