Network Monitoring Software

M

Manu

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 3, 2003
Messages
203
I am curious what kind of network monitoring software you guys use, free/open source or paid software. We have a corporate network with about 10 servers, a few switches, a router, a firewall, a VPN concentrator, and then about 10 LAN to LAN VPN connections. I'd like to be able to monitor specific ports/services, but by and large the main goal is basic connectivity...

ANy suggestions would be great...

Thanks.
Manu
 
I use Solarwinds at work for this type of setup. www.solarwinds.net - download the Version 8 Toolset. Really easy to use, fairly cheap to buy. Its a lot cheaper and easier to use than HP OpenView, and is well suited to the small campus you are talking about.
 
crash848 said:
I use Solarwinds at work for this type of setup. www.solarwinds.net - download the Version 8 Toolset. Really easy to use, fairly cheap to buy. Its a lot cheaper and easier to use than HP OpenView, and is well suited to the small campus you are talking about.
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Thanks, much appreciated, checking out the demo as we speak...

Any other questions would be great...
 
Got a test version of nagios up and running. Also tried Just for Fun Network Monitoring, but honestly was not that impressed with it. It may have just been configuration issues, but it wasn't running that great, slow to detect/react.
 
check out http://cacti.net

I use it. I like it.

it does alot of stuff too....basically anything you can write a script for to get data out of it, you can graph it ;)
 
ServersAlive

you can monitor anything with it, it's meant to do passive monitoring though with the intention of alerting you when there's a problem. If that's what you're after there's nothing better out there.
 
i second ipmonitor.

we use it on over 100 nodes. It is very customizible. you can restart services, reboot servers, etc.

I just starting usingit on all our portables so i can track when they are plugged in. this way we can scan them for av/ms updates, etc.
 
draconius said:
check out http://cacti.net

I use it. I like it.

it does alot of stuff too....basically anything you can write a script for to get data out of it, you can graph it ;)
Click to expand...

that pretty cool. i like the graphs. does it support alert notification for snmp traps and threshold monitoring?
 
I've seen Solarwinds in action- I was quite impressed with it- great for performace monitoring. It was used in combination with Snort.... got a kick out of the security admin's habit of calling up employees who sent passwords unencrypted over the network...
 
killerasp said:
that pretty cool. i like the graphs. does it support alert notification for snmp traps and threshold monitoring?
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I am not sure. You might have a look in the forums and ask / see, there are alot of people who are super good with cacti in there.
 
We use CiscoWorks for prod devices (about 1300 routers, switches, aps, etc.) . I like the customizable map on SolarWinds so I use that as my personal monitoring software. We blew shitloads on Openview NNM but nobody wants to use that.
 
I've been using Zabbix, MRTG, and one other tool that I can't remember because it never has any alerts for me.

I looked into Nagios and it was a pain for me to configure. I haven't played with Big Brother in years. OpenNMS I looked at once. I should check it out again.
 
what didn't you like about open view?

we use cisco works here as well but that obviously doesn't work for non-cisco ;) ;)
 
Looking heavily at ipMonitor, it seems to be a good mix of in depth tracking, price, and ease of implementation...
 
ill second nagios. Its modular, has many different plugins and its free. There is a bit of a learning curve with it but it has some great documentation.
 
This is to help me as I'm sure I'll be using this thread in the future. Thanks to all, keep 'em coming!

Solarwinds Free Windows Trial
Nagios Free, *nix Only
Big Brother Free but no Win2k3 server support
ipMonitor Free Trail but can't d/l from site as of now
Cacti Free Full Program
Servers Alive Free Trial
OpenNMS Free, *nix Only as of Now, Win Soon
HP Openview NNM Evaluation demo available
Zabbix Free, *nix only, for now
MRTG Free, but takes some time to make it work on Windows
GFI Network Server Monitor Full version free for 30 days
PRTG Free for single users and a 30 day trial with more features
 
SYN ACK said:
hp open view NMN
Click to expand...

Isnt HP Openview quite expensive and only financially viable for large companies with $$$ and hundrends of servers? OpenNMS, Naigos, etc doing as much as OpenView for only a fraction of the cost (cost of server).
 
yeah

can any of those do dynamic discovery of ip networks? (i..e auto lookup router arp tables to discover ip networks) ???
 
SYN ACK said:
yeah

can any of those do dynamic discovery of ip networks? (i..e auto lookup router arp tables to discover ip networks) ???
Click to expand...

Solarwinds Orion can. Once you point it to a seed router, it will discover other networks and probe for devices that respond to ICMP and SNMP queries. Once it populates the list, you can choose to import some or all devices.
 
Try PRTG. It's just like MRTG but much easier.

With Solarwinds, can you monitor multiple interfaces/sub-interfaces on your devices? Create reports? View traffice graphs from the web?
 
Killer69 said:
Try PRTG. It's just like MRTG but much easier.

With Solarwinds, can you monitor multiple interfaces/sub-interfaces on your devices? Create reports? View traffice graphs from the web?
Click to expand...

Multiple network interfaces - Yes
Subinterfaces - (please define)
Reports are built in, you can customize reports, and since it uses SQL as a backend, you can pull raw data from the database any way you like.

The beauty part of Orion is the web interface. Checkout Solarwinds website for additional info on how you can customize the web interface.
 
SJConsultant said:
Solarwinds Orion can. Once you point it to a seed router, it will discover other networks and probe for devices that respond to ICMP and SNMP queries. Once it populates the list, you can choose to import some or all devices.
Click to expand...


Ah, I'd still rather use open view for *complete* dynamic discovery.
 
Although only part of our network management software solution we use Cacti for anything/everything anymore it seems. Not only will it read SNMP but we have PHP and Perl scripts that we use to graph T1 Span, CPU Usage, call usage and a ton of other stuff from our Class 5 phone switch. We also use it to pull graphs from all of our CPE to monitor bandwidth usage and it compiles how many times the ACL's on various equipment loggs a drop between reporting times (5 minutes), DNS response times, active DHCP leases, AC/DC power usage, battery voltages and hopefully next week I have a graph to chart deviation on our BITS timeclock...that and how many satellites we track throughout the day...not that we need it but it's neat to see.
 
SJConsultant said:
Multiple network interfaces - Yes
Subinterfaces - (please define)
Reports are built in, you can customize reports, and since it uses SQL as a backend, you can pull raw data from the database any way you like.

The beauty part of Orion is the web interface. Checkout Solarwinds website for additional info on how you can customize the web interface.
Click to expand...

Subinterfaces - an 802.1q trunk port on a router. You can route multiple subnets on one physical port. eg. on a Cisco router the fa0/0 port can be configured with subinterfaces fa0/0.1, fa0/0.2, etc. And each subinterface has it's own ip and can route.

As for the web interface, with PRTG, and MRTG, you can set it up so that it is always monitoring the ports of your routers, and it graphs whatever it is you want it to graph and puts it in a format that can be viewed from the web. Can you do the same with Solarwinds? I guess I'll have to download a demo to find out.
 
SYN ACK said:
No need to pick a seed router.
Click to expand...

Solarwinds does not "require" a seed router. It will scan the local subnet first, then if it hits a router it will query the routing tables and proceed through the routing tables as well scanning each subnet in the routers routing table.
 
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