Network management systems range from free, open-source tools to the pricey enterprise solutions. They can be extremely powerful, complex and sophisticated. So it's important to choose the right tool for the job. By looking at some of the more obvious features and determining from there how they fit into the scope of your network management plans, you can create a short list of tools. Let us help you.

1. What to Look For in a Network
Management System
What to Look For in an NMS
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2. Topics
1. Features to look for in an NMS
2. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
3. Discovery & Mapping
4. Fault, Availability & Performance Monitoring
5. Customizable Web Interface
6. Alerting & Reporting
7. Scalability and Extensibility
8. Thwack On-Line User Community
9. Awards and Resources
10. What IT Pros are Saying about SolarWinds®
What to Look For in an NMS
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3. Features to Look For in an NMS
» Discovery & Mapping
 Automated discovery of existing and new devices
 Customizable layer 2 & layer 3 network maps
 Nested network maps to provide drill-down capabilities
» User Interface
 Simple-to-use dashboards & graphical interface.
 Customizable
 Role-based access control
 Web based interface
Choosing the Right NMS
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4. Features to Look For in an NMS
» Intelligent Alerting
 Device Dependencies – to set parent-child relationship between
groups and devices for easier monitoring
 Correlated Events – to understand the relation between network
alerts and correlate them for deeper root cause analysis
 Sustained Conditions – to trigger alerts only when an alert condition is
sustained for a specific time period
 Multiple Condition Checks – to get alerted only for critical issues
based on defined conditions & avoid alert redundancy
 Delivery methods such as email, paging, SNMP traps, Syslog
Messages, etc…
What to Look For in an NMS
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5. Features to Look For in an NMS
» Reporting
 Out-of-the-box to leverage readily available reports
 Customizable so you can easily build reports based on your
requirement.
 Exportable into useable formats.
» Multi-Vendor Support
 Out-of-the-box support for dozens of hardware vendors
What to Look For in an NMS
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6. Features to Look For in an NMS
» Extensibility
 Traffic Monitoring, IP Address Management, Config Management
 Applications & Servers, Virtualization
» Scalability
 Support for thousands of network devices
 Geographically distributed
What to Look For in an NMS
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7. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
(NPM)™
» SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
 Delivers comprehensive fault and network performance management
 Scales with rapid network growth
 Expands with your network monitoring needs
 Allows you to collect and view availability and real-time and historical
statistics directly from your web browser
» While monitoring, collecting, and analyzing data from
routers, switches, firewalls, servers, and any other SNMP-, ICMP-
, or WMI-enabled devices, SolarWinds NPM offers you a simple-to-
use, scalable network monitoring solution for IT professionals
monitoring networks of all sizes.
What to Look For in an NMS
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8. Discovery & Mapping
» Schedule network scans, automatically
discover new devices on your network
& begin monitoring them immediately
» Ensure that your network devices are
imported into the NPM monitoring
database, regardless of vendor
Automated Device Discovery
» Automatically discover and display
connections between devices
» Create custom nested network maps
remotely from your desktop quickly and
easily, with drag-&-drop simplicity
» View your network logically by
floor, building, department, or geographic
location and drill into more granular views Layer 2 & 3 Network Maps
What to Look For in an NMS
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9. Fault, Availability & Performance Monitoring
Performance Monitoring
Availability
Monitoring
Fault Monitoring
What to Look For in an
NMS
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10. Customizable Web Interface
» Simplify network troubleshooting
with a Web interface that is
LUCID™
(Logical, Useable, Customizable, Int
eractive, & Drill-down
» Manage by exception and focus on
highlighted issues that cross
predefined thresholds
» Customize and view data in
graphs, tables, maps, and top 10
lists
What to Look For in an NMS
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11. Intelligent Alerting & Customizable Reporting
» Quickly configure alerts for
correlated
events, sustained
conditions, and complex
combinations of device
states.
» Topology and dependency-
based alert suppression
enables you to intelligently
escalate alerts for issues
that are truly critical. Customizable Performance and Availability Reports
» Generate network performance reports using
out-of-the-box templates that can be
customized with a few mouse clicks;
automating report creation and distribution.
» Shipping with numerous built-in reports, NPM
makes it easy to report on performance data
over specific time periods or by network
segment.
Intelligent Network Alerting
What to Look For in an NMS
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12. Scale Up & Monitor Your Multi-Vendor Devices
» Monitors tens of thousands of network devices anywhere on your
network.
» Monitors performance statistics from any SNMP enabled devices
regardless of any vendor.
» Seamlessly integrates with other network management modules
from SolarWinds for network traffic, configuration, VoIP & WAN
performance, IP address management, application monitoring &
more.
What to Look For in an NMS
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13. Built by Network Engineers for Network Engineers
» SolarWinds thwack® community is where tens of thousands of IT pros get together, share
and contribute ideas and best practices on IT management.
» You can post your questions and issues on any IT management area and leverage the
knowledge of the global IT community for suggestions and solutions.
» Hear from industry-leading experts, follow blogs from MVPs, vExperts & IT admin geeks.
» SolarWinds NPM
has a thwack
integration that
allows you to
leverage the
community
value from
within the NPM
web console.
What to Look For in an NMS
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14. NPM – Awards & Recognition
Awards
Customer Testimonials
What to Look For in an NMS
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15. Helpful Resources
We invite you to learn more about SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
SolarWinds NPM Overview
Explore the FEATURES
of SolarWinds NPM
• Network Fault, Availability & Performance
Monitoring
• Network Device Discovery, Mapping
• Alerting, Reporting & Intuitive Dashboards
--- Click any of the links above ---
What to Look For in an NMS
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16. What IT Pros are Saying about SolarWinds®
» I've been using various network management system platforms for about
twelve years now and SolarWinds® is far ahead of most in my opinion. The best
part is it keeps getting better!
» Very impressive tool: I have seen (eval and administered) quite a few monitoring
tools (HP® NNM®, Unicenter®, WhatsUp®, SunNet Manager, Fluke®
NetWatch, Netcool®, Ciscoworks) and SolarWinds beats them all.
» What a great product. The best part about it, is I can tell the users...."it's not the
network" ...and with proof..."poof" I show them their interfaces or servers to
show them what is going on. They can not argue when I show them the graphs.
» After evaluating SolarWinds, it only took about two hours to make a unanimous
decision!
» Good software, excellent customer service!
What to Look For in an NMS
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17. Thank You!
What to Look For in an NMS
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