Monitor Zylinc Media Server services

This information is primarily for administrators and/or people who manage Zylinc solutions

The Zylinc Media Server runs on Debian Linux, and you can use AdminCLI to set up its features. You don't have root access to the underlying operating system.

The Media Server provides two important services that you should monitor:

  • Asterisk: A SIP-based PBX (telephone exchange) service that handles calls to phone queues, and makes it possible for callers to hear music on hold and audio announcements (like “You will be served by the next available representative; please hold …”). Asterisk also makes it possible for callers to use IVR menus (Interactive Voice Response, like “For Sales, press 1”), and many other things like that.

  • Tomcat: A web server that hosts Administration Portal and provides access to log file downloads as well as upload and download of audio announcement files.

You should monitor that the two vital services, Asterisk and Tomcat, are running on the Media Server.

Each service should listen on its network port, so you should monitor that those ports respond.

Asterisk ports to monitor:

  • Tcp/5038

Tomcat ports to monitor:

  • Tcp/8080
  • Tcp/8443 (if you use HTTPS)

If you use VMware to host the Media Server, we recommend that you install VMware tools.

VMware tools provide you with advanced monitoring features. To set up monitoring of the Debian Linux server, refer to the guidelines of your organization or to the documentation of VMware and your monitoring tool. You should consider monitoring disk space, memory usage, CPU usage, and the state of time synchronization.

The following steps describe how to install VMware tools on the Media Server:

  • Note that Media Server will restart during installation, so you'll need a service window

  • Log in to AdminCLI (for example with the tool putty.exe)

  • Type system vmware to go the VMware section of the shell

  • A numbered list of different VMware tools versions is displayed on the screen

  • Enter the number of the version of VMware tools to install

  • Type i to initiate the installation

  • Type y to confirm that the server will restart

Hyper-V Linux Integration Services is currently not supported on the Media Server. Instead, you can set up monitoring via SNMP, which is described in the following.

Installation of third-party agents is currently not supported on the Media Server. Instead, you can set up monitoring via SNMP, which is described in the following.

You can set up SNMP on the Media Server. This lets your monitoring tool query the server, and retrieve a tree structure of server- and service health-related parameters (OIDs).

The SNMP service will listen to the IP4 address of the Media Server.

The insecure versions 1 and 2c of SNMP will be disabled.

Communication will be encrypted using SHA and AES. The less secure MD5 and DES will be disabled.

The following steps will activate SNMP, so that the command snmpwalk and your SNMP based monitoring tool can start to work.

  • Log in to AdminCLI (for example with the tool putty.exe).

  • Type feature snmp

  • Type la

  • Type the IP4 address of the Media Server.

  • Type p to set a password for authentication protocol pass phrase. The password relates to the -A parameter of the Linux snmpwalk command, or to the -aw: parameter of the Windows snmpwalk command. In this example, we use the password ppassword, because you use the p command to set it. If you don’t change the password, zycallSwitchUser is the default value.

  • Type pr to change privacy to authpriv.

  • Type at to change authentication type to SHA

  • Type prs to change privacy protocol to AES.

  • Type prp to set a password for privacy protocol pass phrase. The password that relates to the -X parameter of the Linux snmpwalk command or to the -pw: parameter of the Windows snmpwalk command. In this example, we use the password prppassword, because you use the prp command to set it. If you don’t change the password, zycallSwitchUser is the default value.

  • Type v1 to disable version 1/2c.

  • Type v3 to enable version 3.

  • Type t to enable SNMP service.

  • Type sa to save.

  • Type w and you should see the SNMP tree.

  • Type <tab><enter> to close the SNMP tree.

To test that SNMP works, go to another Windows or Linux host and use the snmpwalk command to receive the SNMP tree structure.

Windows:

Download the third-party snmpwalk utility from www.snmpsoft.com.

Type this command and replace the user names, passwords and Media Server hostname with the relevant values, as previously described:

Copy 
snmpwalk -v:3 -sn:zycallSwitchUser -aw:ppassword -ap:sha -pp:aes128 -pw:prppassword -r:MediaServer

Linux:

Use any Linux host to get access to the snmpwalk command.

Type this command and replace the user names, passwords and Media Server hostname with the relevant values, as previously described:

Copy 
snmpwalk -v3 -u zycallSwitchUser -A ppassword -a sha -l authPriv -x aes -X prppassword MediaServer 1.3.6.1

From the previous, we now know that SNMP is working as expected, and we even have working command line parameters, that allow us to run an SNMP query from another Windows or Linux host.

We recommend that you set your monitoring tool to use SNMP to monitor disk space, memory usage, and CPU usage on the Media Server.

For information about how to set up alerts and warnings, refer to the guidelines of your organization or to the documentation of your monitoring tool.

The following Excel spreadsheet contains a list of all available OIDs on the Media Server. The first column is marked with an X for the specific OIDs that we recommend that you monitor as a minimum.

snmp_oids_iso_6_62.xlsx