what tools do you use

[DARYLE DIANIS]

this is open ended, but what kind of network management tools can you recommend? I currently have the NAM in a 6509, Ciscoworks, but anything else? I have 20 remote sites, mostly ISR routers, a number of 6509's, nothing unusual. any suggestions would be welcome.

[Farrukh Haroon]

If you have a network which is a 'Cisco Shop', I would highly recommend using CiscoWorks only, its the best you will get. I've tested various other products in terms of functionality and price (For example BMC Dashboard / Visualis , Nagios etc)

Regards

Farrukh

[Martin Ermel]

A suite which is at least worth to be mentioned beside the known big ones is 'theGuard!' from RealTech (a german company)

the Guard! NetworkManager

is what you need to draw the topology and monitor your network:

http://www.realtech.com/wInternational/software/network_manager/netman_overviewW3DnavidW26222.php

pro:

- it is vendor independant

- you can draw monitored maps which looks the same as your (e.g. Visio-) Maps you have for your documentation.

- it can do performance monitoring/reporting

contra:

- it is pure based on Microsoft Products (MS Windows, MS SQL Server, MS Reporting Engine) - (not 'contra' for everybody...)

- I feel the licensing model for admin and user access is not easy to understand

theGuard! ServiceCenter is necessary if you need Configuration Management:

http://www.realtech.com/wInternational/software/service_center/sc_service_center_overviewW3DnavidW26266.php

- they just started with Config Mgmt in the last release (6.x), so I have no deep experiences with it;

here is a recorded presentation:

http://www.realtech.com/wInternational/software/network_manager/live_presentation/MovieLoading_e.swf

[dave.keith]

I use a little SNMP tool called GetIF. It is small and easy to use for MIB browsing / gets / sets. It does not allow you to poll and store data, but for a quick look it can't be beat, imo. You'll have to google for it, I cannot remember where I got it ... ah hang on .... oops, you will have to google for it, the thing has no 'about' nor do the file properties say much .... but it works well.

Dave

[Farrukh Haroon]

Yes I also use Getif on our customer networks all the time. Specially when you have the NMS and managed devices separated by security zones/ACLs, Getif is always the way to go to check if the device has SNMP reachability (both read/write).

It can be downloaded from:

http://www.wtcs.org/snmp4tpc/getif.htm

Regards

Farrukh

[jbarger]

NMIS to monitor device status, it is very easy to add devices to once you get it configured and has a nice dashboard and many other features.

Simple Event Correlator(SEC) to watch for certain syslog messages... although that can be done in Ciscoworks SEC will let you do things like collect a specific message and send one notification after a peroid of time.

Wearhermap4rrd to give a graphical view of 5 minute max bandwidth.

Drraw to mine the rrds created by NMIS to create utilization dashboards.

All the above are running on one Linux box.

Scrutinizer, the free version, installed on same box as ciscoworks, to find users abusing the network. "how come user x transfered 14 terabytes from the server today"

Below are installed on my computer...

AsItHappens to monitor interfaces as needed in 2 second intervals.

Ping Plotter old version 1.10 freeware tracerout upgrade.

SecureCRT, TFTPstandalone, Wildpackets subnet calculator.. various other crud :)

[DARYLE DIANIS]

thanks for everyone's input. I'm using Orion, Solarwinds, Netqos, Net-sense and kiwisyslog.

[jimmyc_2]

I'm evaluating NetQOS. It seems powerful, but very difficult to learn. What is your expericene?

[DARYLE DIANIS]

There are several components, Reporter Analyzer is good for Netflow data. Its not so bad to learn. Super Agent is more difficult, because you need to know the architecture of the application, you have to span ports and you need to know the actual ports it communicates on. Multi-server applications are tricky. The data is awesome, because it shows the network portion versus the host portion. I had help with the initial setup, its worth paying for.