LAN monitoring software 1

[f2b]

Hi
I am looking for a good LAN monitoring software to evaluate before purchasing. Any recommendations would be very useful.
The software must be able to show alerts and be able to auto discover as well as manually ad/remove devices from PC's to routers and switches. To manage around 300 devices in total. Not to mention user friendly.

Thanks
Andre

 

[KiscoKid]

Hello.

Top of the food chain regarding a LAN monitoring/fault managment platform is HP's Openview suite of software. The basic module is called NNM or Network Node Manager. I think when you buy this product (it's not terribly cheap I'm afraid) you get 500 node license out of the box if I recall correctly.

Everyone but everyone builds their respective fault management software to interact fully with HP Openview, inc. Cisco, 3Com, Nortel and HP of course.

You can get evaluations for this software as well. I think the basic package of NNM is pretty easy to administer when it's up and running and can do manual or automated device discovery.

Most organisations who take their infrastructure seriously should strongly consider this product. However, it's not for everyone (i.e. the cost can get quite high when you start buying additional licenses or additional modules). There are a LOT of modules available with this product. You can pretty much do anything with Openview at a cost.

There are likely free network management solutions out there (I can't really comment on whether they will be good for you as I have limited experience of them). Some I've heard of people using include Servers Alive, Net-SNMP etc. The things with free management software is that they may ultimately lack some of the features that you may need, may not be regularly updated if there are any bugs and usually there is no support path.

I hope this helps with your selection process.

 

[f2b]

Thanks for that.
I have used HP Openview in the past and I agree it is probably the best but too expensive for the size of company I now work for whic is around 250-300 devices in total.

I am currently evaluating Ipswitch's "WhatsUp Pro" on a 30 day trial. Interesting to know if anyone has any comments about this.

Thanks
Andre

 

[outonalimb]

Link Analyst is a great bit of kit and it's really cheap. We use it to monitor our entire network across 15 sites in the UK.

http://www.networkinstruments.com/products/analyst.html

 

[PalmTest]

Hi f2b,

I suggest you take a look at

http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/categories/8/

for some freeware tools or

http://www.snapfiles.com/shareware/categories/8/

for the shareware tools.
Also look at

http://www.hojmark.net

for some more overview of networking.

 

[phannah]

Might want to look at Solarwinds Orion (

http://www.solarwinds.net).

 

[jneiberger]

Heh heh... phannah beat me to it. I was going to recommend Orion from Solarwinds, as well. It is rather powerful and is much cheaper than NNM and other high-end tools.

It all depends on what exactly you need to monitor. There's also Nagios, OpenNMS, What's Up Gold, Big Sister...

There are plenty to choose from depending on your requirements.