Check out thwack Ambassador, Derek Schauland's newest post on Storage Arrays.
Also, don't forget to update your email address in your profile!

Search 140,365 posts and 1,367 resources contributed by 129,111 members or post a topic.

Already Joined? Sign in

Free Downloads from SolarWinds

popular free trials this week
Orion Network Performance Monitor
(182)

Affordable, easy-to-use fault and network performance management.

Storage Profiler
(22)

View the health of your entire storage network through a single pane of glass!

free tools
Product
Screen Shot
File Size
Rating
Action
Free Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor - Free Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor watches your interfaces like a hawk!
6.1 MB
Free Web Transaction Watcher - Record any web transaction with the touch of a button.
5 MB
VM-to-Cloud Calculator - Discover your virtual machines and estimate the cost to move them to the cloud
2.5 MB
Real-Time AppFlow Analyzer - Analyze Network Traffic & Diagnose Issues - Capture and analyze up to one hour of AppFlow data to see what types of traffic are on your network, where it’s coming from, and where it’s going.
13 MB
Free SNMP Enabler for Windows - Save time by remotely installing, enabling, and configuring SNMP on multiple Windows servers and workstations.
1 MB
Permissions Analyzer for Active Directory - Get Instantaneous Visibility Into Effective Permissions!
0.9 MB
VM Console - Bounce VMs & Track Their Status from Your Desktop!
2.41 MB
SAN Monitor - Quickly & Easily Monitor Your Storage Array!
40.3 MB
Network Device Monitor - Monitor Any Statistic on Any Network Device!
61.6 MB
Network Config Generator - Quickly configure devices without opening the CLI!
17.1 MB
WMI Monitor - Monitor Windows® Apps & Servers With a Slick Desktop Dashboard
59.9 MB
IP Address Tracker - Scan, Track, & Consolidate Your IP Address Information
23.6 MB
IP SLA Monitor - Harness Cisco® IP SLA to Analyze Performance Between Sites
8.62 MB
Free Real-time NetFlow Analyzer - Analyze Network Traffic & Diagnose Issues
20.6 MB
Free Exchange Monitor - Monitor Your Exchange Server's Health in Real Time
8.41 MB
Free VM Monitor - Get X-Ray Insight into the Performance of ESX Servers
8.45 MB
Free TFTP Server - Transfer Executable Images & Configs with Ease
7.53 MB
Free Kiwi Syslog Server - Receive, Log, Display, & Forward Syslog Messages
16.9 MB
Free CatTools - Easy-to-Use Network Config Management for Your Desktop
13 MB
Free Subnet Calculator - Get Four Free Tools in One Download
12.8 MB
Free Wake-on LAN - Power Up Your Remote PC with a Magic Packet
6.58 MB
Free NetFlow Configurator - Get Started with NetFlow Analysis in Minutes
7.55 MB
enterprise-class application management
Product
Screen Shot
File Size
Rating
Action
Orion Application Performance Monitor - In-Depth Monitoring for Apps & Servers
302 MB
enterprise-class network management
Product
Screen Shot
File Size
Rating
Action
Orion Network Performance Monitor - Fault & Performance Management
338 MB
Orion NetFlow Traffic Analyzer - Flow-Based Traffic Analysis
13 MB
Orion IP Address Manager - Easy-to-Use IP Address Space Management
3.94 MB
Synthetic End User Monitor - Web Application Monitoring Made Easy!
312 MB
User Device Tracker - User Device Tracker – Powerful, Affordable Switch Management
377 MB
Orion IP SLA Manager - Monitor WAN Performance from Multiple Perspectives
3.78 MB
Orion Network Configuration Manager - Scan, Track, & Consolidate Your IP Address Information
214 MB
Orion Enterprise Operations Console - Manage Your Distributed Network
73 MB
Enterprise-Class Virtualization Management
Product
Screen Shot
File Size
Rating
Action
Virtualization Manager (formerly Hyper9) - Virtualization Manager – Comprehensive Virtualization Management
796 MB
enterprise-class storage management
Product
Screen Shot
File Size
Rating
Action
Storage Manager, Powered by Profiler - Storage Manager, Powered by Profiler - Multi-Vendor Storage Management
198 MB
Backup Profiler - Consolidated, Multi-vendor Backup Management
198 MB
bundled IT management solutions
Product
Screen Shot
File Size
Rating
Action
Orion Power Pack - 3 Powerful Products to Supercharge Your Network
473 MB
Orion Performance Pack - 3 Products for a Complete View of Network Performance
473 MB
IT Pro Pack - 2 Must-Have Tools for Network Troubleshooting
186 MB
entry-level monitoring
Product
Screen Shot
File Size
Rating
Action
ipMonitor - Basic Up/Down Monitoring for Network Devices, Servers, & Apps
15.9 MB
tools for engineers
Product
Screen Shot
File Size
Rating
Action
Engineer's Toolset - Must-Have Tools to Manage & Troubleshoot Your Network
361 MB
LANsurveyor - Automatically Discover & Map Your Network in Minutes
29.7 MB
Kiwi Syslog Server - A Powerful, Flexible Syslog Server That's Easy to Use
29.6 MB
CatTools - Backup & Manage Configurations from Your Desktop
13 MB
other cool free tools
DNSstuff – helps you configure, monitor and fix problems with your domain and email. Their tools and alertsprovide insight into your domain from the outside looking in. They pinpoint what’s wrong and offer mitigationsteps to fix it. Run a free health check on your domain and mail server today!
Splunk – IT search software that indexes, manages and enables you to search logs and IT data from anyapplication, server or network device in real time. If a machine generates it, Splunk can eat it.
Wireshark Ethereal – a popular network protocol analyzer with a rich and powerful feature set that runs onmost platforms including Windows, OS X, and Linux. It is freely available as open source.
freeRadius – an open source RADIUS server that includes support for SQL, LDAP, RADIUS Proxying, failover, load balancing, and vendor dictionary files. It can perform authentications via the PAP, CHAP, MS-CHAP, EAP-MD5, EAP-GTC, EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS, PEAPv0, LEAP, EAP-SIM, and Digest authentication protocols.
Snort – an open source network intrusion prevention and detection system utilizing a rule-driven language, which combines the benefits of signature, protocol and anomaly based inspection methods.
netsnmp – a suite of applications for implementing SNMP v1, v2c, and v3 agents using both IPv4 and IPv6. Net-SNMP is available for many Unix and Linux operating systems as well as for Microsoft Windows.
BIND – Berkeley Internet Name Domain is an open source implementation of the Domain Name System (DNS) protocols and provides an openly redistributable reference implementation of the major components of the Domain Name System.
PuTTY – a terminal application for connecting to remote machines using SSH, Telnet and Rlogin networkprotocols.

