Submit any feature requests here. You may wish to search first to avoid duplicate requests!
1. create view limitations based on custom properties.
2. Report Writer and Web Reports - be able to create graphical reports
3. Report Writer and Web reports - be able to tally nodes/interfaces/volumes at end of a report. Total, optional subtotal when Grouping, and average numerical statistics.
4. Custom View - graph multiple interfaces from various nodes individually on one graph.
5. Web Reports - include "Excel" & "PDF" buttons on generated reports. Move "Printable Version" (and Excel & PDF) buttons to left side of panel so they are visable rather than have to use the horizontal scroll bar to find them.
6. Disable refresh on Web Reports.
7. customer configurable view bar that would display below standard Views bar.
That's all I can think of right off the top of my head at the moment. Maybe after another beer I'll have more to add.
1) The ability to add a 'parent' for a node to easily build a network hierarchy, so that alerts will only fire for the device that is actually down. This is a big one for us.
2) Streamlined way of adding nodes. Currently if I add a UPS, for example - I have to go through the 'add a device' wizard...followed by the custom MIB poller to 'assign' the device, followed by the custom property editor to add things like geographical location. My writeup on how to add a node in our environment is longer than one would think it should be.
3) The ability to monitor a network port, but set the port so that the 'expected' port state is down. Right now our 'nodes with problems' list is 50% useless because of nodes with monitored ports which we expect to be down (as opposed to diabled, which 'most' unused ports at the distrubution and core layers are - but there are exceptions).
These are probably the top 3 issues I'm asked about regarding this tool.
Thanks for asking.
Okay after a good night's sleep my mind is rolling again.
8. Unmanage/manage Interfaces/Volumes.
9. During Node Rediscovery, auto-discover new interfaces/volumes as unmanaged resources on existing nodes. This would be helpful to NOC staff by detecting when new interfaces have been enabled by field engineers. Provide ability to globally exclude certain types of interfaces (ex. console, loopback, selective switch ports, etc.) and volumes (ex. floppy, cdrom, etc.) from rediscovery that statistics are not needed (i.e., either no stats are accumulated or unimportant). A drop-down list of all known Interface/Volume types would be helpful to accomplish this.
10. Move existing or Provide additional Manage/Unmanage checkbox (next to node status icon) on Node Tree in System Manager. Presently, you must enter Node Details for each device to unmanage/manage. Being able to walk the node tree to check/uncheck nodes would be faster when several nodes need to be unmanaged/managed.
11. Network Discovery/Report Writer - provide ability to run a network discovery (of all devices) for auditing and reporting purposes. Provide ability to limit/exclude any device type (ex. workstations, UPS, DSUs, vendors) from discovery and report on all devices and/or exceptions (nodes not currently in Orion). Provide ability to schedule at a selective time period (ex. weekly, monthly, quarterly).
Custom MIB poller - Get Table ( I know it out there somewhere, but I couldn't help myself)
I really like rgward's list so I'll try not to duplicate it here. I tried to categorize these as best as I could.
Report Writer - Custom MIB Reporting More Robust
Custom MIB Poller - Define Custom Names for Pollers that include spaces (Helpdesk staff and Management have no idea what some of these MIB names mean)Custom MIB Poller - Mathematical Manipulation of returned values (Such as changing milliamps to amps or Celsius to Fahrenheit)Custom MIB Poller? - WMI Support Map Maker - Network WeatherMap Like integration
System Manager - Define object adjacency (Ideally CDP via SNMP based) great for Alert suppressionSystem Manager - Unmanage Applications, Interfaces, VolumesSystem Manager - Web Based AdministrationSystem Manager - Ability to Monitor edge switch ports performance/errors but ignore up/down status
Alerting Engine - Ability to "AND" in Custom MIB Poller alert trigger and reset conditions (Currently you can only "OR" in Custom MIB Alert triggers and reset conditions)Alerting Engine - Instant Message Alerts
Wireless Network Monitor - Added support for Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers
Cirrus - Tighter web based integration with Cirrus and Orion
Toolset - Orion Web Based Switchport MapperToolset - Orion Web Based WoLToolset - Orion Web Based IP Address Management
New Orion Add-on - SAN & FiberChannel Switch performance monitoring
Application Monitor - Windows Service Monitoring (Started/Stopped/Paused)Application Monitor - Intelligent Network Application Monitoring for MSSQL MSExchange/MAPI RADIUS LDAP MySQL DNS FTP HTTP HTTPS SMTP TIME/SNTP/NNTP POP3/SPOP3 IMAP4 / SIMAP4
1. Report Writer - possibly use the Crystal reporting engine as we currently use Crystal to run some of our more complex reports and it works great and give us the exact figures we need.
