With the 1.0.8 relase you also get a bunch of showcase videos. In case you don’t have enough of me afterwards, you might want to watch the presentation I gave in Bolzano.
And here’s another goodie. I’ve taken some emoticons and user icons from the FatCow icon collection. Those archives can be added to NeDi by using “Update Images” in System-Files to replace them smilies. Last but not least, NeDiO8 it’s VM and NeDiVA (a Suse based appliance) are available for download as well now. Have fun!
Indeed, I finally managed to release 1oh8. If you’re upgrading from 1.0.7 you’ll have to initialize the DB. Interface RRDs have changed as well, but I’ve included addstatus2ifrrd.pl in contrib to convert them (get details with perldoc addstatus2ifrrd.pl). Everything else is in the Readme.txt, even how you can adjust the DB, if upgrading from RCs.
IPv6 Support
Some new features are extended support for various wireless controllers, IPv6 support and XLS export. You can also take snapshots of the DB to freeze time or create parallel universes (by importing another DB into a snapshot). I’ve added a lab-DB to the downloads, with that you can see for yourself…
Introducing snapshots
to those who wait! I know I still haven’t finished oh8, but we’re in the final testing stages. Features are frozen and only bug fixes are allowed now! You can imagine how difficult it is to develop interaction with devices, you don’t have direct access to. Fortunately I can look at a few NeDi installations, to get the major bugs ironed out, but it takes its time and surprises never seem to cease! Anyhow I’m optimistic to finally release later this week.
On the upside, I get to have a speech again! I’m looking forward to visit the beautiful South Tyrol and present an introduction to NeDi along the very latest features on April 18!
I thought I was close to release 1.0.8 before Xmas, but too many changes prevented this from happening. I’ve now decied to publish another release candidate, to make sure the final version won’t create too many headaches. I’m going to Houston in a few weeks, but I’ll do my best to release 1.0.8 before that!
Download nedi-027 and simply use System-Files to update. I’d recommend initializing the DB, but if you’re updating from nedi-309 you’ll only need to recreate the monitoring table and modify the modules table like this: alter table modules add column modloc VARCHAR(255); (will be used in the future for distributed stacks).
Wait there’s more! NeDi has been used in a number of commercial monitoring solutions for a while now. As I want to improve this area, you’ll see the sponsors showing up here, so feel free to check them out and maybe find the comprehensive overall solution you’re looking for…
Last but not least, if you wanted to contribute to NeDi as a user, but have trouble to get company approval, look at the new Invoice Generator (Other-Invoice) 
Does it ring a bell? Unlike Schroedinger’s mine wasn’t actually part of the experiment! It came to visit me in the basement, while I was developing the WLC and MSM controller support. Aruba made it in there as well, thanks to a faithful community member down under, who was kind enough to hook up a controller to the internet for me! This and many other enhancements made it into NeDi 1.0.8, which can be tested with the release candidate. Simply update it via System-Files, initialize the DB and have fun exploring…
One big topic is IPv6, which needs to be enabled in the .def files of devices actually supporting it. Don’t worry though, the long awaited and very much overdue Defgen-Tutorial is out as well! You’ll also learn about NeDi’s new switch-stacking awareness and the beautiful rack-view feature!
Well, it’s funny how seemingly complex topics like multi-tenancy and database snapshots turned out to be surprisingly easy, where as stuff like IPv6 is creating more headaches than a bottle of schnapps (probably would)…
Trying to store those ludicrous 128-bit addresses in a DB, while making them searchable and sortable is one thing! But it seems every vendor likes to present IPv6 addresses in their very own way, what SNMP is concerned.
So there’s the obsolete ipAddrTable for IPv4, the new ipv6AddrTable and ipAddressTable to bind them all (or so). Now all those tables are mixed and matched as they come, making my head spin (without schnapps!). Oh, and of course some vendors notoriously prefer to keep them in enterprise MIBs… at least on their routers, but not switches!
NeDi is an effective/minimalistic tool and I try to keep it this way. So, the real challenge for me is to get all them addresses with the least SNMP transactions possible. Stay tuned, I’m working on it…
I’m excited to see the growing interest in NeDi. This leads to new ideas and unexpected developments in return! The new version will be capable of listing the top broadcasters and identify top discard ports (considerably important to identify bottlenecks in the datacenter). IPv6 support is on its way, as well as a snapshot feature, which lets you go back in time, or import another nedi db for (forensic) investigation! It’s actually easier than I thought. Many additional improvements like XLS export (which accidentally lead to some great theme enhancements!), sending SMS via chat and adding favorites to the liveunited.org admin message with one click of a button, complete the picture.
Threaded discovery is more complex than expected, especially with perl on OpenBSD not supporting threads out of the box!
But other large scale network features like timezones for users and a master / agent architecture (via HTTPS) are under development as well…
Bear with me as I try to get all this into a stable package. And please use the share button below, if you like what you just read! There’s much more to come… I promise!
Michael Schwartzkopff will have a talk about NeDi at the Open Source System Management Conference 2012. Too bad I can’t be there, but I hope it will be recorded. Here’s some more information from the speaker.
It’s great to see, how NeDi still gets more popular!
I’m wondering how many people would be interested in joining me for a talk in Zurich. There’s a great platform at Digicomp to present the latest developments and some interesting use cases. Let me know via forum or drop me a mail…