If you use cool, free tools that you think your industry peers might find helpful, please e-mail content@thwack.com.

The Orion Power Pack combines three of our most popular products into one supercharged bundle that delivers powerful network management for any size enterprise. Plus, the Power Pack can be installed and deployed in less than an hour to provide immediate insight into your complex network.

Get three great products in one download:

  • Orion Network Performance Monitordelivers comprehensive fault and performance management across multi-vendor networks of any size, enabling you to quickly detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance problems and outages.

  • Orion Application Performance Monitorextends Orion NPM’s powerful monitoring capabilities to applications and servers, ensuring that your mission-critical apps are always running at peak performance.

  • Orion NetFlow Traffic Analyzerprovides deep visibility into network traffic behavior and trends by leveraging NetFlow, J-Flow and sFlow data to identify which users & applications are consuming the most bandwidth.
The Orion Performance Packdelivers an integrated view of network device health, network traffic, and edge-to-edge WAN performance in a single network performance dashboard with an easy-to-use, drill-down interface.

Get three popular products in one download:

  • Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) – Monitor Device Performance
    Orion NPM monitors key performance statistics on your routers and switches, such as CPU and memory utilization, packet loss, and even average response times. With Orion NPM, you can quickly diagnose and resolve performance issues with your multi-vendor network gear.

  • Orion NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) – Monitor Traffic Performance
    Orion NTA delivers a complete picture of network traffic by analyzing NetFlow, J-Flow, and sFlow® data and identifying which users, applications, and protocols are consuming the most network bandwidth.

