Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) allows you to monitor hardware on your network. You can configure the hardware, such as the FortiAnalyzer SNMP agent, to report system information and send traps (alarms or event messages) to SNMP managers. An SNMP manager, or host, is typically a computer running an application that can read the incoming trap and event messages from the agent and send out SNMP queries to the SNMP agents. A FortiManager unit can act as an SNMP manager, or host, to one or more FortiAnalyzer units.

By using an SNMP manager, you can access SNMP traps and data from any FortiAnalyzer interface configured for SNMP management access. Part of configuring an SNMP manager is to list it as a host in a community on the FortiAnalyzer unit it will be monitoring. Otherwise the SNMP monitor will not receive any traps from that FortiAnalyzer unit, or to query that unit.

You can configure the FortiAnalyzer unit to respond to traps and send alert messages to SNMP managers that were added to SNMP communities. When you are configuring SNMP, you need to first download and install both the FORTINET-CORE-MIB.mib and FORTINET-FORTIANALYZER-MIB.mib files so that you can view these alerts in a readable format. The Fortinet MIB contains support for all Fortinet devices, and includes some generic SNMP traps; information responses and traps that FortiAnalyzer units send are a subset of the total number supported by the Fortinet proprietary MIB.

Your SNMP manager may already include standard and private MIBs in a compiled database which is all ready to use; however, you still need to download both the FORTINET-CORE-MIB.mib and FORTINET-FORTIANALYZER-MIB.mib files regardless.

FortiAnalyzer SNMP is read-only: SNMP v1 and v2 compliant SNMP managers have read-only access to FortiAnalyzer system information and can receive FortiAnalyzer traps. RFC support includes most of RFC 2665 (Ethernet-like MIB) and most of RFC 1213 (MIB II). FortiAnalyzer units also use object identifiers from the Fortinet proprietary MIB.

For more information about the MIBs and traps that are available for the FortiAnalyzer unit, see “SNMP MIB Support”.

SNMP traps alert you to events that happen, such as an a log disk being full or a virus being detected.

SNMP fields contain information about your FortiAnalyzer unit, such as percent CPU usage or the number of sessions. This information is useful to monitor the condition of the unit, both on an ongoing basis and to provide more information when a trap occurs.