In This Edition:
Today's networks are superhighways for all kinds of data and applications. Navigating this complex roadway, much less managing it, is more challenging than ever before, especially with the alphabet soup of applications that are now trucking along your network. Luckily, our Head Geek (a.k.a. Josh Stephens) is a great navigator... this month's newsletter is his crash course on sure ways to reach your ultimate destination of high-performing apps in record time. We hope you enjoy the ride! 
 The latest version of Orion Application Performance Monitor (APM) extends Orion Network Performance Monitor's powerful monitoring, alerting, and reporting capabilities to applications and servers, making it easy to resolve performance issues - before your end users experience hazardous conditions on the network superhighway. Orion APM makes it easy to:
- Quickly determine the root cause of application performance issues
- Get a unified view into network, application, and server monitoring data
- Monitor a wide range of server and application types
- Begin monitoring in minutes with out-of-the-box, agentless monitoring templates
- Create custom application monitors quickly and easily
 Orion APM ships with Application Monitor Templates for popular applications like Microsoft® Exchange, Microsoft IIS, and Apache, or you can easily create your own custom monitoring templates without any roadside assistance, ensuring that you'll be on-ramping your app monitoring in literally minutes.
Even better, the new AppBuilder Wizard in Orion APM turbo-charges your app monitoring with a simple step-by-step wizard that enables virtually any application to be monitored with just a few clicks.
 To get started, simply enter the IP address of any server on your network and Orion APM will automatically retrieve a list of available statistics to monitor. Next, just check the boxes for the statistics you want to monitor. Application monitors work on Windows®, Linux, and Unix servers and can monitor services, processes, ports, scripts, and WMI performance counters. Hard to believe it's that easy... but it's true! Just watch the video to see for yourself >
Download a Free 30-Day Trial of Orion APM > 
 Do you know what WMI is? It stands for Windows® Management Instrumentation and is a handy means to getting the detailed data you need to manage your Windows servers and apps. The "instrumentation" concept comes from WMI's ability to get information about the internal state of computer systems, much like your car's dashboard displays detailed information about the state of the engine... that way you don't redline your apps.
So, now you want to know what's so great about WMI? Well, WMI gives you tons of information about your systems, from the hardware all the way to installed applications - much more detail than SNMP alone can provide. With WMI, you can access event logs, operating system attributes, processes, installed applications, and more. When you want to know virtual memory size on a Windows server, the CPU usage of a Windows service, or retrieve the number of messages in an Exchange mailbox queue, you can get them all via WMI.
 Orion Application Performance Monitor makes it easy for you to remotely monitor WMI performance counters, so that you can identify and resolve application issues fast. Adding WMI monitors is as simple as clicking on a server icon, browsing the list of available counters, and selecting the ones you want to add. Plus, you can customize your WMI counters to your heart's content. Watch the Head Geek's video to learn more about WMI >
Some common WMI performance monitors include:
- Windows® Disk Queue Length
- Exchange Mailbox Receive Queue
- SQL Server® Buffer Cache-Hit Ratio
- Windows Page Writes/sec
- IIS Get Requests/sec
Download a Free 30-Day Trial of Orion APM >
Are you ready to put poorly performing applications in the rear-view mirror? We have two easy routes to put you on the road to happy apps. Put on your seat belts and meet two of our favorite FREE tools!
 Route #1: FREE Real-time NetFlow Analyzer captures and analyzes NetFlow data in real time to show you exactly what types of application traffic are on your network, where that traffic is coming from, and where it is going, enabling you to keep a radar detector on bandwidth hogs and ensure that your mission-critical applications get the bandwidth they deserve. Put an end to complaints about your apps being slow and eliminate network traffic jams. This free tool will enable you to:
- Investigate, troubleshoot, and quickly remediate network slowdowns
- Easily identify which applications are consuming the most bandwidth
- Isolate inbound and outbound traffic by conversation, application, domain, endpoint, and protocol
Download the FREE Real-time NetFlow Analyzer >
 Route #2: We all know that the services that Microsoft® Exchange Server provides are critical to your business. And we know what it feels like when Exchange crashes on you. SolarWinds FREE Exchange Monitor delivers a clever desktop dashboard that continuously monitors Exchange to deliver real-time insight into services, mail queue sizes, and host server health. With Exchange Monitor in the passenger seat, you'll be able to:
- Quickly identify and troubleshoot Exchange server problems
- Spot growing mail queues that can indicate bigger issues
- Prevent performance issues with built-in red, yellow, and green health indicators
- Monitor critical server health indicators
Download the FREE Exchange Monitor Today >
 Featured SolarWinds Products Put You in the Management Fast Lane
"The Best Network Management"
"SolarWinds was a godsend to my organization - as we grow, SolarWinds is going to be able to grow with us. I evaluated several network management apps, including HP OpenView. SolarWinds is hands-down the best network management program I've ever used." - grantsewell
Download Free Trials of SolarWinds Products >
"What a Life Saver"
"What a life saver... We purchased Orion NPM about 5 years ago and I can say firsthand it has saved many hours of driving and troubleshooting finding our problems." - Visualone
Try Orion NPM Free for 30 Days >
"Should Be in Every Network Engineer's Toolkit"
"A great collection of essential tools... I have used SolarWinds [Engineer's Toolset] for years and I continue to find usefulness with its offerings. Tools such as the Advanced Subnet Calculator or the IP Address Management should be in every network engineer's toolkit." - rollingsr
Try Engineer's Toolset Free for 30 Days >
Product Tip: Orion's NOC View Gives You 24x7 Insight into Your Apps & Network
 For those of you who need to keep an eye on your apps and networks round the clock, we have an easy way to deliver non-stop Orion views on the big screen in your NOC... think of it like a traffic control headquarters for your network superhighway.
With Orion NPM v9, you can setup an account to never log out of the web console. (Normally, for security reasons, you want unattended, non-NOC accounts to log off automatically.) To create your Orion NOC view:
- Go to the Admin bar
- Click on an existing account or create a new NOC account
- Edit the account settings in the next screen
- Set "Disable Session Timeout" to "yes"
- Save the new settings
Download a Free 30-Day Trial of Orion NPM >
Product Updates
 NEW FREE TOOL: Real-time NetFlow Analyzer Unlocks the Power of NetFlow on Your Network
SolarWinds new free Real-time NetFlow Analyzer captures and analyzes NetFlow data in real time to show you exactly what types of traffic are on your network, where that traffic is coming from, and where it is going. Real-time NetFlow Analyzer takes the guesswork out of diagnosing network traffic spikes and stores up to one hour of NetFlow data - giving you X-ray vision into what's happening on your network!
Download Real-time NetFlow Analyzer Now >
Recent Service Packs & Hot Fixes Available for Download
A number of service packs are now available for download from the support area of the SolarWinds website. Download them today!
EOC v1 - Service Pack 1 >
ipMonitor v9.0.1 >
Orion NPM v9 - Service Pack 2 >
Engineer's Toolset v9.2 Switch Port Mapper - Hot Fix 1 >
NetFlow v3.0 - Service Pack 3 >
Exchange Monitor v1.0.2 >
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