Cisco: IP Policy Routing with IP SLA and EEM

Considering the same environment like in the post Cisco: Policy Routing with IP SLA, there is another way to achieve the same behavior using again IP SLA and EEM (Embedded Event Manager).

For those of you who are not so familiar with EEM please read http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6815/products_ios_protocol_group_home.html. You will find a nice explanation and some examples how to use EEM to achieve the desired result.

Now, going back to our example, please conside the same topology like in the previous post:

We start by configuring again the IP SLA (explanation in this post):

ip sla 5
icmp-echo 172.82.100.1 source-interface GigabitEthernet0/0
timeout 1000
frequency 2
ip sla schedule 5 life forever start-time now

We have the path measured. Instead of tracking this and applying the route based on tracking, we have now a different approach. We use EEM to check the conditions of IP SLA, and according to the result we configure the necessary IP routing. For EEM to work we need to know and Object name and the OID associated with it. In my example I will use the SNMP Object name rttMonCtrlOperTimeoutOccurred with OID value: 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.42.1.2.9.1.6

According to Cisco’s explanation “This object is set to true when an operation times out, and set to false when an operation completes under rttMonCtrlAdminTimeout. When this value changes, a reaction may occur, as defined by rttMonReactAdminTimeoutEnable

As a summary, we will check the IP SLA with EEM using a certain SNMP Object. When a change occur in the monitored IP SLA, EEM will apply a certain configuration defined by us:

event manager applet IP-SLA-5-TIMEOUT
event snmp oid 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.42.1.2.9.1.6.5 get-type exact entry-op eq entry-val 1 exit-op eq exit-val 2 poll-interval 5
action 1.0 syslog msg “172.82.100.1 not reachable – primary line NOK”
action 1.1 cli command “enable”
action 1.2 cli command “configure terminal”
action 1.3 cli command “ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.10.10.1”

EEM is based on a SNMP event. It is monitoring the OID value explained above. You may notice that at the end of the OID value, has been added another value .5 This is important as it defines the relation between EEM and IP SLA. In my case this number is 5, as the IP SLA session is defined, but in your case it may be different. This is checking if the TruthValue is 1 (true) or 2(false), on a 5 second interval and it’s applying the defined configuration. The EEM triggers on value 1 (true), so when the timeout occurs in IP SLA.

You might wonder, what will happen when the primary line is working. Well nothing in this conditions, because EEM is not configure for the case when the primary line is OK. In other words, EEM will not retract the backup default IP route. For this we need another EEM to be configured with a small modification:

event manager applet IP-SLA-5-OK
event snmp oid 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.42.1.2.9.1.6.5 get-type exact entry-op eq entry-val 2 exit-op eq exit-val 1 poll-interval 5
action 1.0 syslog msg “172.82.100.1 is reachable – primary line OK”
action 1.1 cli command “enable”
action 1.2 cli command “configure terminal”
action 1.3 cli command “no ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.10.10.1”

Now the EEM is triggered on the value 2 (false), so when no timeout occurs in IP SLA.

You might be interested in another EEM configuration, which send an e-mail notification when a certain condition occur. Check it here.

Cisco: Policy Routing with IP SLA

Let’s assume that you have a Cisco router with 2 ISP connection. The first one it’s a 10Mbps connection with a decent latency and the second one it’s a 2Mbps connection with quite high latency.

Since you don’t want to load balance over this 2 connections for the obvious reasons described above, you decide to to use the 10Mbps connection as the primary link and the 2Mbps one as a backup, just in case that the primary link fails.

You have no dynamic routing protocol, just a default route pointing to the primary link peer router. To understand better, please have a look to the topology below:

Of course, the easiest method would be to configure the a secondary default route through 2Mbps line but with a higher metric so it would be less preferred.  In this case when the main line goes done the backup default route comes into play. But what if the main line doesn’t go down? Just there is no reachability to Internet or some branch offices? This method will not work very well.

The solution that I propose is first to configure an IP SLA to monitor a certain destination (IP address) that you know if should always be UP. Like a server in your remote datacenter. In my example I will monitor the IP address 172.82.100.1 which is a server reachable over main provider:

ip sla 5
icmp-echo 172.82.100.1 source-interface GigabitEthernet0/0
timeout 1000
frequency 2
ip sla schedule 5 life forever start-time now

I believe you have an idea what IP SLA does. In this example it ping every 2 second the IP address 172.82.100.1 and it wait for reply (timeout) 1000ms before declare the host down.