  • Orion IP SLA Manager – Monitor Site-to-Site Performance
    Leveraging IP SLA technology that’s already built into your Cisco® network gear, Orion IP SLA Manager provides edge-to-edge visibility into WAN performance and enables you to quickly determine if site-specific or WAN-related performance issues are impacting remote users.
The IT Pro Pack arms you with two must-have networking tools that every IT professional needs. Get the perfect pairing of desktop diagnostic and diagramming tools to troubleshoot and map your network in literally minutes.

Get two of our favorite desktop tools in one easy-to-download bundle:

  • Engineer's Toolsetis trusted by network engineers worldwide to troubleshoot network issues and to monitor network statistics in real time. You’ll get a comprehensive collection of tools, including Switch Port Mapper, Network Performance Monitor, IP Address Manager, Bandwidth Gauges, Cisco® Config Tools, and more!

  • LANsurveyorautomatically discovers and diagrams network topology, producing detailed network maps in literally minutes that can be easily exported to Microsoft® Visio®.
Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) delivers award-winning fault and performance management that is built to affordably manage networks of all sizes with expandable modules and scalability engines.
Orion Application Performance Monitor installs in minutes to deliver enterprise-class, agentless, performance monitoring for your critical applications and servers.
Orion NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) analyzes NetFlow, J-Flow, and sFlow® data and performs CBQoS monitoring to deliver a complete picture of network traffic, identifying who and what are consuming your bandwidth.
Find web app issues before your users do using our web application monitor. With just a push of a button, an easy-to-use recorder captures the steps in any web transaction and saves them off into a test that you can schedule to run as frequently as every 5 minutes.
Orion IP Address Manager (IPAM) delivers enterprise-class IP address management at a price you can afford. Toss your spreadsheet in the recycling bin, and download Orion IPAM to manage your IP space with a solution that is easy-to-use, scalable, affordable, and powerful!
Orion IP SLA Manager delivers a powerful solution for identifying site-specific or WAN-related network performance issues from the perspective of each of your remote sites. With this new Orion module, you can quickly discover which devices on your network support IP SLA, automatically setup operations, and monitor key WAN applications.
Orion Network Configuration Manager delivers easy-to-use, enterprise-class network configuration and change management that can be used standalone or integrated seamlessly with Orion NPM.
Orion Enterprise Operations Console delivers a consolidated command center for unified visibility into remote Orion deployments, providing at-a-glance insight into your geographically distributed networks.
SolarWinds User Device Tracker (UDT) makes it easy to instantly find a computer and retrieve the switch name, port, port description, VLAN, and more. Simply search on an IP address, Hostname, or MAC address and SolarWinds User Device Tracker will quickly find the current or last known location of your lost device.
SolarWinds Storage Manager helps you keep a sharp eye on the performance and capacity of your end-to-end physical and virtual storage infrastructure—from VM to spindle!
Virtual & Server Profiler helps you regain visibility and control over your end-to-end IT infrastructure. Virtual & Server Profiler provides a consolidated view into physical server performance and VMware cluster, host and virtual machine performance—all through a single pane of glass!
Backup Profiler gives you complete visibility and control over your multi-vendor data protection environment. Keep a vigilant eye on the status of all of your backup operations and track performance without ever creating complex spreadsheets and scripts!
ipMonitor delivers up/down monitoring for all of your network devices, servers, and apps at a price that any IT team can afford. ipMonitor installs in minutes and is easy for administrators of any level to use.
SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset puts a powerful array of must-have network management tools at your fingertips to help you easily and effectively manage and troubleshoot your network – in one complete and affordable package.
LANsurveyor automatically discovers your network and produces comprehensive, easy-to-view network maps that can be exported into Microsoft Office® Visio®. Get up-to-date network maps in minutes!
Easy to set up and configure, Kiwi Syslog Server receives, logs, displays, and forwards syslog messages from network devices. See why it's one of the most trusted solutions of its kind!
Manage and backup network configurations right from your desktop with CatTools. Schedule batch jobs, implement bulk config changes, receive immediate change notifications, generate reports, and more!
Our free VM Console enables you to bounce your virtual machines without ever logging into VMware®! Plus, you can track up/down status, take snapshots, and restart VMs even if you’re not a VMware administrator. And the handy desktop dashboard ensures your new VM superpowers are always within reach!
