Hey SolarWinds Fans!
Do you have a great story about how you found our products? Maybe want to share why you selected them to manage your network? Or have a network management nightmare where you saved the day with a SolarWinds solution? Got a creative way that you are using Toolset or Orion in your unique network environment?
Tell us your SolarWinds story and we’ll send you a free Thwack t-shirt! It is easy; all you have to do is post to this forum and then fill out a quick form so that we know where to send your SolarWinds swag.
To get your creative juices flowing, take a look at the stories below from your network engineering cohorts. We’re looking forward to hearing the lowdown on how you really use our products, so loosen up those fingers and get ready to share!
* Please note: the posts in this forum are governed by the general Terms of Service for Thwack. If you want to check out the legalese, click here to view the Terms of Service on the "Spread the Word" program page.
Oceaneering:
Oceaneering Communications Manager Mark Stevens had this to say about finding SolarWinds: “We tried CiscoWorks and it required too much management and configuration to be effective in our environment. I downloaded a trial of Orion and knew immediately it was what we had been looking for.”
And how does Oceaneering use Orion? Not only does the four-person IT group manage a global network of 58 offices, they are also responsible for the overall health of 10 LANs that reside on offshore vessels and are connected to the corporate network via satellite links. According to Stevens, the integration of NetFlow Traffic Analyzer with Orion is especially helpful in these situations.
The offshore vessels tend to experience bandwidth issues more frequently than terrestrial locations. This is primarily due to inclement weather. Prior to implementing SolarWinds solutions, Oceaneering’s network engineers would perform PING tests to learn the status of network interfaces on the vessels. The problem was that they could successfully PING an interface one minute and the next minute it would go down; the staff was potentially unaware of this situation until they performed another PING test at the end of the day. With SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, traffic is monitored in real time and an automated e-mail is sent to the network engineers every two minutes reporting the status of the interfaces. The Orion platform and its modules have not only helped the team become more proactive in monitoring the network, but have also enabled them to track performance trends.
Raleigh-Durham Airport:
The RDU Airport Authority uses a combination of solutions from SolarWinds as their network management system. RDU first selected SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset, a desktop application that performs deep root network analysis and diagnostics. RDU keeps it running on a dedicated machine at all times to track IP addresses that are accessing their virtual LANs. Previously, the IT staff was keeping track of these addresses manually in an Excel® spreadsheet — a time-consuming and error-prone process. Engineer’s Toolset also integrates directly with Orion® Network Performance Monitor — the second SolarWinds solution purchased by RDU.
Orion allows the team to create a custom view of only the areas of the network for which they are responsible and then create separate user accounts and views for those individuals responsible for the actual devices. This way, individual users can be alerted to issues with devices for which they have responsibility and separate reports can be created for these issues, while using the same solution across the entire organization.
To complete its end-to-end solution, RDU added SolarWinds Cirrus Configuration Manager to its network management system. Although the Airport Authority has only been using Cirrus for a short time, it has already paid off ten fold according to network administrators. Recently, the IT staff had to make a configuration change across 65 switches. Typically, this would have taken the staff several hours to complete. But with Cirrus, the team entered the configuration script into a central location and the application made the configuration change to all 65 switches almost immediately.
Smart City:
Smart City Networks monitors 50,000 network elements with Orion. Smart City implemented Orion in a multi-poller configuration with a single, common SQL database. This configuration allows Smart City to manage tens of thousands of devices and allows them to collect statistics at a granular level. Smart City uses the customizable Web views to give customers an easy way to ensure they are getting the services for which they are paying. Orion Web Views also provides Smart City customers health and performance statistics about the network.
Thanks for helping us spread the word about SolarWinds!
Saved my life. I had to complete an total over haul of my cisco switches. There are about 16 along with 7 routers and 5 pix. If I didn't have solar winds; I probably would still be moving config files. Thanks
We work for a company that monitor a lot of networks from several customers. And my work is to add, modify, edit the network nodes (routers, switches, servers, etc) among other thing, customers and my boss continiusly ask me for node inventories, and here is when Solarwinds gets into the game and gave me that information in a friendly-format... just in a second!!!!
Also, the Report Writer utility helps me to make complicated reports for several customer requirements, I never imagine how could I did them without Solarwinds, is simple and powerful at the same time.
Thank god there is something like SolarWinds is there for me……….; it was a last moment call for me to execute some Non function test on our Network.
I was pretty confused before to work with some tools in the market then I decided to download SolarWinds and used it for NFT just because it is easy, simple and user friendly structure. Then I realize life is so easy with SolarWinds, I completed my work in just couple of days and submitted all real-time report and we are done.