December 7th, 2007 by James Cerwinski
Categories: Network Monitoring
Monitoring Networked Printers with Raritan CommandCenter NOC
CC-NOC provides real-time information about network enabled printers by leveraging the best attributes of synthetic transactions and SNMP. A highly configurable notification capability enables administrators to be informed via email, pager or mobile phone about printer status changes and problems.
Information about any SNMP enabled node is retrieved with standard MIB (Management Information Base) data and product specific MIBs. Standard MIB information retrieved By CC-NOC includes MIB II (RFC 1213) and host resources MIB (RFC 1514) which provides network performance statistics and host computer information respectively. In addition to these standard MIBs, the CC-NOC also retrieves device specific MIBs which allow for detailed alerts to be sent to network administrators. The user has the ability to compile new or updated MIBs directly into CC-NOC.
The CC-NOC retrieves MIB (RFC 1759) data providing important printer details. This MIB allows alerts, specifying severity level, description, and other pertinent information to be sent to the administrator for both critical and non-critical conditions. Critical alerts are triggered by events in which printing has stopped such as: out of paper, toner empty, and output bin full conditions. Non-critical alerts are triggered by events that may lead to printer being stopped such as: input media low, toner low, and output bin nearly full. Priorities such as normal, warning status, operator call and service call are given to each group of alerts. These capabilities enable a network administrator to achieve the highest level of availability.
November 29th, 2007 by James Cerwinski
Categories: Network Monitoring
Network Monitoring Reports
A list of my Top Five Network Monitoring Reports - No IT organization should do without.
Network Report Card - Provides an overview of how your network performed in terms of availability, security grade and network traffic over a certain period of time. This report should be automatically generated and distributed on a scheduled basis.
Inventory Report - Should automatically discover, update and list the hardware and software in your network. The hardware includes - CPU, RAM, Hard Disk, etc. The software includes application name and version. This should include a complete listing as well as the ability to run a delta view to show the changes between two specific dates.
Performance Report - Provides the current status and trend lines for hard disk space, memory utilization and interface traffic.
Network Traffic Report - Network traffic should include top talkers, top sessions, most resolved DNS names, top web sites visited and traffic by application protocol.
Software Application Report - Should enable you to find the nodes that either have or don’t have a combination of software applications.
Let me know your thoughts…. add to the list
November 16th, 2007 by James Cerwinski
Categories: Network Monitoring
Cisco Network Monitoring
Network monitoring toolset that monitors the performance and availability of your heterogeneous network - keeping close watch on your Cisco Network Elements, Windows® Systems, Linux®/UNIX® Servers, and other network devices such as firewalls and network printers. If an outage is detected, or a threshold is crossed, the appropriate staff members can be alerted with e-mail or pager-based notifications. Problems can then be corrected before an outage occurs, increasing up-time and enhancing your company’s productivity. Escalation groups can also be configured, ensuring that problems receive prompt attention.
Provides Enhanced Support for Cisco Network Devices
- Automatic network node and service discovery
- Availability polling via synthetic transactions
- Performance data collection, thresholding, and reporting
- CPU Utilization
- Interface traffic
- Memory Utilization
- Failures
- Automatic daily inventory discover and reporting via SNMP Host Resource MIB and MIB II
- Ability to receive SNMP traps and syslog events.
- Ability to import new MIBs
- Consolidates and reports Cisco NetFlow traffic data
- Data from main and remote sites
- Traffic logging, analysis and reporting
- Most frequently requested web sites and domain names
- Top IP node talkers
- Top IP node to node sessions
- TCP/IP flows
- Automatically creates Network Topology Map
- Consolidate event logs for easy search and reporting
- Notification via email or mobile device for important events.
Free version now available for download to monitor five Cisco nodes and five Windows servers
November 13th, 2007 by J
Categories: Development & Testing
Well, at least NC State beat Carolina
The NCSU’s Lone Wolf was eliminated from the DARPA Grand Challenge they were in the top 20, but did not make it to the finals. According to a phone interview with the News And Observer, the Insight Racing team was not given a reason for being eliminated, but they do have their logs and other data to build upon. The Insight Racing Blog mentioned that they were proud of the record that they had, and of the support they had recieved from their sponsors and the community. This run was not without some great achievements.
They broke the autonomous speed record at VIR (Virginia International Raceway).
The team provided opportunities for over 40 students to gain experience in a high profile and hands-on set of experiences.
The frustrating part is not knowing why they were eliminated. These guys have their logs to look back at, and they’ve been able to see what the lone wolf did while they were not controlling it, but they were given no real reason for the elimination.
We love to hear from customers, either in comments or in the forums. It helps us build a better NOC. At least we get to know what we are doing well and what needs work. This is yet another way that the Insight team had it harder than us. We are proud of you guys, and we have to ask, “What’s next?”.
J
October 31st, 2007 by J
Categories: Development & Testing, Network Monitoring
Go Pack!
