In this HowTo, I will show you how you can get statistics off of the Netscaler without using SNMP. You might be asking why would I want to do that?? Well like many other devices that support SNMP, the Netscaler makes use of dynamic OID creation. For those of you that do not understand what I mean. Dynamic OID creation, is the way that Networking devices give OID's to variables that are not static in the device itself.

Here are some common static variables/OID's, amongst most devices out there.

• CPU Utilization
• Disk Utilization
• Memory Utilization
• TCP Statistics

Here are some common, non-static variables/OID's..

• A Load Balanced Virtual Server
• Statistics about LUNS
• Statistics about Services

Now you can get these statistics off of the SNMP based device. But if and when this device is rebooted, more then likely the OID has changed. Now you are stuck with the task, of finding the new OID. Since the Netscalers have a SOAP Based API, we can get those same statistics with out ever needing to know the OID.

Here I have attached a script that I wrote, using Python and Suds to connect to the Netscaler. This script works perfectly with Zenoss and its DataPoint structure.

Download Get Netscaler Stats

File Title: Get Netscaler Stats (Details) File Type: py File Version: 1.0.1 File Size: 10.00 Kb License: File Author: Allen Sanabria File HomePage: Downloads: 8 Rating:  ( Votes) Your Vote: ?12345

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Recently I just started to use the Citrix Netscalers again ( Load Balancers ). Being the person that I am, I wanted a way to grab the information using the SOAP API.
Now Citrix has a ton of documentation for Perl/C/C# and Java ( None for Python ). SOAP client support has not been the best for Python, in my opinion.
I know you have soappy/ZSI, which I have had issues with consuming Broken WSDL files ( Having to fix the Broken WSDL file manually, SUCKS!).

Just 2 weeks ago, I encounterd SUDS. This module is by far, the best SOAP client for Python.
There documentation is simple and straight to the point, with a bunch of nice samples to get you on your way.

Install SUDS before proceeding further. You can get suds from here. https://fedorahosted.org/suds/
Connection to my netscaler was as simple as this...

Python 2.4.3 (#1, Sep  3 2009, 15:37:37)
[GCC 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-46)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from suds.client import Client
>>> url = "http://nsip/api/NSConfig.wsdl"
>>> from suds.xsd.doctor import *
>>> imp = Import('http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/')
>>> imp.filter.add("urn:NSConfig")
>>> d = ImportDoctor(imp)
>>> client = Client(url, doctor=d, location="http://nsip/soap/")
>>> client.service.login(username="login", password="pass")
(simpleResult){
 rc = 0
 message = "Done"
 }
>>>

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I've been using Swatch for quite a while now and I never invested the time to  create a quick startup script. Today, I decided to create one and it works just fine under Centos and Ubuntu Server. You can download it here..

Download Swatch Startup Script

File Title: Swatch Startup Script (Details) File Type: sh File Version: 1.0 File Size: 1.37 Kb License: File Author: Allen Sanabria File HomePage: Downloads: 47 Rating:  ( Votes) Your Vote: ?12345

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Well this is where my script comes into play... Stay tuned for updates, as I'm planning on adding to this script. So you can run it with the detail option and a detail port option. Please post any support related question in the forums here..http://www.linuxdynasty.org/forums/Scripting/scripting/sh_cdp_neighbor_help

• Catch all CDP connected switches, even if there is more then 1 switch seen through 1 port.