Next we have to track this IP SLA for reachability:

track 1 ip sla 5 reachability

Pretty simple. I have a track number 1 which tracks IP SLA session 5 for reachability.

Now, most of the people (including I, in the beginning ) make a common mistake in setting the backup default route in the way that they set it based on the track 1:

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.10.10.1 track 1

This is not going to work. Why? Because track 1 check that the IP is reachable! When it is reachable, it will add the backup default route to the routing table and we will have 2 default routes: one through primary line and one through secondary (backup) lines. That’s bad because we need the backup route there only when the primary line fails to transport traffic to 172.82.100.1 in my example. We need somehow that this backup route to be applied when IP SLA 5 is NOT true. Here is is how:

track 2 list boolean and
object 1 not

In this track 2 we tell to track object 1 but to have the condition that this is not true. Now we can see the backup route:

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.10.10.1 track 2

and this will work correctly.

Small hint: You saw that in the IP SLA I’ve specified the interface from which I want to ping 172.82.100.1. This is not just a preferred method, but it’s mandatory! If you follow the steps above, when the backup default route will be in place, 172.82.100.1 will be reachable again, making the track 1 being true and setting the track 2 to think that the primary link is UP again, so it will retract the backup route through 10.10.10.1. Pinging with the source of the primary P2P link interface, you achieve the result that you want IP SLA 5 to be true only when pinging 172.82.100.1 through the first line. Remember that we are not using dynamic routing protocols.

In case  you didn’t catch this until now Gi0/0 is the 10Mbps link and the Serial0/0 is the 2 Mbps.

Another method to obtain the same result will be to used EEM with IP SLA which I will present in some future posts.

How to monitor IP SLA with free tools

Lately I saw an increasing interest for IP SLA monitor and analyze of the data output. I believe that you already know that you can do IP SLA monitor with a lot of tools from the most expensive ones which include support and assistance to the free ones like MRTG or RRDTOOL. From the statistics that I have, more than 50% of the network engineers interested in this tools have a problem either with the money (low budget or the on and on “we do not have money this year for that investment” ) or making free tools actually work and report accurate data.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from SolarWinds that announce me about their FREE IP SLA monitor tool. Usually I ignore such e-mails as for most of them there is always a catch, but since it was from a company that made me a very good impression over the year by offering exactly what’s specified in the advertisement, I said that I should give it a try. Before I present this to you, let’s make something clear. This is not a commercial post, e.g. post to be pay or another things like that. I do not have time and I don’t want to do such stuff of my blog, but when some product really worth to be tried I think that the development company deserve to be specified.

Since it’s a free tool don’t expect to have all the features of the one which you are paying for it, but compared to the headache of implementing other free tools (MRTG, RRDTOOL) you’ll find this one to be piece of cake. Everybody who has an idea about networking can use this without any problems. Configuration is as simplest as it can be. You have to choose the destination IP or hostname to monitor then pick the monitor service and polish some parameters to your particular network. That’s it! One particular issue to me is that this tool is working only from Windows.

Please have a look below to see how to configure this:

IP SLA monitor tool

Cisco: How-to get notifications for IP SLA monitor using EEM

In some previous post, I explained how to configure a basic IP SLA monitor for checking the round-trip time between two Cisco routers. Because in the comments of that post I have been asked how you can get e-mail notification for IP SLA monitor, I have decided to write another post to extend a little bit this topic.

To accomplish e-mail notification for IP SLA monitors we will use Embedded Event Manager (EEM) and some SNMP knowledge.Cisco IOS EEM is a powerful device and system management technology integrated into specific Cisco switches and routers. EEM gives us the ability to customize Cisco IOS behavior based on network events as they happen.

EEM will use a SNMP event to report anomalies in regarding the RTT threshold value. For SNMP to work we need to know and Object name and the OID associated with it. In my example I will use the SNMP Object name: rttMonCtrlOperOverThresholdOccurred (OID: 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.42.1.2.9.1.7). On Cisco website you can find more about this SNMP Object and I advice you to read it before going on with this tutorial.

Below you have a basic example about how to get e-mail notification when the threshold of the RTT IP SLA monitor is reached. More examples you can find on Ivan Pepelnjak’s blog: blog.ioshints.info . It’s a good idea to check them also.

The topology remains the same like in the previous post about IP SLA. You can check it here. Please click below to check the tutorial:

IP SLA EEM

If you cannot check the tutorial above, please read this text file, as it contains all the information from the video presentation.