We just bought two HP 5500-24G-4SFP beasts and I'd like to properly integrate the switches into Nagios. Most of our current monitoring polls actively via SNMP so I figured it would be wise and use the occasion to get snmptrapd
/snmptt
working so we can receive SNMP traps in Nagios.
Now I read this in the device's Network Management and Monitoring Configuration Guide:
Enable SNMP traps only if necessary. SNMP traps are memory-intensive and may affect device performance.
My question is, while the statement might be true, why would one not use SNMP traps on such a core device of one's network and what kind of performance impact is to be expected? I'm struggling to find a sane definition of "necessary" in this context.