[AusNOG] Network Monitoring Systems

[Kian McNab]

Hi all, first time poster here, but I thought I would give my recent
experience with finding a solution.

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 (http://www.paessler.com/) and Manage
Engine Netflow Analyzer.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And no, I don't commission for promoting PRTG. :)

- Kian

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 4:12 PM, Darren Moss <Darren.Moss at em3.com.au> wrote:

>  Hi,
>
> We use a combination of BB4 which has been customised with scripts, probes,
> etc we developed + Nagios.
> Both products are excellent.
>
> BB4 is a paid product and an upgrade to the old Open Source release of BB.
> Runs on UNIX (Solaris), Linux and Windows boxes.
>
> 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.
>
> Another package to check out is Cacti.
>
> Go for cross-platform tools with no lock-ins.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Cheers.
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
> *Darren Moss
> *General Manager
> Australia and New Zealand
> [p] 1300 131 083 [f] 03 9017 2287
> [e] Darren.Moss at em3.com.au [w] www.em3.com.au
>
> Reach me on extension 105.
> For technical support, please visit our website.
>
>
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>  ------------------------------
> *From:* ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net [mailto:
> ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] *On Behalf Of *PRK
> *Sent:* 2010-02-09 3:10 pm
>
> *To:* ausnog at ausnog.net
> *Subject:* [AusNOG] Network Monitoring Systems
>
> G'day guys,
>
> I'm curious what people use for network monitoring, performance monitoring
> & graphing of large scale networks & systems.
>
> Open source / commercial / homegrown / hybrids thereof?
>
> Any experiences (for or against) different solutions that people are
> willing to share?
>
> Cheers,
>
> prk
>
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