Lets talk about CS-MARS

Paul Boz

Until last week I had no experience with Cisco MARS. My boss expressed to me that several clients of ours had interest in MARS consulting, so I decided to check it out to see if it was something we should or could do. A contact of mine set me up with a MARS appliance on loan for a little while so I spent the weekend getting it up and running and getting acquainted with the CLI and GUI.

I have experience using and administering HP Openview in a large service provider environment so the concept of unified network management and alerting isn't foreign, so I was positive about MARS going into it. I honestly haven't had time to do much beyond interfacing it with one router and configuring it for user access but over the next few days I will spend a lot more time working with it.

I'm reading all of the Cisco-provided material (user guide, config guide, startup guide, etc) as well as the two Cisco Press books on MARS and it all seems pretty straight forward. Does anyone have any experience administering MARS in a working environment? I'm curious to know any tips and tricks that have been found, or potential pitfalls that could be avoided.

Paul Boz

Here is some more info I found:

Cisco NetPro MARS site: Click Here

Cisco NetPro MARS forum: Click Here

Cisco NetPro package sharing: Click Here

mamono

As with any monitoring system, there will need to be a lot of hands-on customer management because there will be a lot of initial false positives until the system is tuned out. Even though I have only been working here for a short while, MARS has a lot of false positives particularly during initial setup of a new customer as we are adding one now. Until all the false positives are tuned out and base line operations are in sync, there is a lot that needs to go into the establishment of customer expectations and management of those expectations. After everything is set, then it is smooth sailing.

Paul Boz

Wow, thank you. That is exactly the type of information that I'm looking for. I see the same behavior in our clients already. When I do false positive verification on new clients it often takes hours, but after doing remedial scans on the same clients the job becomes much shorter.

What has been your experience with adding custom devices if you have had to?

mamono

Unfortunately, I'm not involved with the setup of MARS for new clients. All the mid and senior-level engineers handle that. From what I can gather, it is doable remotely if you have a plan and a unified structure to the access of all network resources. Defintiely involves a lot of direct communication with the client. Wish I could shed more light on the subject.

Paul Boz

Definitely not a problem. You have clearly been more than helpful and I appreciate it

I'm out of the office until Friday, then I fly out again on Monday and return thursday so I won't even get to mess with the MARS box I have until the end of next week.

mamono

Glad to be of assistance! Airplane safe belts are awesome, no more drooping pants while going through the checkpoint! TSA safe laptop bags are heavenly, no more people yelling to make the line move faster!

Paul Boz

I gave up on wearing belts in airports. I just wear an un-tucked button up and jeans. I don't care if I look like a bum, I'm trying to be comfortable

oo_snoopy

I'm currently configuring MARS for our network.

It's a love hate relationship. Mostly hate.