Monitoring

[michael4702]

Hello,

I would like to know where to start with monotoring our netwrok. We presently have two core 6500's and 90 odd floor switches (3548’s and 3750’s). Also we have 20 WAN links with routers and switches hanging off them.

At present we simple use solar winds to ping the WAN links to report if they are working or not. Very simple stuff.

I have Solo winds, HP open view and NMS at my disposal.

My questions are…

To be proactive with my network, what should I report on?

And given the tools I have at my disposal (HP open view and Solo winds) what can I actually report on?

Many thanks.

Michael.

[sean]

In addition to the up/down status that you are currently monitoring, start polling with SNMP. This will give you information such as CPU load, Mem used, bandwidth an errors in and out on an interface. With the logging of info, you can do trend analysis to spot potential issues. With solarwinds, you can also automate some reporting. Monitoring in this area is just trying to cut through the massive amount of info and get to what is really required. If you can automate this (whith solarwinds and HP open view), you will save a lot of time and have a better idea of what is going on in your network. Hope this helps.