We used it at district... Very powerful tool once you get past learning curve...
On Nov 10, 2016 10:08 PM, "That One Guy /sarcasm" <[email protected]> wrote: > im hoping to curry favor from the list for recent tyrades i may or may not > have been involved in > > but it really is looking like a cost effective product for a smaller > network like ours > > http://www.solarwinds.com/products/pricing/ is the msrp price sheet > > if a network is running with some redundant techs and no monitoring > solution, 30kmsrp could be justified by tech attrition on the perpetual > license for monitoring alone on the redundant license, i dont know about > the 6k recurring though for maintenance. Cost can be offset too with user > views and remote nodes reselling monitoring as a service. > > One of the primary drawbacks of running an opensource solution with a non > owner admin such as we are (as much of a complainer as I am, I am actually > a company man) is that I can spend a good deal of company time learning and > building up an awesome open source solution that does all kinds of things > with nifty tweaks and whistles, but if i get hit by a car, im the only one > who actually knows whats under the hood, which is fine, as long as its > working, until its not. > > We were running snmpc when i transitioned into my role, it was almost > fully vanilla so migrating me to management of it was smooth, it would have > been smooth even if my predecessor had made an abrupt exit. > > I learned it on my own time, even had a bootleg of it running here at > home. I added in all kinds of neat features, like detailed dependencies to > limit cascading alerts, tons of trap based responses, toolsets to pull all > kinds of reports, I was even in the process of integrating it with our > phone system so techs could call in and have signal readins via a text to > voice application.... and then the installation corrupted. My very first > experience in "did you have a backup?" no "youre fu**ed" Hard lesson > learned, I rebuilt half of it but there was alot I forgot how to do. My > first experience in "did you document?" no "youre fu**ed" > > we didnt renew maintenance and the system got harder to keep running with > all the java and other stuff, the remote monitoring revenue was gone and it > went to the wayside in lieu of Powercode which ultimately wasnt an NMS > > The ease of getting this solar winds going and the default monitoring > tools really makes it appealing, its still pretty much vanilla and it > already saved the day by mistake. If we had it and we lost me because i was > in the server room with the offsite backups in hand when the comet hit, > other than the 7 hours it takes to get a fresh server 2008 instance > updated, the system could be functionally monitoring the network and > processing flows in under 2 hours. The atlas maps would take a little more > time i would bet. There are a couple dependencies that it tells you about, > its a non default iis install, but is has very clear instructions. > > On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 10:37 PM, Josh Reynolds <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> This is a good writeup on how important proper monitoring tools are, >> and on solarwinds. >> >> Well done Steve. >> >> On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 10:31 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. >> > > > > -- > 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. >
