I had a few of folks ask me about snmp configuration on 1000v last so am reusing the content I sent them for this post. This is basically a 5 minute configuration of Nexus 1000v SNMP monitoring with SolarWinds NPM.

Software Versions used:

Nexus 1000v version 4.0(4)SV1(3b)

Nexus 1000v version 4.0(4)SV1(4)

SolarWinds Orion NPM 10.2

Network Topology:
SolarWinds NPM was running in a VM on the same cluster as the VSM. Basically they were connected to the same physical Nexus 5020 and on the same vlan. So a very flat backend network topology and no firewall in between. before you begin make sure you can ping from Nexus 1000v to the NMS.

Configuration Steps:

Step 1.
Configure Nexus 1000v SNMP to send traps to the NMS.

Here we are using user xxxxxx to send traps to the NMS using management interface.

snmp-server contact [email protected]
snmp-server location SJSV-iLAB
snmp-server user admin network-admin auth md5 Cisco123 priv aes-128 Cisco123
snmp-server user admin enforcePriv
snmp-server user xxxxxx network-admin auth md5 Cisco123 priv aes-128 Cisco123
snmp-server user xxxxxx enforcePriv
snmp-server host 172.16.165.134 traps version 3 priv xxxxxx
snmp-server host 172.16.165.134 use-vrf management

Step 2. Configuration On SolarWinds
Step 2(a).
Select Add Node and Type in the Nexus 1000v VSM IP Address

Step 2(b).
Type in the user authorized to send snmp trap on the VSM

The SNMPv3 Password can be either just the password you configured (“Cisco123”)or its localized key (“0x81558f44c057276fca90f3b757465c7c”) from show run snmp. If you are using the localized key make sure you check “Password is a key”, as shown in the following screen shot.
For example:snmp-server user xxxxxx network-admin auth md5 Cisco123 priv aes-128 Cisco123
Becomes:
snmp-server user xxxxxx network-admin auth md5 0x81558f44c057276fca90f3b757465
c7c priv aes-128 0x81558f44c057276fca90f3b757465c7c localizedkey

Step 2(c).
Repeat the same steps, same username and password.

Step 2(d).

Now Click “Test” and it should be successful.

Step 2(e).Now go through the steps and add the interfaces to monitors, I went with all 🙂

Step 2(f).
Select what pollers to add to the node, here some like power supply, temp are not relevant for a VSM running on a ESX host, so pick and choose the ones you want to poll.

Click Next.

Step 2(g).

Now Click on “OK, ADD NODE” and voila “Node was successfully added”.