Solarwinds NCM/Cirrus uploads configurations painfully slow

CASE #85064

I tried to upload a banner ... simple text, nothing complex, to our Cisco switches. It took six minutes. I can log into about 10 switches and manually upload the banner faster than NCM can do it. Why?!? This is extremely frustrating... I feel like Paul Bunyan with my axe easily beating the best of chainsaws. I've tried telnet/ssh2, on routers, switches, 6509s with Sup720s, 3750s with almost zero traffic and zero CPU utilization ... I enable session tracing and the file is HUNDREDS if not thosands of lines long!

While NCM clearly has many more valuable features, Kiwi CatTools flies circles around NCM in terms of speed. The NMS software market is desperate for a clear leader, yet every product, with Solarwinds being the best IMHO, falls short ... a true network engineer needs to master a modern programming language and show these application guys what network management is all about. (Still can't monitor the bandwidth on an interface without receiving up/down alerts when someone shuts the PC down for the night; nobody's config management software can intelligently apply interface commands based on interface type or customizable profile, so I still spend hours a week logging into each device manually to add new features PORT by freaking PORT.)

I'm done venting... just want my transfers faster, please.

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chris.lapoint

I tried to upload a banner ... simple text, nothing complex, to our Cisco switches. It took six minutes. I can log into about 10 switches and manually upload the banner faster than NCM can do it. Why?!? This is extremely frustrating... I feel like Paul Bunyan with my axe easily beating the best of chainsaws. I've tried telnet/ssh2, on routers, switches, 6509s with Sup720s, 3750s with almost zero traffic and zero CPU utilization ... I enable session tracing and the file is HUNDREDS if not thosands of lines long!

There's likely something in the banner that is causing NCM issues or it could be your SSH/Telnet timeout. In any case, please open a ticket and we'll work with you to get this to an acceptable level.

While NCM clearly has many more valuable features, Kiwi CatTools flies circles around NCM in terms of speed. The NMS software market is desperate for a clear leader, yet every product, with Solarwinds being the best IMHO, falls short ... a true network engineer needs to master a modern programming language and show these application guys what network management is all about.

We definitely understand speed is important and we're working on improving our activity scripting capabilities by leveraging components of the Kiwi technology. So, over time hopefully you'll see that you have the best of both worlds in NCM.

Still can't monitor the bandwidth on an interface without receiving up/down alerts when someone shuts the PC down for the night

We hear you. This is planned for the next NPM release.

Nobody's config management software can intelligently apply interface commands based on interface type or customizable profile, so I still spend hours a week logging into each device manually to add new features PORT by freaking PORT.)

Can you elaborate on the use-cases for this feature? Can you explain how you'd want to interact with this feature? We're gathering requirements for our new activity scripting framework and interface/port level changes are a big driver so anything you can share would be really helpful.

ciscorlando

It'd be nice to say "any interface that has ROUTER in the description, apply this set of parameters" ... any interface that says "PC/IP Phone Port", apply this set of settings ... right now, I have to manually configure each switch port because NCM is a blind paste of configuration. Being able to match criteria for an interface then apply settings based on matches would be AWESOME. Nobody does this right now, and I'm on the verge of learning Python to write my own program to do it, since configs are text and parsing text is E-A-S-Y.

Thanks for the timely response. I might sound like a crab, but this customer isn't going anywhere.

chris.lapoint

It'd be nice to say "any interface that has ROUTER in the description, apply this set of parameters" ... any interface that says "PC/IP Phone Port", apply this set of settings ... right now, I have to manually configure each switch port because NCM is a blind paste of configuration. Being able to match criteria for an interface then apply settings based on matches would be AWESOME. Nobody does this right now, and I'm on the verge of learning Python to write my own program to do it, since configs are text and parsing text is E-A-S-Y.

Great suggestion! I've added this to my use-case requirements doc for our activity scripting.