Our new free SAN Monitor delivers the visibility you need to stay a step ahead of potential performance problems lurking in your storage array. With this cool desktop dashboard as your storage sidekick, you’ll be sure to have the speediest SAN this side of Gotham!
Our free Permissions Analyzer for Active Directory™ makes it easy to get a complete hierarchical view of the effective permissions & access rights for a specific file folder or share drive—all from a totally cool desktop dashboard!
Our free Network Device Monitor shields the performance and availability of any network device from the forces of evil lurking on your network. Use out-of-the-box, community-generated, or custom network device monitoring templates to track virtually any statistic on any SNMP-enabled device!
Our new free Network Config Generator helps you change interface descriptions and configure VLANs, switch port security, NetFlow, IP SLA, CBQoS, QoS, EnergyWise, and other advanced network device features, all without ever opening the CLI!
Our free WMI Monitor monitors any Windows® server or application, giving you amazing insight into real-time performance with a slick desktop dashboard. Plus, you can start monitoring immediately using pre-built application templates or choosing from those created by the SolarWinds community of more than 20,000 network engineers!
Our FREE VM-to-Cloud Calculator quickly discovers all of your virtual machines and estimates what it would cost to move them to the cloud.
Our new IP Address Tracker frees you from the evils of spreadsheets, delivering powerful and simple-to-use features that give you a unified view of your IP address space and that enable you to manage it – all for free!
This free desktop tool enables you to quickly troubleshoot network slowdowns between sites and easily understand device-to-device performance using sophisticated Cisco® IP SLA operations already built into your network.
Real-time NetFlow Analyzer determines the types of traffic on your network, where it's coming from, and where it's going. Diagnose bandwidth issues and get deep insight into what's happening on your network!
SolarWinds free Exchange Monitor continuously monitors Microsoft® Exchange to deliver real-time insight into Exchange services, mail queue sizes, and host server health. Ensure this mission-critical app never fails!
SolarWinds free VM Monitor continuously monitors a VMware® ESX Server and its virtual machines. Track virtualization health at-a-glance and impress your boss with X-ray vision into your ESX Servers!
Our free multi-threaded TFTP Server uploads and downloads executable images and configurations to routers and switches with ease. It is the most robust, widely-trusted, and easy-to-use free TFTP server available!
Easy to set up and configure, Free Kiwi Syslog Server receives, logs, displays, and forwards syslog messages from network devices. See why thousands of network engineers love this easy-to-use FREE Syslog Server!
Manage and backup network configurations for up to five devices right from your desktop with Free CatTools. Schedule batch jobs, receive immediate change notifications, generate reports, and more!
Our free Advanced Subnet Calculator delivers four tools in one - a classful subnet creator, CIDR calculator, a list generator for subnet addresses, and address details with forward and reverse DNS resolution!
Free Wake-On-LAN magically powers up your remote PC. When the remote network adapter hears a "Magic Packet" created for its unique MAC address, the network adapter alerts the computer to power up.
Our free NetFlow Configurator remotely and quickly configures NetFlow v5 via SNMP on supported Cisco® devices. The free NetFlow Configurator also facilitates setting up collectors for NetFlow data.
Our Free SNMP Enabler for Windows gives you the ability to remotely install and enable SNMP on multiple Windows servers and workstations. Just think of all the time you can save!
Our FREE Web Transaction Watcher records and tests a live web transaction with just the touch of a button—no scripting required!
Capture and analyze up to one hour of AppFlow data to see what types of traffic are on your network, where it’s coming from, and where it’s going.
Virtualization Manager delivers integrated capacity planning, VM sprawl control, performance monitoring, configuration management, and chargeback automation—all in one awesomely affordable product that’s easy to download, deploy, and use.
Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor makes it easy to keep a close eye on a troublesome interface and monitors bandwidth usage in real-time!

© 2003 - 2012 SolarWinds, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Who is SolarWinds?

SolarWinds is rewriting the rules for how companies manage their networks. Guided by a global community of network engineers, SolarWinds develops simple and powerful network management software and network monitoring software for networks of all sizes. SolarWinds also offers a network certification program to become a SolarWinds Certified Professional (SCP).

What is thwack?

thwack, SolarWinds online community site, was designed by network engineers, for network engineers. thwack is a vibrant, growing community of more than 30,000 IT pros who share a passion for technology.

Explore Resources, Answers, Templates, and Advice

Download Free Networking Tools


Learn More About SolarWinds Products