12 Days of Network Bliss:
It's that time again — time to get your network in shape so that you can kick back and enjoy a little rest and relaxation during the holidays. But we all know how that works. Just when you're packing your bags and typing “over the river and through the woods" into your GPS, your network hands you a few gifts…
It’s too bad you weren’t running Orion Performance Monitor (NPM) when that crucial router went on the fritz.
With Orion NPM, you can quickly and easily configure powerful network alerts to respond to hundreds of different network scenarios, including multiple condition checks. These alerts help you recognize and correct issues — before a major meltdown! And with alerting support for correlated events and sustained conditions, Orion NPM ensures that you don’t get paged just as the fruitcake is being served, unless there’s a critical issue.
In addition to monitoring and analyzing performance statistics for routers, switches, wireless access points, servers, and other SNMP-enabled devices, Orion NPM simplifies investigating issues with drill down maps and Top 10 views of your global network.
Try Orion NPM for Free >
How do you figure out which devices are connected to a switch port when the cables in your wiring closet are more tangled up than last year’s holiday lights?
Switch Port Mapper discovers connections automatically and creates a logical map of the IP addresses associated with each port. It also discovers the MAC address, IP address, and hostname of connected devices, as well as details like operational status and port speed.
This is just one of the nifty troubleshooting tools in Engineer’s Toolset. Here are a few more you don’t want to miss:
- Neighbor Map discovers devices on your network using CDP and LLDP, generates a topology map of devices connected to a specific target device, and displays each device and associated interfaces used to connect to neighboring devices.
- WAN Killer generates random traffic on your WAN and automatically adjusts circuit bandwidth and the percent of load.
- IP Network Browser scans a single IP, IP address range, or subnet and displays network devices as are they are discovered in real time.
Watch the Engineer’s Toolset V10 Tour >
Try Engineer’s Toolset for Free >
Just like Ebenezer Scrooge, compliance auditors love to pile on extra work at the holidays! But now you can respond to their last minute compliance report requests and still get home before crazy Uncle Carl dares your Cousin Ted to crawl down the chimney.
Orion Network Configuration Manager (NCM) automatically produces scheduled reports that identify configuration policy violations and configurations that pose a security risk, or don’t meet internal standards. Orion NCM provides several out-of-the-box policy reports designed specifically for the standards and regulations set forth in HIPAA, SOX, CISP, and Cisco® Security Audit. And with Orion NCM, it’s also easy to build custom policy reports specific to your organization’s compliance needs.
Try Orion NCM for Free >
It’s easy to overlook a conflicting IP address when your IP address management system is a spreadsheet! Don’t you think 2010 might be a good time to ditch that 90s technology?
Orion IP Address Manager (IPAM) delivers an easy-to-use, centralized IP address management solution that doesn’t break the bank. Orion IPAM makes it easy to:
- Prevent your subnets and DHCP scopes from filling up with preventative alert notifications
- Periodically scan your network and Microsoft® DHCP servers for IP address changes
- Create, schedule, and share reports showing IP address space percent utilization
- Scan and track unused IP addresses for free and tag them as available
Try Orion IPAM for Free >
We have a FREE tool that is certain to reduce the number of end-users decking the halls outside of your cube and asking if the network is down.
Download our free WMI Monitor and, in less time than it takes to sing Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, you can be monitoring virtually any Windows® application – including Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007! Add other applications by choosing from pre-built application templates or explore templates created and posted on thwack® by the SolarWinds community — you can even browse the templates directly from WMI Monitor.
Download the Free WMI Monitor >
Explore the Templates on thwack >
All of us are facing budget constraints these days. That’s why we’ve rolled out a one-size-fits-all pricing model for ipMonitor. Now you can get the up/down monitoring you need, for hundreds of devices and apps, at a price that works for almost any IT budget.
ipMonitor delivers out-of-the-box monitoring that makes it super simple to keep up with your network devices, servers, and applications. Plus, ipMonitor includes a built-in database and Web server, so you don't need to install anything but ipMonitor — making it fast, affordable, and easy to use in any environment by IT professionals of all levels.
