Back to SNMP and other things

I used to hate SNMP.  I’m not sure I still don’t.  It’s been annoying to set up.  I’m still fighting with SNMPWALK on SNMPv3 and getting data from a Cisco router and switch. Eh well. I’ll get into that at some other point.  

I have to admit Cacti was one of the better than I thought it could be.  I followed the right instructions and have started doing some SNMP polling and producing some decently relevant graphs on information someone in IT would think could be important.  Luckily, I happened to set it up on a site that had Internet issues later that day.  It worked out great because I ended up diagnosing the issue while trying to connect to my Cacti web page.  Turns out there was interference on the network in the area and the site was dropping about 18% of packets.  Which explains why they were having network connection issues. 

 The other thing I keep looking and thinking about is network security.  Which seems to be something everyone says they need, but no one does anything about.  I pissed off a networking vendor because I told the person I wanted three single purpose servers instead of one multipurpose server.  Everything I've ever read on servers says one purpose per server.  Don't end up with a multipurpose server. 

Eventually, the server needs replaced.  And then you have numerous tools that need replaced or fixed in order to solve all the problems you used with that server.  I mean sure, the RADIUS / print / file server / new thing part two server is great.  But wouldn't it be simpler to have a RADIUS server that does nothing but RADIUS authentication.  Or a print server that does nothing but handle printing.  And then, when you need to upgrade that server you take down one function.  Instead of the 25 different things running on one server.  

I guess the second part of that conversation is "don't turn on any service that you don't need" on a server.  Great.  That's a lot simpler with a single purpose server.  The print server doesn't need to do anything but print.  The file server needs fat bandwidth to reach it, and that's about it.  Virtualize it all.  It's not like you need a physical server for all that.  

But what do I know?