2. NPM - Web enabled frontend so new devices can be added through an admin section on the web site and also manage existing devices.
3. Graphs - Being able to change the scale of particular graphs
4. Some sort of customisable web tool bar so we can have drop down menus or add extra menus like if you've got any modules installed.
5. The ability to define what resources you want to add when you import a group of devices into Orion from Network Discovery for instance when I recently added 30 odd servers it didn't automatically monitor the disks so I had to go back through and manually select them.
6. Better integration with Cirrus.
7. Better integration with Switch port mapper and IP Address Management
Jon
All of the above requests are good and I don't want to duplicate so I will just add a simple one.
Ability in Syslog and Event view to create a query (filter) and save it so that I can just pick one from a drop down menu and don't have to specify my filters every time I want to see something different in those views.
1. For the syslog server, have better integration between the Syslog tables and the Node tables. At the moment, you can only filter based upon very specific node-related criteria such as IP address or hostname. As an aside, the hostname is often useless, because syslogs inconsistently report wacky hostnames (it happens on Unix syslog servers as well, so I'm pretty sure this isn't an Orion-specific problem). An example of some of the entries listed in the 'Hostname' field in my current Syslog table:
46fw1c6d6cfebssba
With the ability to create alerts on a custom property such as 'Device Group', it's easier to make alerts for groups of devices rather than specifying individual IP addresses. In addition, no rDNS lookup has to occur because the message is already tied to a node. However, I'm not sure how viable this is, as it might introduce a significant performance hit, depending on how many messages you are receiving.
2. IPv6 Support!
3. Permissions for maps based upon custom properties. Not every account needs to have access to view all maps!
I would like to see a "Monitored Only" node option within Orion.
The "List Resources" GUI allows a user to select 'yes' on the interface error and traffic charts, but allows a grayed checkbox on the interface status.
It should collect historical statistics, for example, desktop user ports, but not have these clutter alerts or maps as down interfaces.
If this functionality is not available within Orion perhaps the ability to half-check that box should be removed.
So for our company we have a ticket system, every time a server is down Orion makes a log file in an .url format with a url in it.
Every 1 min a script runs to open the .url files. A new ticket is made with the url and the engeneers must explain in the ticket why the server went down. So we have a history of times and resons why a server shutdown.
My Request is fore the alert engine: Make it posible to open a url, with $(NodeName} in the URL.
Second request: A function to compile .MIB files in the database of Orion.
Thanks,
Neede a way to get the ip of intrfaces, adn also get the ip´s connection
ex:core router ip xpto connects to client router with the ip apto+1
get the view for this
the apllication have some great features but when we need basic thing's like the ip's or link´s...:(
Ty
Neede a way to get the ip of intrfaces, adn also get the ip´s connectionex:core router ip xpto connects to client router with the ip apto+1get the view for thisthe apllication have some great features but when we need basic thing's like the ip's or link´s...:( Ty
Exactly what IP's are you looking for? Take a look at the MIBs; you might be able to get what you want from there.
I have a feeling that what pampas is looking for is a way to show the IP address that is assigned to an interface, much like what is contained within the Cirrus inventory reports. I agree that this would be useful information to have in the Interface Details page.
I really like the request of being able manage/unmanage interfaces or volumes.
