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Posted by brickwalls19 on July 14, 2006, 1:45 pm
I have taken the task to do some capacity planning in our server and
user environment. I would need to take a total of all our Catalyst
switch ports and find the number of used and unused ports. Is there a
perl script or app that will be able to help gather this information?
It seems tedious to log into every switch, get a 'show port status'
output, and export it to an Excel spreadsheet. This report would
probably need to be done every month to track the changes in the server
and user environment. Thanks.
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Posted by Walter Roberson on July 14, 2006, 2:19 pm
>I have taken the task to do some capacity planning in our server and
>user environment. I would need to take a total of all our Catalyst
>switch ports and find the number of used and unused ports. Is there a
>perl script or app that will be able to help gather this information?
>It seems tedious to log into every switch, get a 'show port status'
>output, and export it to an Excel spreadsheet.
If SNMP is available on the switches then you can do many useful
queries using SNMP.
But first you have to define what a "used" port is and an "unused
port" is. It turns out to be a difficult question, once you start
thinking about people turning off systems, people going on vacation,
systems that are plugged in but unusued, systems that simply
haven't had anything to say for awhile. The investigation gets
noticably harder if you have some hubs or unmanaged switches. If
your network staff doesn't already do the kind of tracking necessary
for the above, chances are usually fairly high that someone has
installed an unauthorized switch because ~$20 is a lot cheaper and
faster than getting another authorized jack installed.
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Posted by brickwalls19 on July 20, 2006, 10:55 am
on the instance i do a 'show port status'
connected = used port
not connected = unused port
Walter Roberson wrote:
> >I have taken the task to do some capacity planning in our server and
> >user environment. I would need to take a total of all our Catalyst
> >switch ports and find the number of used and unused ports. Is there a
> >perl script or app that will be able to help gather this information?
> >It seems tedious to log into every switch, get a 'show port status'
> >output, and export it to an Excel spreadsheet.
> If SNMP is available on the switches then you can do many useful
> queries using SNMP.
> But first you have to define what a "used" port is and an "unused
> port" is. It turns out to be a difficult question, once you start
> thinking about people turning off systems, people going on vacation,
> systems that are plugged in but unusued, systems that simply
> haven't had anything to say for awhile. The investigation gets
> noticably harder if you have some hubs or unmanaged switches. If
> your network staff doesn't already do the kind of tracking necessary
> for the above, chances are usually fairly high that someone has
> installed an unauthorized switch because ~$20 is a lot cheaper and
> faster than getting another authorized jack installed.
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Posted by J on July 20, 2006, 4:56 pm
brickwalls19 wrote:
> on the instance i do a 'show port status'
> connected = used port
> not connected = unused port
That's fine and dandy if you want stats for that exact moment in time,
say 09:00. But what about the group of call center people that don't
come in until 13:00? There's another couple of dozen ports that may be
disconnected when you check the status. Don't forget about the
executive golf tournament, I mean business retreat that the upper crust
happen to be gone to this week. There's another 4 dozen ports. Is
there a bad case of flu going through the office? There's another
large group of machines that are offline. The point is port status
means very little if you aren't checking and logging the status of each
individual port over a lengthy period of time. If you want to get
anything accurate you should instead look at port statistics. Go
through your interface statistics and look for ports that actually have
carried Ethernet frames. Any ports that have been used since your last
interface counter clearing will show that they've carried frames, even
if the ports are currently offline. When you're done clear the
counters. Do the same thing next week. Note any changes. This is as
close as you can get to accurate port counts. Even this is not
fool-proof. What about the extra ports in the conference room that are
only used once a quarter to hookup all the misc AV equipment for the
quarterly report, or the 3 dozen ports in the large storage room that
gets cleaned out once a year and used for 3 weeks worth of training?
J
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Posted by Walter Roberson on July 20, 2006, 8:46 pm
>brickwalls19 wrote:
>> on the instance i do a 'show port status'
>> connected = used port
>> not connected = unused port
>That's fine and dandy if you want stats for that exact moment in time,
>say 09:00. But what about the group of call center people that don't
>come in until 13:00?
Thanks, you saved me a lot of typing along the same vein ;-)
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>user environment. I would need to take a total of all our Catalyst
>switch ports and find the number of used and unused ports. Is there a
>perl script or app that will be able to help gather this information?
>It seems tedious to log into every switch, get a 'show port status'
>output, and export it to an Excel spreadsheet.