A few of us here in the development team are graduates of NC State University. We are excited to hear that the “Lone Wolf” is continuing to qualify for the Urban Challenge Final Event at the DARPA Grand Challenge. Be sure to follow them at the Insight Racing Blog. The finalists will be announced Thursday. Eliminated yesterday were some great competitors:
Georgia Tech/SAIC Sting Racing, Atlanta, GA
Ody-Era, Kokomo, IN
Princeton, Princeton, NJ
SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering, Thousand Oaks, CA
Team Berlin, Houston, TX
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
In a lot of ways we face some similar challenges. We send our NOCs out into a variety of environments, from pristine “by the book” networks to test labs where devices are expected to malfunction. We must ensure that the NOC operates properly in all situations. This is similar to the Lone Wolf’s release into the DARPA Courses, where the Lone Wolf must drive the route without any advance knowledge of the traffic situation layout or route.
I’m not going to brag and say that the NOC is equivalent to these vehicles. The NOC has a much easier job. The Lone Wolf drives because its sensors tell it where the road is, what the traffic signals say, where pedestrians are, where other vehicles are, etc. The sensors provide data regarding distance, speed, etc. to allow the driving algorithms to operate.
The NOC is more like the sensors of the Lone Wolf. By providing information about outages, service performance, traffic, etc. to the you, it apprises you of the road ahead. You can then make the decision to buy new equipment, move a virtual machine, etc. based on this data.
Go Lone Wolf! Go Pack! Congratulations on making it to the Urban Challenge Semifinals.
J
October 31st, 2007 by James Cerwinski
Categories: Asset Management, IT Admin, Network Monitoring
Improving Incident Management in an SMB
According to ITIL, An IT incident is an event which is not part of standard IT operations which causes or may cause, an interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of service. Your objective is to restore an incident to full service as soon as possible.
Your problem in meeting this objective can be broken down into the following three areas.
- Detection time - Don’t know about an incident until a user complains
- Diagnosis time - Lack of current information about your network
- Remediation time - Can’t remotely access a node to restore it to service
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Your solution should include:
Ability to improve detection time by:
- Polling for incidents via synthetic transactions
- Event consolidation and monitoring
- Monitoring performance thresholds
- Monitoring performance trends
Ability to improve diagnosis time by:
- Providing a notification that will inform you of an incident before your user does
- A page that automatically collects and consolidates what has been happing to a certain node or service in terms of events and performance.
- A page that also consolidates current configuration and recent changes to a node in terms of software and hardware.
Ability to improve remediation time
- Anytime, anywhere out of band access via KVM/IP
- “Virtual Media” capability to remotely mount drives to install software and run diagnostic tests
This is a good first step. There is always more you can do but I will save that for a future blog entry.
October 25th, 2007 by Dennis Ti
Categories: Network Monitoring
Where is your traffic headed?
I remember the first time I saw the CC-NOC in action. A test unit had come up to our corporate HQ to give us a chance to play around with it. The next thing I knew, we were all crowded around a desk, looking at a breakdown of what kind of traffic our network was generating. We knew which one of our machines was generating the most traffic…and that streaming music sites were very popular on our network (we counted 3 that day on our Network Report card).
Well, that wasn’t really a shocker. But it was exciting to see traffic analysis handled like that, and to me it’s still the first image my mind comes up with when I think about CC-NOC’s impressive network monitoring capabilities. I’m sure some of you out there have had similar experiences, so I put this question to you: Where is your traffic headed? What are people on your network visiting? Is there anything interesting you didn’t think you’d see?
October 19th, 2007 by James Cerwinski
Categories: IT Admin, Virtualization
SMB Virtualization
The basic value proposition of virtualization is the same for an SMB as it is for a larger enterprise. An SMB is just as likely to deploy virtualization to consolidate servers, improve server utilization, improve disaster recovery, consolidate legacy applications and reduce server provisioning time. The SMB experiences the same type of benefits such as reduced cost of hardware, energy, space requirements and provisioning.
VMware has just released 3 new bundles specifically targeted to the SMB market. According to industry analyst firm the Yankee Group, virtualization deployments among SMBs is expected to double during the next two years. VMware is positioned to capture this growth with their free product VMware Server and now offering three competitively priced bundles.
October 17th, 2007 by James Cerwinski
Categories: Network Monitoring
Network Monitoring
The following web site by Stanford Linear Accelerator Center provides a comprehensive list of network monitoring tools. I suggest network administrators start their product searches on this site to find out the available network monitoring solutions.
October 17th, 2007 by James Cerwinski
Categories: IT Admin, Virtualization
Virtualization 2.0
Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies for 2008 has been published by networkworld.com. These are the technologies that are potentially game changers for companies so it is advised that all IT people examine them. In today’s environment, you don’t want to be behind the innovation curve.
Number one is Green IT. Cost and environmental concerns are driving the public, companies and the government to raise the awareness and urgency for action in this area. The early result has been new designs for chips, software programs to measure and manage power usage, and new technologies such as virtualization. Almost every virtualization story that I have heard or read included a claim to have reduced power usage. It would be great if our innovation in this area resulted in a better environment and much lower oil prices.
Number 5 is Virtualization 2.0. This is a catch all term for the value offered by this technology beyond server consolidation. Think about the simplification of installation and movement. A good example is a university that has a need to build and tear down a laboratory computing environment every semester.
I suggest you read the full article.
