Hi all, first time poster here, but I thought I would give my recent experience with finding a solution.<br>
<br>
We (we being a small government department) recently went through the
process of reviewing our Cacti/Nagios solution because the reliance on
the single xnix guy was too heavy (windows shop here). We found that
our best solution was a combination of PRTG (<a href="http://www.paessler.com/">http://www.paessler.com/</a>)
and Manage Engine Netflow Analyzer.<br>
<br>
PRTG is very simple, point and click, windows based solution. It easily
replaced our inplace cacti/nagios with little drama. We run a
combination of Cisco routers/switches, Brocade routers/switches, and
have had little problems finding a template for each, and then applying
that template to each device. We mainly use email notification, however
out of the box you can use MSN/SNMP Traps/ SMS/ execute a HTTP action,
to notify you of your chosen event. PRTG also does IP SLA monitoring,
and also QoS monitoring, however I haven't implimented it, so can't
comment on it too much.<br>
<br>
We had little trouble monitoring our load balancers, Window and Sun
machines, and our tacky environmental sensors. Basically if it can be
SNMP polled, we can monitor using it using PRTG. <br>
<br>
The down side of PRTG is its viewing options. You only get three
options for graphing display. Eg, Graph 1 you might show 24 hours with
5 minute averages, graph 2 will show 30 days with 1 hour averages, and
graph 3 will show 365 with 1 day averages. These graph periods are only
customisable globaly, but we got around by changing our sampling rate,
and simply graphing the same device twice for different graphs. We used
this mainly because we wanted to monitor some interfaces "real time"
monitoring, and yet wanted a 365 history. Also, some users will find
that it runs on a Windows machine a major downside, however it was a
positive thing for this environment.<br>
<br>
Netflow Analyzer was chosen simply for it's bang for buck simpleness,
and ease of administration. Combined, we got both of these products
with several years support for less then most other 'supported'
packages.<br><br>And no, I don't commission for promoting PRTG. :)<br><br>- Kian<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 4:12 PM, Darren Moss <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Darren.Moss@em3.com.au">Darren.Moss@em3.com.au</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial">Hi,</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial">We use a combination of BB4 which has been customised with
scripts, probes, etc we developed + Nagios.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial">Both products are excellent.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial">BB4 is a paid product and an upgrade to the old Open Source
release of BB.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial">Runs on UNIX (Solaris), Linux and Windows
boxes.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial">Nagios works just as well, but more cumbersome to configure
and deploy. We've developed a web interface to configure up new nodes so our
helpdesk staff can configure up new monitoring rules quickly for host
deployments.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial">Another package to check out is Cacti.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial">Go for cross-platform tools with no
lock-ins.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial">Hope this helps.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Arial">Cheers.</font></span></div>
<div> </div>
<p align="left"><font size="2" face="verdana">Regards, <br> <br> <br><b>Darren
Moss<br></b>General Manager<br>Australia and New Zealand<br>[p] 1300 131
083 [f] 03 9017 2287<br>[e] <a href="mailto:Darren.Moss@em3.com.au" target="_blank">Darren.Moss@em3.com.au</a> [w] <a href="http://www.em3.com.au/" target="_blank">www.em3.com.au</a></font><font face="verdana"><br><font size="2"><br>
Reach me on extension 105.<br>For technical
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<div></div>
<div> </div><br>
<div dir="ltr" align="left" lang="en-us">
<hr>
<font size="2" face="Tahoma"><div class="im"><b>From:</b> <a href="mailto:ausnog-bounces@lists.ausnog.net" target="_blank">ausnog-bounces@lists.ausnog.net</a>
[mailto:<a href="mailto:ausnog-bounces@lists.ausnog.net" target="_blank">ausnog-bounces@lists.ausnog.net</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>PRK<br></div><b>Sent:</b>
2010-02-09 3:10 pm<div class="im"><br><b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:ausnog@ausnog.net" target="_blank">ausnog@ausnog.net</a><br><b>Subject:</b> [AusNOG]
Network Monitoring Systems<br></div></font><br></div><div><div></div><div class="h5">
<div></div>G'day guys,<br><br>I'm curious what people use for network
monitoring, performance monitoring & graphing of large scale networks &
systems.<br><br>Open source / commercial / homegrown / hybrids
thereof?<br><br>Any experiences (for or against) different solutions that people
are willing to share?<br><br>Cheers,<br><br>prk<br></div></div></div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br>