One software, One Solution.

lcsw2013

SolarWinds should move towards having all appliances migrated into NPM. What I mean specifically is have any module that's current on an appliance and integrates into NPM, have them as a native part of NPM.

1. It would remove single points of failure. And remove integration problems. Having things native gives better peace of mind knowing that you don't have to worry about integration breaks.

2. It would also remove possible problems with the appliance. We run both vman and old alert central. When integration works it's a beautiful things. When it breaks it's frustrating. Plus I've had issues with the vm's where these appliances are located causing more headaches than anything else.

3. Having one alerting engine, having all features from old alert central integrated into the alert console would offer a much more robust alerting capabilities.

4. Having VMAN native would allow better monitoring of the virtual infrastructure and servers. It would be great to have a full in-deth view of server monitoring and virtual monitoring under one roof instead of breaking things up and have basic monitoring in NPM and more in-depth coming from vman.

5. LEM integration would give us better ability to monitor event viewers and other things going on without having to rely yet on another appliance.

Point here is you remove several weak points that currently exist and instead offer a more robust solution with more capabilities than the current setup.  SolarWinds offers amazing solutions and we perfer it better than other solutions. But compare to others it lacks in areas where others propel ahead.

The idea here is that if we can fortify the weaknesses in solarwinds, it would mean less sleepiness nights for us Admin's and more time managing a solution that offers a strong and robust software and tools.

Many times our upper management pointed out weaknesses as being a potential reason to switch and many times in many meetings I've had to convince them that solarwinds is worth the money. But there is only some much I can defend before they move to a different solution.

And this where this idea stems from.

rschroeder

I like where you're coming from, and have wished for the same solution.

I don't think it's feasible, perhaps not even possible, in large environments.  There just won't be enough resources on a single hardware or VM solution to handle the resources required and consumed by multiple Orion modules.  I monitor 50,000+ active ports across nearly a thousand switches, firewalls, & routers.  The amount of data coming into my NPM can't be handled by a single anything, much less trying to run LEM and VMAN and NTA and NCM on top of that same single appliance or VM instance.

There might be a "small environment / single appliance deployment" we could wish for, but even if it only managed a tiny handful of elements, its processing and memory requirements may not be sufficient to handle multiple Orion modules.  Perhaps wouldn't be able to handle even NPM and NCM on the same box, not to mention the SQL database storage needs for displaying historical trends.

Putting it all in one box would put all points of failure within one appliance, which means Solarwinds would be more likely to fail completely.  And I'd rather a particular module were unavailable than having all of NPM down.

LEM should have its own isolated solution, simply from the massive amount of work it must do--particularly if any firewalls or wireless controllers report to it.  Including it within NPM and throwing in NCM, NTA, VMAN, etc. . . . I think you're wishing for the impossible.

Which is NOT an unworthy cause! But with the state of computing, and given the size of the networks my Orion products manage, I need five pollers just to monitor configurations and interface statistics.  And more VM's for the other modules, not fewer.

Instead, I find breaking the separate modules out into their own VM or physical appliances makes NPM more reliable.  Something else can break without causing NPM to fail, and while it's inconvenient to have that other module down, it's not nearly as inconvenient as having NPM down.  NPM is my eyes and ears into the network; it gives me an edge over 17,000 users across three states--almost all of which are doing hospital or clinic patient support.  I want to be working on problems before they all start calling to notify the Help Desk, swamping them AND my team.

I'll vote your suggestion up, but I'm not expecting SW to be able to grant the wish. And I DO hear your pain with Integration of modules.  Still, the only solution that's worked for me is to follow the deployment and integration guides, and keep everything up to date running the current recommended versions of every module. Yes, it's a big challenge, and I wish it were simpler, just as your idea suggests.

Better to enjoy the ability to have separate modules, any of which can fail, while still keeping NPM alerting & monitoring.  If the Titanic had been a dozen ships instead of one with a dozen floatation compartments tied together, we might have lost one ship to an ice berg, but the other 11 would have been available to rescue the passengers from the single sinking vessel.  SW Orion should stay that way, IMHO.