Setting up an SNMP environment

Question

I have done a decent amount of looking into setting up devices to use SNMP. Sorry in advance if my terminology appears incorrect.

I am wanting to query a switch (Netgear) status from a directly connected Linux box (RHEL).

1. Is the switch, the SNMP manager and server? Does this make the Linux PC, the SNMP agent and client?

2. Does an SNMP daemon run on the switch?

Are the below steps correct to set up the SNMP environment in a LAN:

1. Enable SNMP on the switch.
2. Yum install necessary packages for SNMP and load MIBs into Linux machine.

Answer 1

1. Partially. The manager and agent don't really apply to this type of connection, but the switch is the SNMP server and the Linux box is the client.
2. The SNMP daemon would need to run on the switch.

Furthermore, since most of NetGear's suite is unmanaged switches, you need to ensure that your switch is a managed switch. The safe bet is if you assigned your switch an IP address, then it can be managed. However, I would check the product documentation to be sure.

The below steps are correct, you'll specifically need net-snmp-utils installed, and for your user you can put the MIBs into the ~/.snmp/mibs/ directory.

Answer 2

An SNMP server collects traps from SNMP agents running on managed devices which could be networking devices such as a switch or a server. Setup typically requires installing a network management server which will have the SNMP server functionality and then configuring the agent to talk to the server.