asked on

network monitoring

Hi,
Can anybody recommend a good network monitoring / long analyzer app?

My personal favorite is PRTG: http://www.paessler.com/prtg/

But also have a look at: https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/26748566/Good-Monitoring-Tool.html?cid=748&anchorAnswerId=34841205#a34841205

vburshteyn

ASKER

not to sound too lazy,but I just took over the role of network admin / architect for this company with multiple offices around the country with various equipment scatter all over the place. There was no knowledge transfer and no inventory list of any kind.

Any good apps that i can just set to scan and it will find all the server, cisco equipment, and identify whats what?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Ernie Beek

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vburshteyn

ASKER

thank you

Ernie Beek

You're welcome :)

chouckham

Hello,

Servers: (If Windows) you want to monitor some specifics using WMI (Windows Management Interface). There are hundreds of ways of doing this. Here are just a small handfull and my recommendations:

++ Performance Monitor (Built in to All Windows systems found in: Control Panel >>> Admint Tools >>> Performance Monitor). This allows you to monitor and graph and see exactly what is happening on your system with hundreds of pre configured metrics from CPU utilsation to Memory usage, etc.. You can even configure a second server to monitor the first one remotely.

There are many "Turn-key" solutions which you will need to pay for: MOM, HP OpenView, SolarWinds Orion Application Monitor, etc...There are many Open Source, Freeware, Shareware software also such as: Nagios, Spiceworks, Cacti, etc... My recommendation for a skilled linux/ windows admin would be to use such a system like Nagios Core or Cacti with a WMI Monitor plugin.

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Network devices: SNMP (Simple Network Monitoring Protocol) is the way to go here, I would go out on a limb and say all Managed Network devices should support SNMP. Using this protocol you can "Poll" a device and request key information from it, such as: CPU Usage, Interface Statistics, and some more interesting things... For this there are again a whole host of Commercial, Open Source, Freeware, Shareware options...

++Nagios
++Wireshark
++Cacti
++HP OpenView
++Solarwinds Orion NPM
++Advanced HostMonitor
++IPSwitch WhatsUP
++RRD Tool
++Smokeping

-Craig

oppofwar

Zabbix or Zenoss are both open source and easy to setup. For Log analyzaer of the whole network you can use splunk