comparing ipMonitor to Orion

Question

I am an Orion user but was just wondering how ipMonitor works compared to Orion fundamentally. From the SW website I can see that ipMonitor does not use SQL, it uses SNMP, WMI and RPC. So a few questions just for my own understanding please..

(1) How does IPM use the protocols to collect data?

(2) How does IPM store data? Where is it stored? Can it be manually manipulated like you can with the Orion database?

(3) Are there device types that IPM monitors that Orion cannot and vice versa?

(4) What scalability limits does IPM have practically?

I appreciate any help I can get with these questions since we have another IT group with their own small network that they want to monitor. Orion might be more than they need, so I need to be able to advice them about IPM as well from a technical standpoint.

chris.lapoint · Answer

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One other basic question...what is a good, basic definition of a "monitor" in the context of ipMonitor?

A monitor is anything that you would like to gather a statistic on or see the status of....for example, a PING would count as a monitor, a CPU would count as another monitor, a Disk would count as another monitor.

By the way, ipMonitor seems like it could be described as Orion lite with APM incorporated. Is that a fair characterization?

That's a fair characterization. If you'd like to detail this out for your friend, we've got a comparison matrix that describes the differences:

http://www.solarwinds.com/products/orion/product_comparison.aspx

chris.lapoint · Answer

(1) How does IPM use the protocols to collect data?

ipMonitor uses SNMP to remotely collect data from network and Linux devices and can use SNMP, WMI, or RPC to remotely collect data from Windows servers.  ipMonitor automatically figures out the best protocol to use for data gathering based on what's available and type of device.

(2) How does IPM store data? Where is it stored? Can it be manually manipulated like you can with the Orion database?

ipMonitor stores data in the local file system.  This database format is specific to ipMonitor and can't be manipulated like you can with Orion.  Most of our smaller customers don't want to be bothered with database management and so ipMonitor is perfect for them.   If you're looking for an open database from a reporting perspective (which is typical of many of our larger customers), then Orion is the product for you.

(3) Are there device types that IPM monitors that Orion cannot and vice versa?

No.

(4) What scalability limits does IPM have practically?

ipMonitor is intended to be an entry-level, all inclusive monitoring solution.  Its scalability is limited to 5000 monitors.  As you noted, this makes ipMonitor potentially very appropriate for smaller, standalone networks.  However, It is important to note that ipMonitor does not provide additional pollers or support distributed deployment scenarios.

freemen · Answer

One other basic question...what is a good, basic definition of a "monitor" in the context of ipMonitor?

By the way, ipMonitor seems like it could be described as Orion lite with APM incorporated. Is that a fair characterization?