Monitoring Avaya Aura Distributed Stations with Zabbix

Introductory

I needed to put on the monitoring station Avaya. There were no problems with the Communication Manager version higher than R16.0.141 - everything is very well and transparently visible in SNMP, including the status of trunks and internal numbers. But with earlier versions - an ambush. And given that there were more than 30 such stations, and even trunks on each of at least 10-20 (and some hundreds), the task turned out to be a little non-trivial. But since it is still necessary to do it, I had to decide). So…

Formulation of the problem

What do we need:

1. Catch a trunk failure within 1-2 hours after a fall
   
2. Catch a mass failure of internal numbers (disconnecting 10-20% of internal numbers within 10-20 minutes)
   
3. Failure of any of the offices or the appearance of errors on them
   
4. Catch the failure of key internal numbers (incoming groups, VIPs, etc.)
   
5. Monitor the status of DECT databases connected to stations
   
6. Well, it would be nice to get the latest information about the software version at the stations, serial numbers, and more.
   

What do we have from equipment

• More than 30 Avaya Aura stations versions from R13 to R16;
• 10-300 trunks of different types (CO, E1, H323, SIP, etc.) at each station, trunks are added or removed extremely rarely;
• 100-3000 phones at each station. There are both IP devices, and analog and digital;
• From each DECT-station work from 5 to 100 DECT-bases. By Model: Avaya DECT R3, Avaya DECT R4, Spectralink IP-DECT Server 6500 and Spectralink IP-DECT Server 6500
• Linux server on which to deploy zabbix
• All objects are accessible on a network.

Preparatory work

Set up a zabbix server

1. Let's agree that the server is already configured to work with SNMP and SNMPtrap;
   
2. Set up a breakdown of rsyslog into different files and allow it to receive messages from other hosts. To do this, edit the rsyslog.conf config
   
   

   $UDPServerRun 514
   $InputTCPServerRun 514
   $template FROMHOSTIP,"%fromhost-ip%"
   $template FILENAME,"/var/log/rsyslog/%fromhost-ip%/syslog.log"

   
   and then restart rsyslog;
   
   
3. We put the files trunk2type.sh , trunk2ip.sh , and trunk2alive.sh from the archive into the externalscripts directory ;
   
   
4. We put the file convert_trunks.sh to any place and configure its execution through cron once every 10 minutes.

Do not forget to change the PATH_TXT variable to the current one in these scripts .

Configure Avaya Aura Communication Manager

Enable SNMP

1. We’ll go to the Communication Manager web interface with a browser
   
2. In the menu Administration → Server Maintenance → Alarms → SNMP Agent, set the following parameters:
   
   
   1. Access from IP-addressess: Any or specify the IP address of the Zabbix server
      
   2. Enable SNMP Community v2 and set the read-only community name to public
      
   3. Save the settings.
      
   
   
3. Apply the settings by restarting the agent (Alarms → Agent Status)
   
4. In the menu Security → Firewall, enable snmp and snmptrap (you need to put both daws in front of the corresponding services)

Enable trunk statistics

1. Launch Avaya Site Administration, connect to the station and run the command:
   
   

   ch mea tru

   
   And then we indicate all the numbers of trunks for which statistics should be collected. On versions of R13 and earlier, the number of trunks observed is limited to 20 trunks.

Set up DECT stations

Avaya DECT R3

Settings should be made only on the main base. Other bases will pick up these parameters automatically.

1. When enabling SNMP, specify the IP address of the Zabbix server and the public community.
   
2. We will indicate it to the Syslog server. Port 514.
   

Avaya DECT R4

Settings should be made only on the main and backup databases. Other bases will pick up these parameters automatically.

1. When enabling SNMP, specify the IP address of the Zabbix server and the public community.
   
2. We will indicate it to the Syslog server. Port 514. Logging level 4 (Warnings) or 3 (Errors).

Spectralink IP-DECT Server 400/6500

Settings should be made only on the main base. Other bases will pick up these parameters automatically. When applying the SNMP settings, the database will require a reboot !!!

1. When enabling SNMP, specify the IP address of the Zabbix server, and the community public
   
2. We will indicate it to the Syslog server. Port 514. Logging Level 4 (Warnings) or 3 (Errors)
   

Set up Media Gateways

After entering through telnet or ssh to the media gateway, enter the following commands:

snmp-server community read-only public read-write 
set snmp trap 
set snmp community trap public

Create a list of trunks

To monitor the trunk, we need the following information for each of the trunks:

1. Trunk number
   
2. Trunk name
   
3. Trunk type
   
4. The number of lines in the trunk
   
5. Number of out-of-service lines
   
6. Far Trunk IP Address

All this data can be obtained through SNMP, but in this case it will not be possible to associate the trunk number with the address of its distant node. Therefore, you will have to do this manually. To facilitate this task, I created a file in Excel that forms the list we need based on the results of executing those commands from Avaya Site Administration. The procedure is as follows:

1. In Avaya Site Administration, press Ctrl + R and make reports to the csv files for each of the three commands:
   
   
   • li tru
     
   • li sign
     
   • li node-n a (on stations earlier than R15, this command looks like li node-n)
     
   
   
2. We import the results of each of the three commands into the corresponding sheets of the Excel file
   
3. On the Zabbix sheet, as a result, we get the table we need. Export it to a text file called avaya_node-names_.txt
   

Hosting Zabbix Nodes

In Zabbix, we start the hosts of stations, gateways and the main DETC databases, attaching the following templates to them:

• Avaya Aura Station version younger than R16.0.141:
  
  
  • Template_Device_SNMP
    
  • Template_ICMP
    
  • Template SNMP AVAYA AURA PBX TRUNKS
    
  • Template SNMP AVAYA AURA PBX MG
    
  • Template SNMP AVAYA AURA EXTENSIONS (If you need to separately monitor internal numbers) Use with caution - the station gives the parameters of internal numbers very slowly !!!
    
    
• Media Gateways G4xx, G3xx, G7xx. Please note: G6xx gateway monitoring is not supported !!!
  
  
  • Template_Device_SNMP
    
  • Template_ICMP
    
  • Template SNMP AVAYA G3xx-G4xx-G6xx MEDIAGATE
    
  
  
• DECT-bases R3 and R4 (you can start all the bases - both basic and working in slave mode)
  
  
  • Template_Device_SNMPv1 (Yes, these stations only have SNMPv1)
    
  • Template_ICMP
    
  • Template SNMP AVAYA IP-DECT R4
    
  
  
• DECT-bases Spectralink IP-DECT Server 6500 and 400 (only master-bases can be started)
  
  
  • Template_Device_SNMP
    
  • Template_ICMP
    
  • Template SNMP Spectralink IP-DECT Server 6500_400
    

Since some of the parameters are collected once a day and the templates use auto-detection of the vast majority of parameters, note that we will receive actual data only after a day and a half.

Conclusion

There are several points that I want to pay attention to:

• At R15 stations and for some unknown reason, the SNMP agent may hang during four or more concurrent calls.
• Template SNMP AVAYA AURA EXTENSIONS works very slowly with connected 100 or more phones. I advise you to enable it for the initial scan of internal numbers, and then disable all groups of sensors of non-key numbers (except for VIPs or incoming ones).
• Avaya R3 and R4 DECT databases have very little monitoring information.
• When adding a trunk to the station, you must re-do the steps described in the “Creating Nodes in Zabbix” section .
• Log analysis from rSyslog in these templates has not yet been implemented

References

• Archive with all files from the article
• Example file with trunks