You may just be cheap, but its all relative to your net revenue and expenses of course :)
On Nov 11, 2016 8:11 AM, "Ken Hohhof" <[email protected]> wrote: > You say price isn’t that bad. Whenever I’ve looked at anything from > Solarwinds, the price has been way out of reach – serious, serious sticker > shock. Did I evaluate incorrectly, or am I just cheap? > > > > > > *From:* Af [mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Paul Stewart > *Sent:* Friday, November 11, 2016 4:59 AM > *To:* [email protected] > *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] solar winds network bandwidth analyzer pack > > > > Solarwinds is interesting software… > > > > I’m now on week #4 of “renovating” our Solarwinds deployment…. updating, > cleaning stuff up, better automation, better alerting etc etc > > > > i’m a Linux guy … really like open source. But for network monitoring I > have yet to find an NMS (even commercial) that I actually liked in Linux. > it seems strange just saying that as there’s a lot of great TOOLS in Linux > but for a full blown NMS that’s where I have my issue. > > > > Right now, we run multiple tools on Linux such as Nagios, Cacti, > Observium, Collectd, Munin to name a few …. and then we have Solarwinds. > All of these systems are disconnected from one another, so a conscious > effort has been underway to “standardize’ everything under one platform - > and this is Solarwinds. > > > > I have been a long time user of their platform - and generally like it > quite a bit. I wish it didn’t run under Windows and I wish the performance > of the system was better …. also wish they would integrate some of their > other products into the “common platform” that they have acquired. > > > > Also, the price isn’t that bad (that will vary with company size, > importance of use etc) and it’s a good system that doesn’t take a huge > amount of time to manage/maintain once it’s operational. > > > > For their net flow product in particular, depending on number of > interfaces and flows, make sure you size the database accordingly…. it’s > very hungry for resources in that regard. > > > > > > > > > > On Nov 10, 2016, at 11:31 PM, That One Guy /sarcasm < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > > We are running a demo of this. It started out as an eyeballing a netflow > collector and analyzer I dont have to poke all the time. we started > scrutinizer, liked it, but found out the price scale killed any chance of > getting it approved > > > > the pricing for this wasnt as bad, and the sales guy has some incentives, > but the whole package was alot, and I didnt intend on even looking at the > monitoring side because port based pricing models can quickly get out of > hand > > > > as part of the initial configuration i seeded the auto discovery just to > get through the setup. in the mean time, some other stuff came up and i i > got busy, this was friday or thursday > > > > we have been having some intermittent issues with periodic slowness to > some customers, the symptoms were that of a bottleneck. We had to throw > some static routes into our OSPF network defeating dynamics to force > traffic out one connection, thinking maybe it was a saturated lower quality > upstream, no noteable relief. so we thought maybe we were saturating a > backhaul that was getting to high percentage utilization, we added a > redundancy and further split traffic up with static routes. no joy. it was > at a point where the next step was just going site by site auditing every > device...fun since the issue was intermittent, that means multiple times > > > > the sales guy wanted me to commit to getting this thing up and running by > this weekend so next week we could list out what we want from it and how we > achieve it, or if we cant do it. > > > > so yesterday i go to turn on the flows and send them to the server, the > weird slowness is going on so its irritating me. > > > > i decided to clear out the alarms from installation and low and behold > theres an alarm on a named interface of one of the routers i tossed in on > discovery saying 90 percent or more usage. this is a 366mb licensed link on > a gigabit interface, so im quite curious. I drill into the detail, the port > is running at 100mb and saturating, i flap the port and its back to gigabit. > > > > we only monitor with powercode currently, we have snmpc but its old and > shut off. Ive toyed with a whole bunch of other opensource and low cost > systems but never had enough time to actually drill down and learn them, i > did just get a book on nagios because it was cheap on ebay. > > > > powercode is worthless for any amount of invasive alerting or monitoring > at any detail, if i want ports identified other than by port number it > requires an individual probe. pita. its good for long term static > monitoring and some real time tools, but its not an NMS. > > > > the point here, is the solarwinds tool is sweet, and for the 100 interface > package with a promotion the cost is doable if one takes into account the > time investment of the other opensource platforms, installation, learning > curve, back end configuration, and plethora of gotchas. > > > > this particular issue could have cost us a good deal in man hours tracing > it, refunds to customers for service impacts, and potential long term loss > of customers. > > > > now, once i knew where the issue was, i knew exactly where to look in our > existing data to verify it. 20/20 hindsight doesnt mean those are the > toolsets that would have been picked out first. if this tool had been in > production use, we would have known the first time the link negotiated > down, and addressed it before there was any noteable service impact. > > > > > > If you are very frugal in your interface selection, this can be a good > choice for an nms (i havent played with the atlas map other than dropping > some stuff on it) if you dont want to dick around with a diy solution. its > cheaper if you dont add the netflow analyzer package. Its solar winds so > its pretty, and user friendly. the flow analyzer does route monitoring too, > i havent looked at that, but the salesguy says he thinks we can visualize > our ospf with the network atlas component, if thats the case the boss will > likely drop cash. licensing is perpetual with 20% yearly for maintenance if > you want it > > > > > > > > http://www.solarwinds.com/network-bandwidth-analyzer-pack > > > > > > -- > > If you only see yourself as part of the team but you don't see your team > as part of yourself you have already failed as part of the team. > > >
