Example: monitoring router bandwidth

Through the Performance Monitoring system, you have the ability to configure the application to gather bandwidth usage on your SNMP enabled devices (routers, switches, etc.) and then track that usage through performance reports. Several performance monitors are installed with the application, but for bandwidth monitoring, the Interface Utilization monitor is the most useful (this will illustrate percent utilization and throughput).

The Interface Utilization monitor gathers statistics on the volume of bytes going through the active interfaces on the device. You can collect data on all interfaces, active interfaces, or just specific interfaces. This monitor is configured and enabled through Device Properties > Performance Monitors.

Note: Before you can configure the monitor, you must have SNMP enabled on the device, and the proper credentials configured in the Credentials Library for the device. The Performance Monitoring system uses these credentials to connect to the device during the configuration process, and during normal performance gathering. For more information on enabling SNMP, see "Enabling SNMP on Windows devices."

Configuring the monitor

Because the Interface Utilization performance monitor is one of the default performance monitors installed with WhatsUp Gold, there is no global configuration required before setting the monitor up for a device itself. Once your SNMP credentials have been established for the device, you are ready to configure and enable the monitor to start gathering data.

  1. On the WhatsUp Gold web interface, select the device you want to gather performance data for and then right-click.
  2. Select Properties from the right-menu.
  3. Select Performance Monitors on the Device Properties dialog.
  4. Select the Interface Utilization monitor from the list.
  5. Click Configure to set up the monitor for the device. WhatsUp Gold scans the device and discovers the interfaces on the device.

    Once the scan is complete, the Configure Interface Data Collection dialog appears. If the credentials for the device are not configured properly, the scan will fail (return to the Credentials Library to fix it). If the device is not SNMP-enabled, the scan will fail (see "Enabling SNMP on Windows Devices" on page 96).

  6. Select the interfaces you want to collect data for. From the Collect data for pull-down, select All, Active, or Specific. If you select Specific, select just the interfaces you want to monitor in the list below. By default, active interfaces will be measured.
  7. (Optional) Click Advanced to change the retry and timeout settings for the SNMP connection to the device. Click OK to save the changes to the Advanced Settings.
  8. On the Configure Interface Data Collection dialog, enter a time interval (in minutes) you want the application to wait between polls. The default is 10 minutes. See, "Program Options - Report Data for more information on data collection and roll-up."
  9. Click OK to save the Interface Utilization configuration.

Viewing the data

WhatsUp Gold will take several polling cycles before it has enough data to produce meaningful graphs (with a 10 minute poll interval, this may mean a few hours). Once enough data has been gathered, there are several reports you can use to view this data.