Configuration files

You provide the agent with the list of devices to ping by using configuration files.

The agent requires two types of configuration files.
Device list file
Includes a list of devices to ping. If you have many devices, you can divide them across multiple device list files. The agent starts a separate thread for each device list file and cycles through the files in parallel. It cycles through each file every 60 seconds or every 30 seconds plus the time it takes to ping the list, whichever is longer.
The syntax of the device list file is as follows:
LISTNAME=list_name
device_name or host_name
device_name or host_name
device_name or host_name device_name or host_name
Where list_name is a description for the devices in that file. If no list name is defined, the name of the device list file is used. The list name does not need to be the first entry in the file. However, if the file has multiple list name definitions, the last definition is used.
There is no limit to the number of devices you can include in a device list file. However, including too many entries defeats the purpose of having a targeted list of critical devices and increases the overall workload. It might be more difficult to retrieve the status of each device within the 60-second monitoring interval.
At the start of each cycle, the agent checks the last modification time of the device list file. If the last modification time of the file is more recent than the last time the agent read the file, the agent rereads the file without requiring a restart.
Ping configuration file
Specifies the location of each device list file. Use the fully qualified path or a path relative to the location of the ping configuration file. The ping configuration file is passed as a runtime configuration parameter to the agent.

Example

In the following example, devices are divided into two files.
The /data/retailList.txt file contains the following entries:
LISTNAME=Retail
frontend.mycompany.com
productdb.mycompany.com
The /data/manufacturingList.txt file contains the following entries:
LISTNAME=Manufacturing systems
manufloor.mycompany.com
stats.supplier.com
The ping file, /data/pinglists.txt, contains the following entries:
/data/retailList.txt
/data/manufacturingList.txt

Network Management configuration property

After a ping data source is added, the configuration is displayed on the Runtime Configuration Information page of the Agent Editor.

The Network Management configuration section of the Runtime Configuration Information page contains the following property:
Table 1. Network Management configuration properties
Name Valid values Required Description
Ping configuration file Path to a file No. If this file is not provided, the KUMSLIST file is used from the agent bin directory. The path to the file that contains a list of files, each containing a list of hosts to monitor by using ICMP pings.