Geek Speak

Hiya Mister Geek,

I have some ideas about checklists.  Here are some examples:

1.  thinkingproblemmanagement.blogspot.com/.../ultimate-test-pilots.html

2.  thinkingproblemmanagement.blogspot.com/.../infrastructure-managers-checklist-for_27.html

3. thinkingproblemmanagement.blogspot.com/.../checklist-for-network-management.html

Ronald

PS: Even Tom Peters sees the beauty in checklists - thinkingproblemmanagement.blogspot.com/.../even-tom-peters-sees-beauty-in.html

Josh, once again another good thought!

As you can imagine there are some DoD customers that have very restricted access to their systems, ours being one of them. This puts a damper on things like Going-To-Meeting for a support tool as well as running carte-blanche diagnostics. We have to sanitize all files going to an outside vendor such as Solarwinds. What would be nice if Solarwinds could designate a tech or group of tech's to work issues that way we would have some continuity.

As for the tools Orion is a good start. However in addition to the superb monitoring of infrastructure devices it would be nice to be able to extend this to servers without the additional cost to by another add on. What I am referring to is the ability to monitor Windows services on servers and have an icon change to an alternate color if a service is down. We currently have this on our WUG system and this has been an extremely valuable tool.

Another key aspect here is the ability to monitor the downtime per interface. We need to manage down to the interface and show downtime to that level. Another would be root-cause analysis so if an interface goes down on an upstream switch then the downstream switch doesn’t report it as the failure but the upstream interface would have the downtime minutes with the root cause being the upstream switch. Make sense?

And lastly, please see what can be done with Thwack. It is painful to search for a subject only to have it retrieve all hits regardless of the version. There are posts that apply from previous versions but were addressed in a later release. Is this possible?

Solarwinds has done a good job with Orion and I look forward to working more with the tool. You have a lot of competition out there beating on the DoD’s door but I think that your product has a lot to offer. Keep up the good work!

Hey Josh,

As a network manager for a largely dispersed government network, I've got a few thoughts :-)

One thing that I've found in our sector is that you very often (in order to save money) have extremely centralized support. Some of the sites I manage have little or no on-site tech support. Luckily, Solarwinds now allows me to know that their systems are down, often before they realize it. Many remote sites have very few employees, sometimes as little as 5, and can barely justify more than a VPN connection, let alone a local server.

Distributed architectures furthermore create problems in configuration management of numerous routers, switches, servers, and workstations. Cirrus has helped this issue.

Another challenge in many areas is antiquated equipment... some offices are still relying on frac-T1s for primary Internet, Intranet, and remote support. Managers have to know what an acceptable ping time is for each office, depending on the line speed.

And finally, as mentioned above, security. Government networks are relying more and more on increased security, SSL encryption, and two-factor authentication. Solarwinds would be awesome if you could integrate AD Authentication (which I know they're working on), and authentication using RSA Tokens and smartcards - either of which could probably flow back to AD. SSL in a Solarwinds case might run a bit slow, but could be an option. I think the permissions structure is decently customizable and fairly robust.

In reference to some of the above post, the service monitoring is always a necessity especially with remote offices - but I believe the Orion Application Module does this fairly well. I've used WUG, and I'm not going back after Solarwinds. :-)

Ever since we've started using Solarwinds (the first in our agency), I've had numerous network managers contact me to get more information and see what it can do for them. At least in our agency, Solarwinds is looking to become to preferred network management tool.

I'm the architect for a city in Orange County, CA.  Our network covers 31 locations.

I find the two most helpful management tools to be:

documenting well with Visio

monitoring well with Orion

managing change with Cirrus

Josh,

Two cricital aspects based on my experience with a large DoD service provider and a large civilian agency provider:

1) Integration of toolsets and processes. Folks are tired of application siloes that require swivel chair integration. Customers want a product that their NOC/SOC can use that can monitor, detect, drill into the event, capture packets, and then open interface with a ticket management solution.

2) End-to-end monitoring. The WAN no longer stops at the border in the government world.

Hope this helps.