Fed up with overly complex network graphing tools? Want a simple but powerful way to monitor bandwidth throughout your infrastructure? FITB (fit-bee, or "fill in the blank") is a tool designed to make polling every switch and router in your network easier, simpler to find, and with more detail than previously possible.

1. FITB
Network Graphing Done Right
Laurie Denness
http://laur.ie
@lozzd

2. Monitoring
• Everyone knows it’s important
• “If it moves, graph it” - Me, 2009
• BTW: ##monitoringsucks on Freenode

3. What is your network doing?
Saturating your network in unexpected
places can cause unexpected problems

4. What is your network doing?

5. What we wanted
• Every port, on every switch to be
monitored
• Previously this meant a lot of clicking and
overhead to maintain
• 1 minute polling interval, for extra detail
• New switches to be monitored within
minutes of them coming up

6. How hard can that be?
• There are *a lot* of graphing solutions out
there, old and new
• Kept thinking to myself “can it really be this
difficult”
• Everyone has their own set of
requirements

7. Introducing FITB
• Fit-bee or “Fill in the Blank”
• Based on RRDTool, same data structure as
many other RRDTool based systems
• Written in PHP

8. Feature Overview
• Automatic Discovery
• Every “up” port on every switch
• Handles the ports going up/down and being
renamed
• Simple Config
• One line to add a new switch
• Precise, 1 minute polling

9. Feature Overview
• Simple, but powerful interface
• Search interface name, alias
• Filters on every page to drill down
• Monitors any combination of
• bits/sec, packets/sec, errors/discards/sec

10. Getting Started
• Some sort of webserver with PHP
• and the PHP CLI
• RRDTool
• MySQL
• Cron
• Some devices to monitor

11. Installation
• Get the code
• Import the database schema
• Set up cron
• Make a safe place for your RRD files
• Put a switch in the config
• Resume looking at pictures of cats online

13. List of devices

14. Set time period
(5 mins to months)
List of devices

15. Set time period
(5 mins to months)
Refresh interval
List of devices

16. Set time period Search
(5 mins to months)
Refresh interval
List of devices

17. Set time period Search
(5 mins to months)
Refresh interval
Graph type filter
(bits, errors, packets)
List of devices

18. Set time period Search
(5 mins to months)
Refresh interval
Graph type filter
(bits, errors, packets)
List of devices
Host filter

19. Adding a switch

20. Adding a switch
prettyname
Display Name

21. Adding a switch
enabled
Polling enabled?
prettyname
Display Name

22. Adding a switch
enabled
Polling enabled?
showoninterface
Display in GUI
prettyname
Display Name

23. Adding a switch
enabled ip
Polling enabled? IP or hostname
showoninterface
Display in GUI
prettyname
Display Name

24. Adding a switch
enabled ip
Polling enabled? IP or hostname
showoninterface
Display in GUI
prettyname snmpcommunity
Display Name SNMP details

25. Adding a switch
enabled ip graphtypes
Polling enabled? IP or hostname Graphs required
showoninterface
Display in GUI
prettyname snmpcommunity
Display Name SNMP details

40. What happens when a new
port comes up?
• Next polling run it will be added
automatically
• No config, no fuss

41. What if a port goes down?
• All the pages have graphs ordered by last
update
• Keep stale things at the bottom out of
the way
• The graphs are marked as stale

42. What if a port goes down?

43. What if a port goes down?
• The “stale” time is configurable
• Config option to permanently delete old
graphs

46. What else?
• Dashboard support has been written
• https://github.com/etsy/dashboard
• Network Weathermap patch available

49. What next?
• This is version 1
• Bugs?
• Features?
• Stacked graphs
• Config editor
• Less than 1 minute polling?
• Open source!

50. FITB
http://github.com/lozzd/FITB

51. FITB
http://github.com/lozzd/FITB
Laurie Denness
http://laur.ie
@lozzd