Revision 1.1 9/11/2009

• Added --type option ( --type=detail )

When you log into a switch and run a show cdp neighbor, your info might look a little like this..

show cdp neighbor
Capability Codes: R - Router, T - Trans Bridge, B - Source Route Bridge
 S - Switch, H - Host, I - IGMP, r - Repeater, P - Phone
 
Device ID        Local Intrfce     Holdtme    Capability  Platform  Port ID
71_5th_SW1           Gig 10/15          145          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/48
D_M1001_V180_SW1     Gig 1/42           132          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/1
D_M1001_V181_SW1     Gig 1/46           136          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/1
D_M1001_V181_SW2     Gig 1/47           166          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/1
D_M1001_V180_SW3     Gig 1/43           147          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/1
D_M1001_V181_SW3     Gig 1/48           158          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/1
D_M1001_V180_SW2     Gig 1/41           141          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/1
D_M1001_V181_SW4     Gig 1/44           179          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/1
D_M1001_V180_SW4     Gig 1/40           145          S I      WS-C3560G-Gig 0/1
D_M701_V177_SW4      Gig 10/7           174          S I      WS-C2970G-Gig 0/25
D_M701_V177_SW1      Gig 10/6           154          S I      WS-C2970G-Gig 0/25
Router               Gig 10/1           162          R S      WS-C6513  Gig 9/9
Router1              Gig 10/14          168          R S      WS-C6513  Gig 9/16
79_18th_Fl_SW1       Gig 10/12          174          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/48
D_1700_V187_SW1      Gig 10/13          129          S I      WS-C3560G-Gig 0/28
D_1700_V187_SW3      Gig 10/10          146          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/48
D_1700_V187_SW2      Gig 10/9           148          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/48
D_522_V176_SW1       Gig 10/3           121          S I      WS-C2970G-Gig 0/25
D_522_V176_SW4       Gig 10/4           125          S I      WS-C2970G-Gig 0/25
D_CL001_V200_SW1     Gig 10/11          125          S I      WS-C2960G-Gig 0/24
2W_4507R             Gig 7/2            147         R S I     WS-C4507R Gig 3/9

Now this is how it will look if you run sh_cdp_neighbor.py script...

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In my previous HowTO, I created the get_port.py script. Now this script did the job, but had a few faults in it.

• Major fault was the fact that the script could not match multiple MAC
  Addresses per port
• Also if the port had multiple MAC Addresses it usually would fail while doing the search
• Better error checking. For example if you searched by IP Address before, the error was ambiguous.
  Now the error will say the IP Address you are looking for is not in the ARP Table

This script has been heavily tested on Cisco Core Switches and on Cisco Catalyst Switches. So far no issues like in the previous one.
I will post some of my output below so you can get an idea on how the script works.

Also to see the script in action immediately, you should run the command like this..

python port_report.py -d 192.168.101.1 -c public -n "1/40"

The reason you should run the above first, is that if the ip address you are searching for is not in the ARP table you will not get any results. Also I have already seen instance where a someone runs the script and uses the search for mac function and it does not return a mac. One reason this happens, is because the mac you are searching for is not on the switch you are walking or not part of any vlan.So by passing a port, the script  will scan every vlan on the switch for MAC Addresses connected to that port.This script uses the dot1d tables to get the MAC info as per the CISCO website.

Update 1.1

• Fixed Port Matching...
• Now for the -n option you can pass the port number '1/1' or the Port Name as per ifName "Gi1/1"
  1. Pysnmp
  2. Pyasn1
  3. SNMP Access to the switch you want to talk too and its community string.



Three things you will need for this script to work..

• 1. install python-setuptools
     
  2. then run easy_install pysnmp
  3. and easy_install pyasn1
To make your life easier you should do the following


I am using the following revisions from the python cheese shop pysnmp 4.1.7a  and pyasn1 0.0.6a

You can download the script here
port_report.py


Download LD Port Report

File Title: LD Port Report (Details) File Type: py File Version: 1.13 File Size: 43.83 Kb License: File Author: Allen Sanabria File HomePage: Downloads: 338 Rating:  ( Votes) Your Vote: ?12345


Please post anything related to this script on this forum link http://www.linuxdynasty.org/forums/Scripting/scripting/port_report
Unless it is just a comment, thank you...

Also if you download this script on other Platforms besides Cisco, please let me know if it works, so I can added under platforms supported.



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Tags:
• howto
• python
• script
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