In This Edition:

• Alerting on WAN Performance Issues
• Alerting Across Complex Networks
• Alerting for Your IP Address Space
• Free Tools & Resources to Energize Your Network
• SolarWinds & Cisco Team Up on Virtualization
• Product Tip: Monitor & Alert on Your Data Center Temperature

We know what gets you up in the morning and keeps you alert all day – caffeine, of course! Whether you prefer some strong java or stick to a pure diet of Mountain Dew®, geeks dig their caffeine as much as their network toys. This month, we're all about the alert – and not just the caffeinated variety; we have some awesome alerting tricks for your network to keep it on its toes while you prep for your late night gaming session with a couple of cans of classic Jolt® cola.

Our new product – Orion IP SLA Manager – gives you ultimate alerting on critical IP SLA statistics that provide valuable insight into site-to-site performance issues across your WAN. You'll know immediately if thresholds are violated, indicating that parameters are outside of what is considered "good" for a given WAN link, and can immediately start troubleshooting. With Orion IP SLA Manager, you can:

• Monitor and alert on WAN network performance using IP SLA technology that's already built into your existing Cisco® routers
• Generate test traffic on your network that alerts you to WAN performance issues and site-to-site problems before they impact users
• Set up alerts for correlated events and sustained conditions across your WAN

Learn More About Orion IP SLA Manager >

Download Orion IP SLA Manager >

Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) delivers advanced alerting for your network devices, ensuring you get notified of router issues and poorly performing switches and servers at any time of day or night. Don't let your network succumb to sluggishness – fire up Orion NPM and let its alerting features keep you and your network at peak performance. With Orion NPM's advanced alerting, you can:

• Define device dependencies
• Configure network alerts for correlated events (alert if X and Y are true)
• Set up network alerts for sustained conditions (alert if Y is true for more than 5 minutes)
• Escalate network alerts automatically
• Ensure you don't receive unnecessary alerts and prevent floods of useless messages

Learn More About Orion NPM >

Learn More About Advanced Alerting >

Download Orion NPM >

Staying on top of issues in your IP address space can be a challenge. That's why our Orion IP Address Manager (IPAM) enables you to quickly and easily configure powerful alert engines to respond to hundreds of different scenarios, including multiple condition checks of your IP address space. Finally, you can rest assured that you'll be notified before a subnet or DHCP scope is full, and recognize and correct issues before your users experience issues. With Orion IPAM, you can:

• Define subnet capacity thresholds and configure alerts to notify you before your subnets become full
• Prevent running out of available IP addresses in your DHCP scopes with advanced alerting
• Leverage more than sixteen built-in alert delivery methods and responses, including email, pages, SNMP traps, text-to-speech, syslog messages, and the launching of an external application

Learn More About Orion IPAM >

Download Orion IP Address Manager >

If there is one thing that has the same adrenaline-inducing capacity as your favorite caffeinated beverage, it is free stuff for your network. We can help re-energize you and your network with some cool new free tools and resources.

• Free VM Monitor continuously monitors a VMware® ESX Server and its virtual machines. Track virtualization health at-a-glance and impress your boss with X-ray vision into your ESX Servers!
  Download Now >

• Free Exchange Monitor offers up a desktop dashboard that monitors Microsoft® Exchange for real-time insight into Exchange services, mail queue sizes, and host server health.
  Download Now >

• Free IP Address Tracker liberates you from the evils of spreadsheets, delivering powerful and simple-to-use features that give you a unified view of your IP address space and that enable you to manage it – all for free!
  Download Now >

View All Free Tools >

• NEW! Reference Guide for Fundamental Protocols of Network Management answers all of your questions about network protocols with this in-depth, 5-part guide. Learn everything you've ever wanted to know about ICMP, SNMP, Windows® management protocols, Telnet, SSH, and more!
  Download Now >

• The Essential Series: Network Troubleshooting and Problem Identification gives you the low-down on how to automate many of the pesky manual tasks you face everyday. Plus, pick up great tips for bandwidth monitoring, isolating network vs. application issues, and streamlining config management.
  Download Now >

View All Free Resources >

Have you discovered the virtualization goodness that Cisco® Nexus 1000V switches offer? We thought so. But you may not realize that SolarWinds can take the complexity out of managing these virtual infrastructure environments. In fact, our Orion Network Performance Monitor offers the same ease of management for the Nexus 1000V as any other switch.

SolarWinds and Cisco want to get you invigorated about virtualization, so we've teamed up to provide you with two great ways to get started:

• On-Demand Webcast: Managing the Impact of Virtualization Technology on Your Network: Virtualization experts, Josh Stephens, SolarWinds Head Geek, and Neal Mueller, Cisco's Nexus 1000V Product Manager, discuss how to manage virtual switch infrastructure and best practices for analyzing network traffic within the virtual ecosystem.
  Watch Now >

• Bundled Discount: Buy Cisco Nexus 1000V with Orion NPM for Only US$2425 – a US$745 Savings! Contact your reseller to purchase this powerful virtualization bundle at a great discount before December 31!
  Learn More >

View Our Resource Center for Cisco Networks >

Adding monitoring and alerting on the temperature of your data center to Orion Network Performance Monitor is as easy as brewing a super-strength cup of coffee.  Just follow these easy steps:

1. Purchase and install an SNMP-capable thermostat for your data center. (You can find examples at http://www.netbotz.com/.)
2. Add the thermostat to Orion NPM for monitoring.
3. Open the Universal Device Poller interface in Orion NPM.
4. Click "New Universal Device Poller"; then select the appropriate MIB and OID for temperature and click "Next".
5. Assign the poller to the thermostat devices you added and click "Next".
6. Specify whether you want these statistics displayed in the Orion web console and click "Finish".
7. Open the Advanced Alert Manager interface in Orion NPM and click "Configure Alerts".
8. Select "New Alert" and provide a name for the alert on the first tab.
9. Move to the Trigger Condition tab and, in the drop-down menu, select "Custom Node Poller".
10. Add two simple conditions by clicking on the "..." graphic and selecting "Simple Condition" twice.
11. Click the first * and select Custom Node Poller -> Poller Name and enter the name of your new poller.
12. On the second row, click on the first * and select Custom Node Poller -> Status; then select "is greater or equal to" and enter your desired temperature threshold.
13. Under the Trigger Actions tab, specify how you want to be notified if this alert is triggered and click "Ok".

Download Orion NPM >

Recent Product Updates

ipMonitor v10 >

Orion IP SLA Manager v3.0 >

Orion NPM v9.5 - Service Pack 5 (only required if using Orion IPAM v1.5) >

IP Address Manager v1.5 >

Engineer's Toolset v10.3 Hot   Fix 1 >

Orion APM v3.0 - Service Pack 1 >

Orion NTA v3.5 - Service Pack 2 >