5) Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh yes yes yes. Table-based alerts do need improvement - it's very awkward at the moment. Alerting based on other values for that row in a different column would be awesome, but we would also need to be able to use other row values in the alert emails/actions.
I'm not particularly bothered about the others, except for WMI<->SNMP switching which would be useful. There are a few things, however, that would significantly improve day-to-day duties with NPM:
11) A more user-friendly method of bulk "schedule unmanage" - the current utility is very much a bolt-on & isn't integrated into the product.
12) A method of auto-selecting a working mail server to send alerts through, rather than having a choice of only one. This is a very complex suggestion though.
I use the Windows built-in evntwin.exe / evntcmd.exe for sending events to Orion as traps, with a small Powershell scripts for bulk SNMP config updates to servers:
13) A more user-friendly conditions screen. It's very clunky right now, i.e. no "copy", import/export, the screen refreshes when adding a row, etc.
14) The varbind numbers changed (minus 2) with a recent update - i.e. vbData6 became vbData4, vbData9 became vbData7. Needs consistency among versions.
15) For trap alert emails, I should be able to use the varbind label, i.e. eventText or eventVar1 - these hopefully should never change and would significantly aid readbility of alerts.
16) Built-in parsing of evntwin.exe-based SNMP traps would be truly awesome. Preparing these alerts & selecting criteria is massively time-consuming and quite prone to mistakes.
17) Trap alert throttling in the form of only executing one action per host every X minutes rather (or in addition to) than the current options. Perhaps have an option to discard traps being sent to Orion at a high rate - for example, some Exchange events can number in the thousands, and the built-in Windows SNMP trap throttling system is awkward.
18) A method of testing ("test firing") a rule to make sure it will work.
I am very excited about #1, I have made several suggestions and feature requests on that one; can't wait to see the blog post!
I am also very excited about #3 as many of us have been asking for that for years.
Overall I think this is a great list of things to look forward to, thanks for the update!
Hi
Please add better discovery filters to the next release as this has been on the cards for years.
1: Ability to filter by hostname or interface ifAlias
2: Ability to filter by interface type or vendor
3: Ability to add to a group based on a filter
4: Ability to remove hostname suffix
5: Ability to add custom properties based on filtering, meaning if your filter matches then add these custom properties to the node or interface
Keep up the great work
Kind Regards
James
How about improvements around report writer and being able to graph reports and include a lot more flexibility.
Thanks for all of the great feedback everyone.
jonchill, although we aren't going to work on Report Writer and graphs in reports, it's something currently under investigation to work on soon.
jawells, yes we definitely need to improve the discovery filter options. We took some of this feedback into account when we built UDT, but we aren't currently focusing on this problem today.
Keep the feedback coming!
Mav
yes we definitely need to improve the discovery filter options. We took some of this feedback into account when we built UDT, but we aren't currently focusing on this problem today.
:| I was hoping there would be at least some improvements in discovery filtering in the works for the next release with all the complaints and feature requests from the user community. Due to lack of discovery filtering we've never used this feature of NPM. The lack if this functionality is preventing us from abandoning our HP OpenView product. Our NOC has been screaming for this improvement in NPM since this feature was released in 10.0 so they don't have to continue to maintain OpenView just for it's discovery capabilities. PLEASE give resources to improving this feature for the next release!
Hi Mav
I dont like banging on about the discovery filter as it is something that has been requested so many times, but if SolarWinds really want to progress into the automation aspect of the product, this is the primary key if I can put it that way. As some customers and I am talking about large customers, already have a CMDB external to NPM and automation is at the forefront of their process. having the discovery filters is key to loading what should and should not be in NPM/NCM/UDT as the manual effort is painful for businesses that have large environments.
One thing I have noticed with the developement of the product/products is you are keen on new features but not keen on improving existing features as some of the requests like this one are 3 to 4 years old. If I might be bold to say practice what you preach, you claim to listen to users, then this is someting we have all being crying for a long time.
