I was recently asked to evaluate the SolarWinds products, specifically Orion Performance Monitor and the Network Management Tools (Engineer’s Edition). Below is my experience:
Environment
I started with two computers – A Dell 1400 server with a PIII 800Mhz Processor, 1G Ram, and plenty of disk space. The Server Operating System was a fresh install of Windows 2003 Server with SP1. The other machine was a Dell GX Workstation with Windows XP. Both computers were joined to a (test) domain running in Windows 2000 Native Mode.
My Network consisted of 2 Cisco 6509 switches that were connected together along with several closet switches hanging off the core. The closet switches were a mix, but mostly some form of the 3550 series line(12G, 24PWR, and plain -24′s). The 6500′s were configured as VTP servers with 5 vlans configured and doing routing for all five. VRRP was configured between the two 6500′s for redundancy.
Server Installation
I wish I could say this went better – however I did have some problems. I started with a download from SolarWinds of the Orion product. When you unpack the zipfile – you get the Orion program and the MSDE installation program. Following the directions, I installed MSDE first and then continued right into the SolarWinds installation. Installing SolarWinds went off without a hitch. After the installation, the first time you click on the Orion System Manager – it detects the configuration has not been setup. It runs another program that is available to you for running seperately called the configuration manager. The configuration manager program takes you through a series of prompts to setup the database, configure the IIS website, and install the SolarWinds optional system services.
The problem began at the database configuration section of configuration. You have an option to run SQL server locally or remotely. Since this was an evaluation, I was using the bundled MSDE. After you select which SQL server you want to use – you are prompted for the database name and path to store the data. I had an empty D: drive that I thought would be good for storing the Database, however the program threw an error when trying to continue and didn’t create the database tables in the new DB. So, after finishing the Orion installation – I attempted to run the program. I soon came to realize that there was no data being stored, I ran the DB manager to confirm there were no tables in the empty database.
Knowing there was a good chance that SP1 of Windows Server 2003 could be giving a problem, I searched the SolarWinds KB. I found an article about the enhanced sercurity that is enabled in SP1 causes a problem with a particular service (not letting it run because of permissions). In the KB article, it recommended turning off the enhanced Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and only letting it operate for the essential Windows programs and services only. I followed this procedure and then proceeded to recreating the database.
I then went in and stoped all the Orion related services and using the included Database manager program, dropped the database. Then by manually running the Configuration Manager, I was able to go back through the entire configuration setup – this time successfully creating the database.
Initial Configuration
Not to any suprise, when I went back into the Orion System Manager and started the discovery – I could see it populating data from the discovered devices it found into the Management screen. When you run the discovery, you have the option of specifing the ‘seed’ routers and letting it determine subnets, devices, etc. from the core alone. After entering the RO and RW community strings that was being used along with the 6500′s as the seeds – the discovery went very smoothly. The next step allows you to choose which interfaces you want to import – I selected all the available options (Operationally UP, Down, and Administrativly Down). However, the program only imported the first 100 interfaces it found because of the trial limitation. So, I wasn’t able to see all the discovered devices on my test network – however it was enough to evaluate the progam.
Operation
After letting several polling cycles go by (approx. 2 hours). I went back into the Orion System Manager to check out the results. I found the interface easy to navigate with the default reports to be useful. In the left pane it lists all your discovered nodes along with the ability to expand each item to view the specific reports for that device. The only thing I could say for improvement regarding the layout would be the abilty to put the devices into expandable groups. I can see this left pane getting very ‘busy’ with all the devices on your network listed in one vertical column. This display grouping ability may be possible, but not evident after an inital search.
In the left pane, the area is reserved to display each chart you select from your various device list. You can have multiple charts open at one time and is only limited to what is pratical based on the size of your screen.
Orion has a web Interface that gives you access to all Health data, along with any events and log entries to view. The web Interface would be your primary console for this program, since the Performance monitor program mentioned previously is a Windows GUI application. The web interface was very responsive during my tests and seemed to layout the data to where it was very accessable.
Other programs that are easily launched from the performance console are the Map Maker and the Report Writer.
The Map Maker gives you the ability to create new maps and customize the way you would like to view devices. This exportable map then gives you the ability to use it as a overal view of your network health. The map program seems easy to use – sort of like a simplistic Visio, with the ability to drag and drop your nodes onto a new map. I wish it would automatically connect the lines to each device – but it appears you have to do that manually. Connecting the dots could take considerable time initally, but who said a network management program didn’t take time to setup for the first time???
The other program is the Report Writer – which I liked very much. Think of this as the Crystal reports part of the program. Once you launch, there are several default reports that appear to be very useful. Topics such as Availabity over a period of time, Current Interface and Node Status, Current Volume Status, Events, Historical Response Time and Traffic Reports. There are also Inventory reports which is a nice little bonus – you can report on Disk Volumes, Interface and Device types, even the IOS versions of all your Cisco devices. All the reports mentioned thus far are the ‘canned’ reports. You have the ability to create new reports based on any of the data that is collected, which makes it very powerful.
General Thoughts
As you probably know from reading some of my other stuff, I am a big fan of Open Source products. However, at the same time I fully realize not everyone may have the time or expertise to dive into something that is unknown. Products like this have a very solid place in I.T. The product is reasonably priced, and comes in for a fraction of the price that an Enterprise NMS would cost. If you are trying to monitor your companies network using a famaliar Windows platform at a fair price – I would certainly look at this product before any others…
I will continue the Engineer’s tool review in a seperate post.