Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is what I call the 'big
tackle'. Big in its power to zoom into network trouble spots, and
big in the comprehensive range of checks that it manages. If you
are reviewing performance monitors, then take advantage of Solarwinds
offer to
download a free trial of Orion NPM v10.2
Orion NPM is geared to detecting network outages caused by broken links
and faulty
equipment. Because it produces network-centric views, it's
intuitive to navigate and easy to see what's working and what's not.
Perhaps Orion's best feature is the way it suggests solutions.
Moreover, if problems arise out of the blue, then you can configure Orion
to notify members
of your team what's changed and how to fix it.
Please note: Orion NPM is not easy to setup for a network beginner.
However, even a minor network expert will have no trouble installing
Orion, and there again you can always get support from Solarwinds' experts
starting with the Thwack forum.
Once the Orion NPM v10.2 setup is complete then it's time to enjoy the
monitoring. I should not say this, but the greatest fun for a
techie is when something is wrong, but you can fix it easily.
With Orion NPM you start with a top-level network map and drill down
through the red dots to discover more about the symptoms. The cause of the
outage could be a broken physical link, a server that's offline, or an
application on a server that's run out of resources.
Free download of Orion NPM v10.2
By using Orion NPM you will avoid amateur mistakes such as blaming
the network for latency problems, when it's really an
application on a server that is underlying cause. On a big
network a sub-contractor may have changed a router at a distant site, or
they patched a
server, only for the upgrade to cause a new far-reaching glitch.
Orion will help you detect and cure such problems.
Perhaps your company wiz-kid introduced a new VoIP or wireless
network, but did not realize the consequences for the rest of the
corporate network? Again Orion NPM will soon troubleshoot the root
cause, and more than likely suggest solutions.
Often the most frustrating problems are those that appear only sporadically.
For these annoying intermittent challenges Orion has an analyzer with retrospective
network-analysis capabilities. This historical data enables you to quickly
isolate and resolve the irregular network problem.
Summary: Orion NPM will find the worst performing
device on your network.
NPM Top 10 Lists No performance monitor appraisal
could be complete without mention of the top
ten lists. In fact, I find it mesmerising to observe how the nodes
change position and move in and out of the top 10. My favourite
category is response time, but you can also keep watch on:
Response Time (see screenshot right)
Wireless Clients by Traffic
Wireless APs by Client Count
Capacity
utilization
Memory usage
CPU load
Disk space volume
Network traffic and Packet Loss
I really enjoy customizing the lists so that Orion
monitors in just the way that I want.
Drill Downs It soon becomes second nature to double click on the network maps and
drill down through the site level to the server. From there you
can even examine the
resource usage of individual devices. However, you are newbie,
this ability to locate problems is awesome and it feels like being at
NASA's mission control in Houston Texas.
The Underlying Polling Technology Solarwinds Orion NPM ships
with a MIB database that covers all common network
devices. However, if you do have a non-standard Orion NPM allows
you to create a custom poller to monitor any SNMP-enabled device
value that has a MIB. As with so many of Orion's features, you can also
adjust how the module
collects and reports on the data.
For those with wireless networks, version 10 now has an integrated Wireless Poller.
And for those with VMware, Orion NPM reads host MIB information from
each VMware ESX server and its corresponding virtual machines.
Role-based Access Control Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) allows you to fine-tune who
sees what information. Typically, at HQ you want to see
everything, but perhaps you want the team at the Boston site to see only
their own servers, and not start interfering with the New York
operations. See also my review of Orion
APM (Application Network Monitor). Also the
Web Transaction Watcher is
worth a look.
EnergyWise It would probably be over-playing your hand to say to your MD that energy
savings will pay for Orion NPM, but nevertheless, controlling the energy
consumption of Cisco EnergyWise-enabled network devices will reduce
costs, and could be a clincher in persuading the financial director to
buy Orion. For the techie it's just an interesting and worthwhile
challenge to reduce energy consumption and keep the server rooms cooler.
Free download of Solarwinds Orion NPM v10.2
Time to Create Baselines
Creating baselines of network
activity is a good litmus tests of a well run company. Thus, one unexpected side-effect of using Orion NPM is that the techies
could have more time on their hands! As a manager you can take
advantage by commissioning them to show you baseline charts. The trouble with
fire-fighting is that you are never quite sure what is normal. By
having a 'feel' for the network backed up by stats for off-peak usage,
you can soon pin-point abnormalities. As a result you can either
prevent latency problems, or else cure them quickly before the users
realize there is something not quite right.
To support this pro-active approach to network management Orion
provides reports which are both comprehensive and interesting for the
techie. One common side-effect of baseline analysis is that ideas
for improvements
leap out of the charts, for example, load-balancing servers - one of my favourite
'cost nothing' tactics.
Review of Orion 10.2
In this release the Orion team have listened to user feedback and
incorporated these five features that so many have requested:
1) Better Active Directory (AD) Authentication Support With NPM 10.2, you can now authenticate to the Orion Web Console
using native AD Users and Groups. Prior to 10.2, NPM only supported
authentication via an Orion account or Windows pass-through.