Sorry for the rant ,I really like the product/products as I have come from the big enterprise toolsets , like CA eHealth, Openview, Ciscoworks, VitalNet, Omnibus, SMARTS and so on and there are some basics like discovery filtering that should be in your product from day one to be honest.
Kind Regards
James
Hi Mav,
#3 is going to solve what has been a pain in the **** for years, hope all of these comes into fruition! 
also feeling good about #1 and #9, keeping track of the downtime age will be quite helpful..and being outside the US, i hope something great is in store for us with #4.
I have to agree with jawells as well, there's room for improvement in discovery filtering. But all in all, really looking forward to all of these. Thanks!
I also vote with urge for useful discovery filters,
at the moment discovery is producing more work than benefit!
when I add a node manually, I select my 2-3 interfaces and fine --> 1 minute
when I use discovery e.g. for our routers with voice modules (PVDMs) I have >300 interfaces to ignore for every node --> click to death
when I use discovery for stacked switches, I have >300 interfaces to ignore for every stack --> click to death
thanks for hearing us
Herwig
Discovery is single handedly the biggest feature holding us back from really getting use out of NPM. Currently everyone has this perception that we can't trust that Orion says everything is good because we've been burned too many times by not having something in Orion (due to engineer's fault for not putting it in there, obviously, but making discovery useful would provide peace of mind that we lack)
Auditing who adds and especially deletes nodes would be a superb start for audit.
I love it James. These enhancements are great! Please add my vote to all them.
YES! #1, #3 and #5 are very much appreciated. Have been looking forward to #1 for quite some time. Please go big on this one!
Would like to see more JUNIPER integration. As in Juniper SA / MAGs don't poll CPU / Memory OoB. Would also like to see a better UnDP interface. - ie, when trying to build and test a UnDP.
We have Juniper SA as well. Also it doesn't recognize (CPU & Memory) Brocade FC swithces. Brocade is a well known product. It should support it by now.
#3 is #1 in my book and has been since I first installed Orion 6 years ago. The forums are filled with posts from myself and others of the complicated workarounds we implement to handle this problem on our own.
The other one that I would hope could be done but is not on this list would be the ability to add some copy or import features to the traps and syslog modules. I can copy an alert and alter for a new one but every one of my trap rules has to be written from scratch even though I may be only altering one simple aspect of it.
It seems a little odd that even though the interfaces are very similar between the alerting, SNMP, and syslog filters the features are not constant in the least.
Nice list.
I would still like to see some work be done on the custom properties page.
IE:
Be able to set a list of drop down boxes for pre-entered values to prevent someone from using the wrong values.
True/False being a checkbox
Ability to define a "label" for the custom property that can be used to explain what its for.
Be able to set a list of drop down boxes for pre-entered values to prevent someone from using the wrong values.
Agree completely
Thanks guys, those are all great requests as well.
jspanitz, I'm going to contact you offline to get some more details on the Juniper SA / MAGs that aren't collecting CPU and Memory (I'd like to collect some walks from the devices).
Mav
Thanks all, great feedback.
Jspanitz, I will contact you off-line about your UnDP requirement.
I'd like to submit a couple additional feature requests:
The abiliity to "search" within groups and dependencies
And most importantly - AN AUDIT TRAIL IN NPM so you can see who is adding/removing/changing nodes
I agree with raj512. We need an audit that shows who is adding/deleting/ interfaces and nodes!
Thanks Rachel, the audit trail is definitely something we get a lot of requests for. Can you tell me which specific events are the most important for you to audit? For example: add node, delete node, un-manage node, add/delete interfaces, add/delete accounts, etc. What are the most important events for you to audit?
Mav
Thanks Rachel, the audit trail is definitely something we get a lot of requests for. Can you tell me which specific events are the most important for you to audit? For example: add node, delete node, un-manage node, add/delete interfaces, add/delete accounts, etc. What are the most important events for you to audit?
Mav
Hey Mav
Having this audit trail is really important to me as well so I hope you don't mind me responding to this question as well...
