Network Management Overview

Our network management requirements haven't changed much although the networks we manage constantly evolve. Compared to yesterday we have many new types of devices attaching themselves to the corporate network, wireless access points, VoIP Phones. tablets, smartphones; the list goes on and on. We need Network Management tools for the same reason as a decade ago, which is to provide network visibility, network connection status, alerts and pinpoint abnormal traffic patterns in a timely, easy to use way so we can take preventative action and avoid downtime.

Over the last 5 years we have been gradually introduced to new layers of managing networks, new technologies to interrogate and pull information from, such as using IP SLA to manage Voice and Video, accessing Netflow data to pintpoint bandwidth usage rather than deploying remote capture devices. Our IP address usage has probably grown and become more complex as we introduce new layers and new platforms to the workplace so we need to adopt some sensible practices for IP address management, of course Configuration Management is not new to us however one of the key differences we find now are that we are asked to adhere to compliance process's and report on the effectiveness of the policies that are in place.

The SolarWinds Orion product family provides a unified approach for all these different aspects of Network Management with an easy to use flexible web based console, SolarWinds develop simple to use solutions that provide instant return on investment and minimal effort to deploy.

SolarWinds Orion Core Features:

• Detailed monitoring and analysis of routers, switches, servers and other SNMP devices.
• Discover Network devices and show performance statistics in real time
• Out of the box dashboards, alerts, reports, best practice thresholds
• Detailed visibility and management of IP Address schemas
• Trace devices, find available ports, historical device reporting