Forum Discussion
hoolio
Cirrostratus
CirrostratusNetwork Management System suggestions?
Hi,
Like a related post (Click here), this isn't exactly on topic for this forum, but... I'm wondering if anyone can give their thoughts on an NMS.
I'm trying to set up a new network management system for our small network to check the state of a few BIG-IP's, a dozen or two production servers, some switches and firewalls and a gaggle of test gear. In total there are probably 50 to 100 hosts I'd like to monitor. I don't need much beyond CPU, disk utilization (and some service monitoring for databases, etc on the servers).
I'm looking for something in the opensource to cheap range that doesn't take eons to set up and configure. If it's not on Windows, I become the sole administrator. So I'm leaning towards something that runs on Windows.
I installed Hyperic and it looked very promising until I came to setting up alerts. You have to set an alert per service per host all through the GUI. So that's out the window.
I've done some searching and found that the popular OSS ones are OpenNMS, Nagios, Zabbix and ZenOSS. None of these run on Windows. OpenNMS seems like overkill. Nagios sounds like it requires a lot of manual configuration.
So does anyone have feedback on these for *nix, or other non-free (but cheap) solutions that run on Windows?
Thanks,
Aaron
Ert_27713Nimbostratus
OpenNMS is an excellent application, big or small network. I just switched out or Nagios for OpenNMS this past summer. I was extremely happy with the results. With Naigos, I found myself updating the configuration all the time, with OpenNMS discovery, I've saved a ton of time.. I configured OpenNMS to receive traps from our F5's and alerts us when issues arise. The latest dev release of OpenNMS, 1.3.8 runs on Windows (but still belongs on *nix)
Gary_T_31565I've starting using Opmanager (win and *nix). Cheap for what you get (for me £ to $ also helped). Easy setup for NMS. You'll get windows servers showing nic, cpu,mem and disk stats in minutes. It will also collect errors from the event logs and traps with simple setup. Support for any wmi/snmp device plus out of box support on lots of other devices. Also create monitors using any type scripts.
For a bargin $400 the DC, SQL and Exchange add-ons gives a complete view of those services. Status and threshold alerting setup is easy which can be templated and bulk applied.
My only grip is I've started using from newly released v7 which comes with fundemental changes causing shocking bugs. Good news is they release updates quickly and are very active in the forum. Support is cheap and they constantly want to webex in to help me.
I am setting up a custom device monitor for the LTM this can be shared with the community when they start supporting config sharing. E.g. traps, virtual svr stats, temps.
If only F5 would give us an easier mib to deal with. CPU is a nightmare. v7 can not handle the calculations needed at the moment.
hoolioThanks for the suggestion. I'll take a look at it.
Aaron
Shawn_Badger_11I use a product called Zabbix to monitor all of my equipment. It has a native clients for Linux and windows as well as SNMP capabilities.- Rodrigo_EV_7869We are evaluating OPManager Enterprise Edition (Central +Remote Probes) and I'm loving it. Really easy to use.
It is a very good idea to create a Custom Device Monitor for LTM. Do you have some good hints?
Let's develop some other monitors for GTM/LC, WA and ASM...
-Rodrigo 
Josh_41258I'd highly reccomend ZenOSS. It provides agentless monitoring via SNMP and SSH, and the Enterprise version has a "ZenPack" for BigIP LTM devices. We use it to monitor Linux, AIX, Windows, Cisco, F5, etc.
Naman_65674Hi Hoolio,
We currently have Hyperic monitoring other systems in our organisation. I was wondering how you setup the F5 on hyperic? Did you use any plugins?
Thanks,
Naman- Naman_65674Hi Aaron,
We currently have Hyperic monitoring other services in your company so it would be good to monitor the F5 as well. I was wondering if you used any plugins when you setup your basic configuration?
Regards,
Naman 
M_56772Please Help Regarding OpenNMS
Dear Fellows,
Please do help us in our study. It is very important for us to have feedback from you (who is using OpenNMS). I bet I would not take you more than 5 minutes, all questions are multiple choice and on a single page. We will be highly thankful to all the participants.
Please click on following link to answer this survey.
http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=KBINNF_9b336176
Regards- hoolio
What are people's current thoughts for a simple but functional network management system for a small (semi-)production environment?
I'm in a surprisingly similar situation as last time, where I need to monitor 10-50 hosts including a number of BIG-IPs. I could run it on a VM, *nix or Windows.
Thanks for your thoughts, Aaron