MIMIC Virtual Lab Online Documentation

A. A "gambit" is a term from the game of chess, a risky opening move with high potential return. Also see Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Main Entry: gam·bit
Pronunciation: 'gam-b&t
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian gambetto, literally, act of tripping someone, from gamba
leg, from Late Latin gamba, camba, from Greek kampE bend; probably akin to
Gothic hamfs maimed, Lithuanian kampas corner Date: 1656
1 : a chess opening in which a player risks one or more minor pieces to
  gain an advantage in position
2 a (1) : a remark intended to start a conversation or make a telling point
    (2) : TOPIC
  b : a calculated move : STRATAGEM

> In your support page, you give the minimum hardware configuration and
> the preferred hardware configuration, but the number of agents simulated
> doesn't seem to be taken into account. I mean is the hardware configuration
> the same for all the versions of MIMIC (MIMIC Single, MIMIC Lite, ...,
> MIMIC Global) which simulate different numbers of agents?

A. The preferred configuration listed on the web page is for a typical case. MIMIC Virtual Lab will run in any run-of-the-mill PC better than the minimum configuration listed. For MIMIC Simulator, read on.

Obviously, the more demanding the simulation, the more hardware you have to throw at it. The main thing to realize is that the hardware requirements for MIMIC can be viewed as satisfying an equation, eg.

performance (management side) <= performance (agent side)

meaning that the performance of the agent side (MIMIC) has to be at least as good as that needed by the management side. The performance requirements are thus driven in large part by the management application. The second point is that the equation is not controlled by a single variable (eg. "requests per second"). There are many variables which determine the exact demands on the simulation:

• the number of agents
• the set of MIBs for each agent
• the complexity of the simulations for the different MIB objects
• the trap generation rates
• the number of management threads (eg. pollers)
• the poll rates (average, sustained, peak)
• the make-up of the requests (single-variable vs. multi-variable vs. bulk)

This is just a partial list, but gives you an idea of the considerations. Ultimately, there is no generic answer and each customer has unique performance requirements. We can help you to determine these requirements through empirical evaluation. Your requirements may change over time, so your hardware solution should accomodate this change (more CPUs, more memory, more network cards). MIMIC is designed to take advantage of all the hardware you throw at it.

MIMIC supports up to 50,000 agents on one workstation. The main concern is the performance for a fully loaded workstation. You want at least hundreds of PDUs per second to make a simulation viable.

For MIMIC, performance is primarily governed by the amount of physical memory (RAM). The memory requirements depend on the simulations you are going to run. Obviously, a high-end router simulation with hundreds of interfaces, RMON tables, etc. is going to take more memory than the simulation of an end system.

As a ball-park estimate, we like to see at least 1MB of physical RAM per simulated agent, e.g., a 100 agent scenario should run fine on a 128MB system (depending on how much memory is used by the OS and other processes). For better performance (less swapping), 2MB per simulation is recommended.

After version 4.30, MIMIC has a new feature - memory optimization. That means more agents' MIB data needs less memory than before. Agents with identical simulation will only require one copy of data in memory. For example, in the common case if 10,000 agents are identical, only a couple of MB of RAM is needed. However, if 5000 agents are running the same simulation, and 5,000 agents are each different, then 5GB will be recommended.

You can more accurately measure this by running a simulation configuration, and checking on memory usage before and after starting the desired agent simulations. Notice that MIMIC uses memory on demand, so you should measure the memory after doing a walk of the desired tables (or a complete MIB walk). Eg. on Windows NT use the Windows Task Manager to check "Memory Usage", and on Unix use the "top" utility.

The memory usage by MIMIC is approximately the same for all platforms.

The CPU is of secondary importance. Most modern processors (e.g., Intel Pentium 800MHz or faster, and Ultra Sparc) are adequate. MIMIC works with multi-processor systems, since it is a multi-threaded, distributed application. Agent thread processing will be distributed across multiple CPUs. From our internal experience, we have run 10,000 agents on dual and quad-CPU Pentiums, and Ultra 10 to E4500 Sparcs.

The final bottleneck would be the network pipe to your agents. 10Mb Ethernet is adequate for low-volume traffic, 100Mb or faster is better for more demanding applications. MIMIC works with multiple network adapters on your system, so you can talk to the simulations over separate network pipes. MIMIC works with the OS-native protocol stacks, so that all network interface cards that your OS supports can be used. You can even run MIMIC over PPP.

A. MIMIC Virtual Lab based on MIMIC Simulator 10.20 or later supports Windows 7.

A. There is no support for MIMIC Virtual Lab on Windows 95 / 98 / Me as documented in the online documentation Windows Installation Instructions.

A. You can download an unsupported binary distribution of the Net-Snmp (was UCD SNMP) toolset from our website.

> Also, how is MIMIC programmed?  What programming language?  Tcl?
> Scripts?  What type of development environment?  How customizable is it?

MIMIC Virtual Lab is a static environment, but MIMIC Simulator is highly customizable. Check for details at our web site.

A. Tcpdump is a free public domain protocol analyzer. Most Linux distributions include this valuable diagnostic tool. You can download an unsupported binary executable with SNMPv1 and SNMPv2 support from our website for Solaris.

Ethereal is a great free public domain protocol analyzer. It decodes SNMPv3. Download it for your favorite platform from their website http://www.ethereal.com/.

A. The fastest way of resolving problems is by sending e-mail to support@gambitcomm.com with a brief description of the problem, and supporting information, such as excerpts from the log window that show the problem.

If there is a workaround, we will let you know as soon as possible. If the problem requires a fix, we will open a trouble ticket and schedule it for an upcoming release. All customers are notified of new releases as soon as they become available.