Compare ipMonitor to WhatsUp® Gold >
Try ipMonitor for Free >
It’s the last day of the quarter and a very unhappy sales manager is threatening to melt your snowballs because SalesForce® is stalling and the inbound sales calls are jittering. If only you were running Orion Network Traffic Monitor (NTA), you could track the bandwidth bottleneck to the 2nd floor where the merry denizens of the Dungeons of Northrend are celebrating the Feast of the Winter Veil by launching an attack on the Grand Magus Telestra.
Orion NTA can help you find and shut down those WarCraft® Warlords by analyzing NetFlow, J-Flow, and sFlow® data and delivering a complete picture of network traffic. And with CBQoS monitoring, you can be sure that the policies you’ve set give your mission-critical traffic the highest level of priority. So go forth and rid your network of the scourge of bandwidth bandits with a free 30-day trial.
Try Orion NTA for Free >
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could track application health in real time with dynamic network maps? You can with Orion Application Performance Monitor (APM)! Choose from several built-in geographic map templates or import a logical image of your network based on floor, building, department or larger geographic location. You can even nest multiple maps to provide drill-down capabilities.
As a module of Orion NPM, Orion APM presents application-monitoring data alongside comprehensive performance information for your network infrastructure, giving you a complete, at-a-glance picture of network health.
Try Orion APM for Free >
Want an easy way to find and monitor all the virtual machines and VMware® ESX Servers hiding on your network? Our free VM Monitor makes it easy to keep a vigilant eye on virtualization health – and it’s FREE!
- Quickly check the health of your VMware ESX Server by monitoring CPU, memory utilization, number of virtual machines configured and running, and much more
- View detailed virtual machine health statistics including VM name, guest OS, and VM state, as well as processor, memory, and network usage
- Leverage best practice thresholds to begin monitoring virtualized servers right out-of-the-box
Download the Free VM Monitor >
Take a break from stringing those fussy holiday lights, fire up your laptop, and pour yourself a glass of eggnog. Our Head Geek, Josh Stephens, has a double feature for you.
It’s hard to imagine a network in today’s world that couldn’t benefit from implementing some form of Quality of Service (QoS). Learn what you need to know to successfully implement, manage, and monitor QoS on your network. (You’re on your own with those lights.)
- Network QoS Webcast – Part 1: In Part 1, Josh covers the fundamentals of implementing a QoS strategy. Learn about the types of QoS, best practices for QoS deployment, QoS monitoring applications, and when and why to deploy QoS. Watch Now >
- Network QoS Webcast – Part 2: In Part 2, Josh dives into more advanced topics including: traffic shaping, scheduling and queuing algorithms, congestion avoidance, and Cisco’s Class Based Quality of Service (CBQoS). Watch Now >
View All On-Demand Webcasts >
Here’s a helpful tip for monitoring remote sites with limited bandwidth and eliminating those winter WAN woes.
Let’s say you need to manage critical devices at a remote site – like the North Pole. You've done the math and the bandwidth is just not there. Sure, you can buy an SNMP appliance and talk an elf through the installation (after he finishes loading Santa’s sleigh). With any luck, you might have monitoring data by the new year.
Or, with Orion NPM and our free IP SLA Monitor, you can monitor that remote, low bandwidth site... today! Here's how:
- Download and install our free IP SLA Monitor.
- Use IP SLA Monitor to configure ICMP echo operations from an IP SLA-capable device in the remote site to the other critical devices at that site.
- Create and export pre-configured Orion Universal Device Pollers (UnDPs) for the ICMP operations using IP SLA Monitor's built-in wizard.
- Import the templates into Orion NPM.
- Start monitoring and alerting on your critical remote devices with minimal bandwidth!
Try Orion NPM for Free >
Download the Free IP SLA Monitor >
Oh look! Someone left you a present – an IOS update! Now you just need to upload it to 187 routers – tonight, before you leave for your vacation.
Our free TFTP Server can save you a ton of time. With TFTP Server, you can concurrently upload and download executable images and quickly back up configurations on multiple routers and switches. Experience for yourself why our free TFTP Server is the most robust, widely-trusted, and easy-to-use free TFTP solution on the planet.
Download the Free TFTP Server >
TFTP Server is just one of the many powerful tools included in SolarWinds award-winning Engineer's Toolset. This robust collection of powerful network management tools delivers everything you need to easily and effectively manage and troubleshoot your network – in one complete and affordable package.
Try Engineer’s Toolset for Free >
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