I think for any audit trail to be successful it needs to track any and all changes made; what was changed, who made the change and when it was made.
If you are looking for a place to start then I would go with any changes made to nodes in Orion.
I am very interested to see what others think about this!
Hope this helps!
+1 for Byrona's comment regarding the Audit trail. We really need the ability to track changes made to nodes in Orion. I'd also like to have the ability to tie those changes to HelpDesk or Change Request tickets too.
For example; If a node gets deleted by mistake there is no way to add it again unless you remember it's IP address. This is not acceptable for us. Audit at least shows the IP address of the deleted node and also who, when, and WHY.
Yes the WHY feature is also important for us. If it can show who and when only that's not good for us. Because you need to ask him/her why he/she did it. Remember if you try to shutdown/reboot a windows it asks for a reason (shutdown tracker feature). Last but not least the unmanage functionality is also need this WHY field. I have created a custom property (Unmanage_Reason) just for this very specific reason. They unmanage every down node for no reason!
how about fixing the "groups" and "dynamic groups" funtionality within the account limitation, described in the following post:
Node groups - account limitation issue
Not sure how useful filtering out all other groups (not the members of those groups) vs the expected functionality of only showing what is within the selected group....
Hi,
Nice with an update! - I really like the work being done on UnDP table poller alerts and better graphs!
As already mentioned I would also like an audit trail, furthermore the ability to have multiple nodes with a duplicate IP would be a dream come true.
Duplicate IPs is necessary for polling the same node with different snmpv3 context values.
Cheers,
Henrik Noerr
As more and more stuff is added to Orion (via NPM, APM, etc) I find more and more great resources getting added to my node view. While I love having all of this extra information I am also finding that my node views are becoming a bit cluttered feeling.
I would like to see SolarWinds (and their community) put some thought into added functionality that could help clean up these views.
I had posted a feature request a while back (that I can't seem to find now) on having the ability to expand and collapse resources within a view and having the ability to specify on a per resource basis if they defaulted in an expanded or collapsed state.
I would love to hear other ideas on functionality to accomplish cleaning up these views without removing useful resources!
I want to add a +1 to Byron's request and point out that it would be very helpful to make the collapsed resources not load until they are expanded so the node details page loads. This would be extremely helpful with Netflow charts.
I love the new polling engines/details page, especially the change to the polling rate/server capacity spec. You wouldn't believe the peace of mind this has given my boss knowing exactly where we stand as far as monitoring capacity. It's also great to see almost instantaneously how polling interval changes affect the capacity of the server.
I would like to request that on the polling details/engines page that the last database sync result be changed back to a date/time format rather than xx seconds ago. I used this number in the past to make sure that I was looking at fresh data and to make sure that the page was actually refreshing.
I love this new release and i'm looking forward to the next!
Hi.... any chance that the ability to monitor virtual CPU allocations on IBM P-series (P595, P780) AIX servers is in the cards soon?
Thanks!
NPM 10.2.2
NTA 3.8.0
SEUM 1.5.0
IVIM 1.2.0
SAM 5.0.0
IPSLAMGR 3.5.1
Storage Manager 5.1.2
Feature: Discovery add interfaces with multiple MAC addresses.
There's a perl script that does this on Content Exchange. Perfect. I want to automatically add any interface that has three or more MAC addresses associated with it. (Three because we use voip phones with a one port switch presenting two MACs).
That would catch all uplinks. Exceptions from LLDP could then be added.
Please, just please bring back #7 - I am drowning in duplicate nodes with alternate IP addresses that are ALL POLLING SNMP.
Maybe I've missed it somewhere, but all the refs to IPv6 on search are from 2011 or older. Is the newest version of NPM 10.2.1 IPv6 ready? are all SW products ready for it?
Network to FVO IPv6 3Q12.
Thanks
Mike
Verizon
Hi Mav,
the list has great improvements but there is still lack of few features I'm waiting for. I must agree with jawells saying "you are keen on new features but not keen on improving existing features".
