SNMP Trap and Cortex Integration

Input and output integration overview

The SNMP Trap Telegraf plugin enables the receipt of SNMP notifications, facilitating comprehensive network monitoring by capturing important events from network devices.

This plugin enables Telegraf to send metrics to Cortex using the Prometheus remote write protocol, allowing seamless ingestion into Cortex’s scalable, multi-tenant time series storage.

Integration details

SNMP Trap

The SNMP Trap plugin serves as a receiving endpoint for SNMP notifications, known as traps and inform requests. Operating over UDP, it listens for incoming notifications, which can be configured to arrive on a specific port. This plugin is integral to network monitoring and management, allowing systems to collect and respond to SNMP traps sent from various devices across the network, including routers, switches, and servers. The plugin supports secure transmission options through SNMPv3, enabling authentication and encryption parameters to protect sensitive data. Additionally, it gives users the flexibility to configure multiple aspects of SNMP like MIB file locations, making it adaptable for various environments and use cases. Transitioning from the deprecated netsnmp backend to the more current gosmi backend is recommended to leverage its enhanced features and support. Users implementing this plugin can effectively monitor network events, automate responses to traps, and maintain a robust network monitoring infrastructure.

Cortex

With Telegraf’s HTTP output plugin and the prometheusremotewrite data format you can send metrics directly to Cortex, a horizontally scalable, long-term storage backend for Prometheus. Cortex supports multi-tenancy and accepts remote write requests using the Prometheus protobuf format. By using Telegraf as the collection agent and Remote Write as the transport mechanism, organizations can extend observability into sources not natively supported by Prometheus—such as Windows hosts, SNMP-enabled devices, or custom application metrics—while leveraging Cortex’s high-availability and long-retention capabilities.

Configuration

SNMP Trap

[[inputs.snmp_trap]]
  ## Transport, local address, and port to listen on.  Transport must
  ## be "udp://".  Omit local address to listen on all interfaces.
  ##   example: "udp://127.0.0.1:1234"
  ##
  ## Special permissions may be required to listen on a port less than
  ## 1024.  See README.md for details
  ##
  # service_address = "udp://:162"
  ##
  ## Path to mib files
  ## Used by the gosmi translator.
  ## To add paths when translating with netsnmp, use the MIBDIRS environment variable
  # path = ["/usr/share/snmp/mibs"]
  ##
  ## Deprecated in 1.20.0; no longer running snmptranslate
  ## Timeout running snmptranslate command
  # timeout = "5s"
  ## Snmp version; one of "1", "2c" or "3".
  # version = "2c"
  ## SNMPv3 authentication and encryption options.
  ##
  ## Security Name.
  # sec_name = "myuser"
  ## Authentication protocol; one of "MD5", "SHA", "SHA224", "SHA256", "SHA384", "SHA512" or "".
  # auth_protocol = "MD5"
  ## Authentication password.
  # auth_password = "pass"
  ## Security Level; one of "noAuthNoPriv", "authNoPriv", or "authPriv".
  # sec_level = "authNoPriv"
  ## Privacy protocol used for encrypted messages; one of "DES", "AES", "AES192", "AES192C", "AES256", "AES256C" or "".
  # priv_protocol = ""
  ## Privacy password used for encrypted messages.
  # priv_password = ""

Cortex

[[outputs.http]]
  ## Cortex Remote Write endpoint
  url = "http://cortex.example.com/api/v1/push"

  ## Use POST to send data
  method = "POST"

  ## Send metrics using Prometheus remote write format
  data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"

  ## Optional HTTP headers for authentication
  # [outputs.http.headers]
  #   X-Scope-OrgID = "your-tenant-id"
  #   Authorization = "Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN"

  ## Optional TLS configuration
  # tls_ca = "/path/to/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/path/to/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/path/to/key.pem"
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

  ## Request timeout
  timeout = "10s"

Input and output integration examples

SNMP Trap

1. Centralized Network Monitoring: Integrate the SNMP Trap plugin into a centralized monitoring solution to receive alerts about network devices in real-time. By configuring the plugin to listen for traps from various routers and switches, network administrators can swiftly react to issues, such as device outages or critical thresholds being surpassed. This setup enables proactive management and quick resolutions to network problems, ensuring minimal downtime.

2. Automated Incident Response: Use the SNMP Trap plugin to trigger automated incident response workflows whenever specific traps are received. For instance, if a trap indicating a hardware failure is detected, an automated script could be initiated to gather diagnostics, notify support personnel, or even attempt a remediation action. This approach enhances the efficiency of IT operations by reducing manual interference and speeding up response times.

3. Network Performance Analytics: Deploy the SNMP Trap plugin to collect performance metrics along with traps for a comprehensive view of network health. By aggregating this data into analytics platforms, network teams can analyze trends, identify bottlenecks, and optimize performance based on historical data. This allows for informed decision-making and strategic planning around network upgrades or changes.

4. Integrating with Alerting Systems: Connect the SNMP Trap plugin to third-party alerting systems like PagerDuty or Slack. Upon receiving predefined traps, the plugin can send alerts to these systems, enabling teams to be instantly notified of important network events. This integration ensures that the right people are informed at the right time, helping maintain high service levels and quick issue resolution.

Cortex

1. Unified Multi-Tenant Monitoring: Use Telegraf to collect metrics from different teams or environments and push them to Cortex with separate X-Scope-OrgID headers. This enables isolated data ingestion and querying per tenant, ideal for managed services and platform teams.

2. Extending Prometheus Coverage to Edge Devices: Deploy Telegraf on edge or IoT devices to collect system metrics and send them to a centralized Cortex cluster. This approach ensures consistent observability even for environments without local Prometheus scrapers.

3. Global Service Observability with Federated Tenants: Aggregate metrics from global infrastructure by configuring Telegraf agents to push data into regional Cortex clusters, each tagged with tenant identifiers. Cortex handles deduplication and centralized access across regions.

4. Custom App Telemetry Pipeline: Collect app-specific telemetry via Telegraf’s exec or http input plugins and forward it to Cortex. This allows DevOps teams to monitor app-specific KPIs in a scalable, query-efficient format while keeping metrics logically grouped by tenant or service.

Feedback

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