If you have a large supporting file from one of the tools (core file, log file, walk file), please don't email it yet since our mail server has limited resources (bandwidth and space). Tell us about the problem first, and we will ask you for the core file.

	The problem: the drive that MIMIC is using has become full due
	to MIMIC usage. Is there a way to modify the configuration of
	MIMIC to use another drive for its use?

	This is running on an NT Server with a drive C and D. Mimic
	has been using drive C:

A. You can set the environment variable MIMIC_PRIV_DIR to point to a location on another drive to do this. Determine what directory is being used currently by MIMIC for storing your private data. Copy this over to a different drive and then point MIMIC_PRIV_DIR to this location. Restart MIMIC fresh and all subsequent data should be stored on the new drive.

First, terminate MIMIC Virtual Lab (use File -> Exit).

• On Windows NT, use the System Control Panel to set MIMIC_PRIV_DIR to the new path.

A. MIMIC should allow you to do what you want. The snag is that HP/Openview requires an SNMP agent to run on the management station. This agent conflicts with agent instances running on MIMIC. You have 2 choices:

a) run MIMIC on one machine, HP/Openview on another. This would require 2 laptops to do your demos. We have found this to be a better solution than b), because HP/Openview and other management applications put a lot of burden on the machine (memory, CPU utilization).

b) run MIMIC and HP/Openview on same machine, but this only works if you use non-standard port numbers for the MIMIC SNMP agent instances. You will have to configure HP/Openview to probe these non-standard ports.

A. HPOV does not discover foreign networks automatically. I quote from the NNM Runtime manual, section "Maps" --> "Customizing you Network Map View" --> "Expanding Your IP Network Map" --> "Adding a Network":

 >For security purposes, Network Node Manager does not discover networks
 >in your internet, beyond your local gateways. You can add an object for
 >an network that NNM has not discovered to an Internet submap, by placing
 >a network symbol on that submap. If you are adding an object for an IP
 >network, NNM will eventually discover it. For network objects that NNM
 >cannot discover, the network symbol remains on the user plane.

For example, if you want to discover the 192.9.201.0 network, you'll have to create a "IP Network" object in the "Internet" map.

> Do you see any issues or know of things to watch out if
> we  want to
>   o Run Both MIMIC and Apache web server on a linux machine
>   o Run both MIMIC and IIS web server on an NT machine?

A. MIMIC does not care what other servers run on your system, as long as they are not making use of the same ports as MIMIC (eg. UDP SNMP port 161). Since standard web servers use UDP ports 80 or 8080, there is minimal likelihood of a clash.

A. If you want to apply new license keys to an already installed version of MIMIC (eg. if you want to change the evaluation keys to permanent keys, or upgrade in size), all you have to do is edit the license key files in config/*.lic . There is one file per licensed component (Simulator, Compiler, Recorder). Open each file with your favorite text editor, and copy/paste the corresponding key.

> Why when I try to telnet my firewall tells me that the prog is trying
> to access the internet?

A. When you use the Device->Telnet... menu item, MIMIC Virtual Lab just invokes the native Telnet application of the OS that MIMIC is running on. Just like in the real world, the Telnet is connecting to the IP address of the simulated device, and likely it is trying to do DNS name resolution on that IP address.

Another reason for Internet access is the Update Wizard trying to download updates for your software. The Update Wizard runs in a program called wish, which will be reported in the firewall popup. If you allow access to our download site, you will be able to install updates and optional software.

A. This problem is likely caused by the existence of another SNMP agent running on this system. The solution is explained in detail in Appendix C, for Solaris or Windows NT.

A. When you start agent instances with IP addresses on a subnet different from the one that your management station is on, you need to tell the management station how to get to the subnet.

This can be done in most operating systems via a static route with the route command. Assuming that your agent instances are on the 192.9.200.0 subnet and that the address of your management station machine is IPADDR, here are the route commands for some common operating systems:

• Windows NT
  From the DOS command prompt:
  C> route add 192.9.200.0 mask 255.255.255.0 IPADDR

• Solaris 2.6, 7
  From any shell as root:
  
  To add a route:
  # route add -net 192.9.200.0 IPADDR 0
  
  To delete a route:
  # route delete -net 192.9.200.0 IPADDR

• Solaris 2.5
  From any shell as root:
  # route add 192.9.200.0 IPADDR 0

• Red Hat Linux 5.x
  From any shell as root:
  # route add -net 192.9.200.0 gw IPADDR

• Red Hat Linux 6.x
  From any shell as root:
  
  To add a route:
  # route add -net 192.9.200.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 INTERFACE
  
  To delete a route:
  # route del -net 192.9.200.0 netmask 255.255.255.0
  

• HP/UX
  From any shell as root:
  # route add 192.9.200.0 IPADDR 0

A. MIMIC does extensive error logging to justify its actions. If something is not going the way you want it, you can find out why from the error log. The error log is normally displayed in a log window with the Lab->Troubleshoot menu item, as well as dumped into a file mimiclog.date.time in your temporary directory (/tmp in Unix, \TMP in Windows).

The most common error messages are described in Appendix C of the online documentation.

A. The details for this error message are described in Appendix C of the online documentation.

A. The MIMIC Virtual Lab Java-based user interface is highly configurable as documented by the Sun Java documentation. By default, the user interface runs with the Java Metal look and feel. The easiest way to change the look and feel is to specify it in the batch file which starts the application, eg. on Windows to get the Windows interface look and feel (including inheriting its properties as set in the Display Properties dialog) in vlab*.bat, use the additional

-Dswing.defaultlaf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel 

on the java invocation.