Now, you can add an AD Group to Orion and then easily control Orion
web access by add/removing group members through AD Users and Computers.
2) Dynamic Service Groups and Dependencies With the introduction of Dynamic Service Groups in NPM
10.2, you can
group multiple Orion objects (such as nodes, interfaces, applications,
etc.) into a container that can be used to visualize status. For
example, you can create a "WAN Links" Group, add several interfaces, and
then set Group rollup status mode to "best" to account for link
redundancy.
3) Multiple Interfaces or UnDPs on a single chart With NPM
10.2, you can now graph multiple interfaces or UnDPs on a
single chart. More importantly for some, you can also place the new
resource on a summary view and graph multiple interfaces from different
nodes on the same chart.
4) PDF Views and Reports With NPM 10.2, you can now schedule the export of any page or report
in Orion as a PDF. This eliminates the problems with sending HTML pages
and the images getting gobbled by your email servers. You'll also notice
an Export to PDF button in the upper right hand corner of NPM 10.2 web
pages. Click it and you can create ad hoc PDF exports of whatever you
see on your screen.
5) Mobile Device and Alert Management Enhancements With NPM
10.2, you can access a dedicated Orion alert view for mobile
web browsers that allows you to view and acknowledge alerts from your
mobile device. What about email? You can also receive an email
notification and acknowledge alerts by clicking a link from your PC or
mobile device.
What if you need to remotely disable an alert?
With NPM 10.2, you can view, enable, disable, and delete alerts directly
from the website.
Finally, as an added bonus, just like in Report
Writer, you can use custom SQL to create advanced alerts you cannot
create through the built-in trigger creation interface.
Thwack Forum
Please note that Solarwinds are using your thwack posts as examples
because they're publicly available for us to point to, but they're not
the sole determiner of release content prioritization. We know you can't
access our minds or our internal feature tracking systems, but if you
could, you'd see we also take into account all the great feedback you've
given us in 1:1 interviews, feature requests submissions, beta posts,
through our support organization, etc. to help us decide what goes into
each release.
So, regardless of which method you prefer to provide us your
feedback, please keep it coming! Solarwinds are absolutely listening.
Join the NPM Thwack forum.
As I evaulate NPM v 10.2, the most exciting new feature is Network Atlas. This topology
management feature combines sharp, accurate monitoring with detailed
reporting, and best of all it shows connections between devices.
Automatically discover new (rogue) devices added to your network.
Tell the truth, I am suffering version blindness, however I don't think
this ability to spot any extra devices that join your network existed in
v9.5. The benefit is that you scan every week or even every day to
see if anyone has added a device to your network.
It's only fair to point out when reviewing Solarwinds Orion performance monitors
is that the full package represents a big investment. Indeed, there are
cheaper performance monitoring packages, but they don't have the data
collection and storage capacity of Orion NPM v10.2. Actually, my
biggest discriminator in determining whether a product is cheap or
expensive is the quality of the support staff. Some people say
Orion is expensive, but nobody complains about the troubleshooting
skills of Orion's technical staff.
More good news is that Solarwinds offer of a trial version of Orion
NPM v10.2 so that you can see if this performance monitor really would save you money in the
long run. Another way of reducing costs is to select only the NPM
modules that you need. Once you see the benefits, particularly if
you are trying to track multiple sites, then it's easy to justifying
adding more options later.
There are cheaper alternatives to each Orion module, but one hidden
benefit of Orion is that all the modules integrate with each other,
which makes it so much easier for reporting and root cause analysis.
Also most rival products don't supply the level of detail that you get by drilling
down through the Orion Network maps.
Log & Event Manager (LEM)
If you are more interested in an application that can provide
automatic reaction to events, then check-out another of Solarwinds' apps
namely the Log & Event Manager. In addition to analyzing logs from
routers, anti-virus software and Windows logs on the servers, LEM can
also help you achieve IT
compliance. See more on the Log &
Event Manager (LEM)
Operating Systems for Orion: Windows 2003 or 2008 Server,
including R2 (32-bit or 64-bit). Please note, that you also need to install IIS and .NET Framework 3.5
Resources: CPU Speed: 3.0 GHz; Hard Drive Space: 30 GB; Memory: 4 GB
Database: SQL Server 2005 SP1, or SQL Server 2008 (Express,
Standard, or Enterprise)
Orion Network Performance Monitor is ideal for discovering network
trouble spots. When I tried the NPM I was surprised how much there
was to learn about network technologies, fortunately the NPM helped my
understand an appreciate how devices communicate.
More Free and Trial Network Software
Here are Guy's reviews, recommendations and download links for handy
utilities.
Guy Recommends: Orion's NPM - Network Performance Monitor
Orion's performance monitor is designed for detecting network outages. NPM makes it easy to see what's working, and what needs your attention.
This utility guides you through creating network maps. It also helps troubleshooting by indicating whether the root cause is faulty equipment, or resource overload.
