Top Network Management Tools in 2014
1- Solarwinds Network Performance Manager 10.5
Solarwinds is a heavyweight in the network-monitoring world, and for good reason. For years, Solarwinds NPM has provided all-round monitoring capability. With the release of NPM 10.5, Solarwinds has dropped the “Orion” product branding (it’s now officially ‘Solarwinds Network Performance Manager’ or ‘NPM’) in addition to stepping up the scalability of their game. NPM 10.5 has several new features and many improvements.
NPM 10.5 can handle basic SNMP monitoring and alerting just like always. New features include VMware & Hyper-V monitoring; and ConnectNow, an automated network mapping tool. ConnectNow appears to be based on the old LanSurveyor tool, but now nicely integrates into NPM. Improved historical trend reporting is also a welcome change. And, a redesigned UI rounds out the list of improvements.
2- OpenNMS 1.10
OpenNMS is open-source network management software. It’s truly an awesome, incredibly flexible package – and did we mention it’s free? It can handle virtually any network management task: device management, application performance monitoring, inventory, trouble alerting – it does it all. Support is available online from the OpenNMS user community, or for a fee from the OpenNMS group – the commercial arm of OpenNMS.
New features in 1.10.9 include:
• IPv6 support throughout
• Web page and web application monitoring from recorded user scripts, via Selenium integration
• New default syslog receiver rules for a handful of commonly encountered applications
• XML performance data collection protocols
3- Ipswitch Whatsup Gold Premium 16
Another fierce competitor is Whatsup Gold. Whatsup Gold is a full-featured network management suite. It can monitor devices using SNMP – but adds the ability to monitor application availability using synthetic transactions.
Whatsup Gold also features WMI support for Windows monitoring, and agentless SSH monitoring for Linux/Unix systems – making it ideal for monitoring everything on your network.
A wide range of plugins are available for Whatsup Gold, adding support for everything from VMware and VOIP management to configuration and Flow reporting.
New features in version 16 include:
• Wireless infrastructure management for Cisco and Aruba networks
• Layer 2 discovery, network mapping and asset tracking tools
• New scaling tools for large networks
• Updated SQL query and WMI formatted monitors
• Expanded Windows services, Active Directory, Exchange support, Powershell/.NET support.
4- Dartware Intermapper 5.6
Intermapper is a great tool. It’s based around the idea that a network map is the most important thing to a network administrator. Intermapper uses a series of maps to display the status of your network. Like other products, it also does SNMP polling, as well as application monitoring using customized “probes.”
A major strength is the way the map includes not just devices, but active status of connections between devices. Traffic volume between devices is represented with a crawling-ant display, and trouble is easily identified by colored indicators. And, it also supports notifications and logging like other products.
New functionality in version 5.6 includes:
• Web server identification: InterMapper can now identify HTTP servers during auto-discovery, and automatically creates probe groups to monitor them
• ARP discovery: InterMapper now uses the ARP table to find additional devices during auto-discovery, broadening its view of the network
• Multiple UI enhancements
• Mobile device-optimized reports
• Additional tools to manage how data is exported to the database
• New fields in labels, notifiers and status windows.