re-visit network monitoring

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cyr0n_k0r

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At my previous job we had solarwinds. It was nice, but pricey. And honestly we didn't use it to its full potential. We had the SL500 and only monitored about 100 network devices, about 80 servers, and 20 or so volumes.

I'm now at a new organization that is substantially larger and we are looking for a solution. We just purchased PRTG just to get 'something' in and monitoring our WAN links while we look for something permanent.

This new environment has about 1,200 network devices, about 200 servers, and 2 separate SAN's (EMC and Nimble).

I'm looking for something that is AD/LDAP integrated for authentication, has a NOC view for our helpdesk that is easy to understand at a glance, can be clustered, runs on windows and must support MSSQL.

I'm not super familiar with PRTG but from what I read it will do most of this but doesn't support SQL. We CAN afford solarwinds if we want to go that route but if there are alternatives that are the same price or cheaper and will still hit all the requirements I'm open.
I'm leaning towards solarwinds for a few reasons.
1) I'm familiar with it already (especially advanced alert monitoring)
2) We can add modules such as App Monitoring, Storage monitoring, etc as we get more embedded.

Any other suggestions? (Please only enterprise solutions. I'm sorry but Cacti is not an enterprise solution)
 
Why not get Solarwinds again? LEM is also well worth the money.
 
PRTG is nice. I use the free version for bandwith + sflow monitoring my two ISP uplinks. But pricing for a high amount of sensors is too expensive. We currently have an old HP NMS, but I wont´t recommend it at all.

NOC view + helpdesk integration + AD authentication, that would be also interesting for me.

(Btw, what is "LEM"?)
 
if orion/npm is too pricey, there is always ipmonitor (also from solarwinds). HP sitescope sucks. Zabbix is pretty cool, and cacti+thold works pretty well if you have the time to set it up. Lot's of love around here for nagios as well, but I don't use it personally.
 
PensFault said:
Cisco ISE + Cisco Prime (Not windows)
Accelops
Click to expand...
We have both ISE and Prime however I'm not super familiar with either one.
From what I'm hearing in the office neither offer historical reporting and such which is important for the higher ups.

What about SCOM?
 
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Look into some of the MSP RMM packages. I work for an MSP and we use LabTech to monitor WAN, LAN, and hardware. You can install Agents on servers to send you info, pull info via SNMP, WMI, etc. It has helpdesk for ticketing and reporting. If it does LDAP connections, we don't have it setup. But there are lots of Remote Monitoring and Management software groups out there. If you use a PSA like ConnectWise, then some will even integrate so you can have emergency alerts generate tickets for you.
 
I know you have your Windows and MSSQL requirements, but if you want to be cheap cheap suck it up turn up a sweet debian box and do Nagios and MRTG. Nagios has a paid for support if you require it. MRTG unsure.

I hated it at first, but once I got my head wrapped around the config files and the global stuff it was really easy to put in services to monitor and such. Became second nature.

The new gig I'm at uses Orion. I haven't had the chance to dig deep into it yet, but I'm told it's going to become my baby.
 
We use iGlass Networks for a large portion of our monitoring. They're a hybrid/hosted solution if that doesn't bother you. Fair prices (IMO) and they've been excellent to work with.

http://www.iglass.net/
 
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