chris.schear replied on Tue, Apr 28 2009 9:21 AM

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I have a Blackberry Bold and have no problems accessing Orion NPM from it.

chris.schear replied on Tue, Apr 28 2009 9:29 AM

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I didn't want to sacrifice Windows Pass Through from the desktop so I setup a new webserver on port 81 of the same box and pointed it at the same directory.  I just changed the Directory Security.  Works fine.  This solution should work on all Blackberry models.

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Curious.  When I created an additional web site running over 81, I get the following error:

"%1 is not a valid Win32 application."

I've gone tab by tab on the original (running) IIS NPM site and everything is the same.

chris.schear replied on Mon, May 4 2009 11:50 AM

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I opened up a support case on my "%1 is not a valid Win32 application" error when trying to setup a second IIS web instance on a different port, this was the response:

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Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Our software supports one copy of the Web Console per Primary Poller or per Additional Web Server. It sounds like you'll need to contact your Sales Representative to get set up with a copy of the Additional Web Server.
 
Is there anything else I can do for you?

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I have followed with:

I would disagree with your suggestion.  Instead of contacting a Sales Representative to license another web instance just so Blackberries can view Orion easier, I would recommend forwarding a request onto engineering/product development to implement a feature that supports alternate authentication mechanisms and/or a mobile “m.<yourorionURL>.com” front-end for Blackberries, Smartphones, etc.

Before we go the developer route, is SolarWinds’ official stance that a listening port on a server constitutes “more than one Web Console”?  There is only one web console installed on the server.  The fact there are two different IIS-derived ports doesn’t duplicate the web console, it just allows for more than one TCP port you can access it over.  It’s the SAME web console in both cases.  If I change the default IIS instance from port 80 to 8080, I haven’t changed the Web Console.  Also, in supporting SSL connectivity, having a single Web Console listening over TCP/80 and TCP/443 should technically be a “Second instance”, which you don’t require a sales representative to be involved with.

How is an Orion front-end listening on 80/443 any different than one listening on 80/81?  It’s two listening ports on a single Web Console.

bcole replied on Wed, Jul 1 2009 2:36 PM

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I just set this up on version 9.5sp2 and it appears to work ok on Curve.  My World Edition phone doesn't work (time out).

I can understand Solarwinds reluctance to add functionality to phones, but it is becoming a necessity.

denny.lecompte replied on Wed, Jul 1 2009 8:27 PM

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What if we were to expose certain information as an RSS feed? Such as alerts and top 10s.  Then you could get the info on any phone with an RSS reader (which is most of them). 

Thoughts?

r0berth1 replied on Thu, Jul 2 2009 9:19 AM

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Yes, i have some thoughts on the subject. I think that SW needs to focus on fixing the problems with 9.5 SP2 first, and once all of the issures are fixed, then they can focus on adding new features. example:

Maps - Network Atlas (in my opinion) is far better utility than map maker. but there are still issues with the maps, if you set the map preferences to anything above 50% before the map status shows down, the all of the maps get grayed out and show unknown. This is not major, but it is a pain in the butt.

Reports - there is still an issue with Report Writer when creating reports. the issue is random, but when creating new reports, the report writer will crash (I have taken screen shots and sent them in with the diagnostic info) but have heard nothing back about it except to try installing the latest service pack and/or reinstalling Orion.

Stored Procedures - the web pages along with most of the reports would probably run faster if they called a stored procedure on the db server instead of trying to run the script from the webpage. This is just a thought.

kahmeelyon replied on Thu, Jul 2 2009 9:35 AM

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denny.lecompte:

What if we were to expose certain information as an RSS feed? Such as alerts and top 10s.  Then you could get the info on any phone with an RSS reader (which is most of them). 

This isn't a bad idea but I'm not sure it gives me much beyond what I get with the email alerts.  I have realized that the problem in my case is the browser on the Pearl.  But I think SW could put some time into coming up with views which are mobile optimized.  This doesn't even involve any coding.

msheltontx replied on Thu, Jul 2 2009 10:27 AM

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I certainly agree that stabilizing the code takes precedent.  However I do think adding a mobile view and not just a RSS feed would be a significant step forward - mainly to make the escalation feature useful.  Obviously we don't want to wake up at 6am to discover a major outage occurred at midnight and hasn't been addressed. 

Most small to midsize shops don't have a 24 hour monitoring NOC and many use an on call pager or Blackberry to respond to alerts after hours.  Some alerts come through in the evening hours that may or may not require immediate action.  I want the ability to have our on call admins to use the "acknowledge alerts" feature.  If the alert does not require immediate action they simply could acknowledge it with their Blackberry.  If the on call admin sleeps through a page or doesn't hear it in a noisy restaurant and the alert is not acknowledged, then the escalation feature could page a manager and the end users will likely have working systems when the workday begins.  If alerts are never acknowledged, then the escalation feature is useless.  If the on call admin responds to every alert by logging into their home computer in the middle of the night, then that admin is probably useless the next day.

We do try to tweak the alerts to avoid "chatter", particularly in the middle of the night.  Perhaps others have their Orion alerts so fine tuned that this isn't an issue for them.  I do know that while I can eventually navigate to a readable alerts page from my Blackberry bold, a mobile view would make it much easier to respond. 

denny.lecompte replied on Thu, Jul 2 2009 10:43 AM

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r0berth1:

Yes, i have some thoughts on the subject. I think that SW needs to focus on fixing the problems with 9.5 SP2 first, and once all of the issures are fixed, then they can focus on adding new features. example:

Fixing bugs with the last release is obviously the top priority.  We are working on that now.  In this thread, I'm trying to explore the problem people want to solve when they ask for mobile views.  Your other issues are valid and interesting, but I don't want to take this thread off the current track.

denny.lecompte replied on Thu, Jul 2 2009 10:49 AM

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kahmeelyon:

This isn't a bad idea but I'm not sure it gives me much beyond what I get with the email alerts

For the alert feed, it would allow you to look at the entire list of current alerts from any RSS reader.  For the Top 10 lists, you could see the same info as a Top 10 view, even if no alert has been generated.

kahmeelyon:

But I think SW could put some time into coming up with views which are mobile optimized.  This doesn't even involve any coding.

<smile> Perhaps your definition of coding is very narrow, but creating mobile views does involve coding and testing.  It's not hard, but it's not free, and it has done be done instead of something else.

So which views would you want to see on the mobile device.  What're the most important ones?

msheltontx replied on Thu, Jul 2 2009 11:02 AM

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Yes, the mobile alert view (with acknowledge) would be the main thing we would look for.  

I'd love the email with an acknowledge signal as that would allow an even faster acknowledgement plus leave a clear audit trail.  

ckj replied on Sun, Jul 12 2009 12:50 PM

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I'd love to see an email reply to ack alerts.  While the mobile alerts would be valuable to us email response would cover many of our needs

MagnAxiom replied on Fri, Jul 17 2009 9:22 AM

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The ability to acknowledge alerts in any way via a phone (Specially BlackBerry) would totaly transform the way we do alerting, and for the good! I would say that it would increase the value of the SolarWinds Orion alerting two fold at least.

cdeeds replied on Tue, Jan 19 2010 5:45 PM

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^^...I concur.  Any updates on this?