Here are few examples:
1. Report Writer - I see that it has not been improved for years and it is practically the same application now as it was in 2006 when I started with Orion. Few new report templates for APM and NTA are the only changes done .
There is really huge amount of data in Orion database but it is very hard to analyze historical data without integrated tools for that. Report Writer has too poor functionality for that. I see very often that I can not get what I want from Report Writer and I must export data to Excel format file - transfer it from Orion server to my PC and work on the spreadsheeet manually. Connecting Excel with ODBC to database of around 10 GB from remote location ... forget it - would spend hours for transmission. And finally I'm not SQL specialist and have no budget for SQL consultant to make me SQL querry based report.
Report formatting function is very poor as well. There is practically one layout. No option for include graphics and diagrams.
2. Graphics and diagrams - I would say that is even step back when System Manager disappeared forever. I was able to adjust diagrams with subject, time frame, scale, legend and size in seconds or few minutes by System Manager. I must spend tens on minutes now to get the same set of diagrams.
3. Network Atlas defaults - that is something I asked over year ago. Is it really so difficult to enable setup of default line thickness, color or font type and size?
4. Advanced Alerts - still lack of dependancy on another alert.
5. Orion website users log - promised over year ago - called an audit trial !
6. Orion website - node management - resources - when virtual server got reconfigured old volumes have the same color as the new ones and it is necessary to compare IDs to recognize which disappeared and which are active. I asked for that already year ago.
Orion Core 2011.2.2, APM 4.2.0 SP1, NPM 10.2.2, NTA 3.8.0, IVIM 1.2.
One thing I'd like to see would be the ability to both turn off device rediscovery and adjust the rediscovery interval for an individual node. The reason for this is because we've run into an SNMP based issue on a couple of devices that only causes issues when a rediscovery takes place. The regular poll doesn't affect it. So if we could turn off rediscovery for those two individual devices or at least adjust the interval to be very high for them without changing it globally it would be nice.
I asked for this previously....
On error reporting, giving me an number of errors in a certain time frame is OK, but not especially helpful. I need an option to convert the number of errors into a percentage of errors based on the number of packets processed. Seing 1,000 errors is nice, but telling me that 15% of my packets contain errors is useful. It's data I can take to the carrier and get them moving towards a solution. NPM already collects the data, so how about a new and useful way to display it?
Rick
What about some proper map handling finally? It has been asked about countless times.
Scalable maps, scrollbars in map window, etc.
Please please implement native support for mikrotik / witelcom radios!!
how about (since 10.2) stopping the database maintenance each night, deleting from the logs for any node that has been removed
as now, we can no longer run reports on nodes we have removed, for us it's a financial issue
I am using the latest beta (3) and I did not find anything about the multiple IP address feature anywhere.
Some of our nodes (VPN Edges) lost their ping for sometime. So If a node respond to SNMP but not ping it is proves that node is not down.
Also if a node is unplugged and other device with same IP address (but different sysoid or no snmp at all) came in. It still shows the device is up! That's not a true. We didn'tt have a solution for this.
Are there any news on Trapeze thin wireless AP/controller monitor ? like your Cisco wifi today
Linux (net-snmp) OS breakdown support! I don't want to see just net-snmp anymore. Also I would like to see which linux and which version as well.
Ex; Red Hat Enterprise 6 (32 Bit)
I would think the number one priority in all of the goals and objectives for Solarwinds would be to work on performance and scalability and focus on data architecture across the product lines. I believe there are multiple areas where if the data architecture were the primary focus, many other things could be possible. Several of the stored procedures for alerts/alarms, ability to retain data for longer periods in the original retention polling periods, etc. Meanwhile, the concept of insuring one can "Retire" and interface and so continue to leverage the data. This is true of so many of the modules but Orion NPM is at the core of it. Meabwhile ensuring that Web front end is compatible with the modules is key to performance and scalability.
I second the comment by ecornwell. We absolutely need to be able to specify custom properties as dropboxes, so an extra space doesn't create a whole new property.