The ability to put an interface into an "unused" state as stated by another person. Often times many ports on a switch aren't always used, but you don't want add and remove. Maybe this could be covered with the previous suggestion of a "checkbox" to manage or unmanage an interface.
One that I haven't seen. When grouping by some manner, like device manufacturer or a custom property, if a child interface of one of the devices on a group is down, it does not filter up to the group. For instance, I have multiple switches of different manufacturers and I group them with a custom property called Network. The group them on a summary web page by that custom property. If one of the switches in that group has an interface that is down, it does not give an indication at the group level. It only gives that indication if an entire switch is down.
My two cents for now.
We need to monitor NetApp Filer volumes. Then NetApp Filers seem to have all the data for disk space used, percent used, etc..Why can't SWinds get us that data. If Orion can't so anything with the table, why not poll the individual elements of the table, and give us the same types of disk space statistics that we get with windows servers. We really need to trend this information, and set up alarms accordingly. Who do I need to petition at either or both companies to make this happen?
Is anyone close to getting disk space from a NetApp Filer?
Thanks.
We need to monitor NetApp Filer volumes. Then NetApp Filers seem to have all the data for disk space used, percent used, etc..Why can't SWinds get us that data. If Orion can't so anything with the table, why not poll the individual elements of the table, and give us the same types of disk space statistics that we get with windows servers. We really need to trend this information, and set up alarms accordingly. Who do I need to petition at either or both companies to make this happen?Is anyone close to getting disk space from a NetApp Filer?Thanks.
Consider yourself as having petitioned. We will be implementing support for Custom MIB Tables in the release immediately after 8.5, which should address your issue.
Tremendous.
Thank you.
Here's one that is probably a design issue more than a feature issue:
Have a version that allows for a distributed architecture - perhaps an "SLX-Plus". My issue right now is that I am using Orion to monitor my Americas' sites from that area's main hub. However, I would have to set up a separate Orion instance (database, etc.) in Europe to monitor that region, and ditto in Asia. And unless I set up three screens for each Orion app, I cannot really monitor each site from one place efficiently.
The idea would be to have a Manager-of-Managers that would gather and display the data in one shot, much like HPOV claims to do, and MRTG. This would be a very, very big sell for organizations like mine that are global.
Otherwise, I like the suggestions that have been presented - especially the SNMP MIB Table and better reporting on custom MIB's.
Regards, Jim
I'm a huge fan of MRTG and have been using it for many years. I don't understand how MRTG solves the problem you describe above. MRTG isn't a product it's a perl script, nothing more. It has no distributed configuration, but instead has significant scalability problems when used in large environments. Cacti attempts to address the shortcomings found in MRTG, but even it can't naively address the concerns you outline above with Orion.
Here's one that is probably a design issue more than a feature issue: Have a version that allows for a distributed architecture - perhaps an "SLX-Plus". My issue right now is that I am using Orion to monitor my Americas' sites from that area's main hub. However, I would have to set up a separate Orion instance (database, etc.) in Europe to monitor that region, and ditto in Asia. And unless I set up three screens for each Orion app, I cannot really monitor each site from one place efficiently. The idea would be to have a Manager-of-Managers that would gather and display the data in one shot, much like HPOV claims to do, and MRTG. This would be a very, very big sell for organizations like mine that are global. Otherwise, I like the suggestions that have been presented - especially the SNMP MIB Table and better reporting on custom MIB's. Regards, Jim
Stay tuned.
I've heard rumors about this in a code release named after a mythical beast
I'm taking the 5th.
You can use the Account Limitation Builder to create account limitations based on custom properties. This was one of rgward's feature requests way back on page 1.
Well, I'll be. So, that's what you have to do. I missed that completely. Now, why didn't support tell me that when I opened a case asking about creating views based on custom properties just a few weeks ago?
As simple as Account Limitation Builder is, it would be nice if it was just merged with the web View Limitations.
Thanks Floyd! That made my day.
Ron
Couple more things that came to mind. These are more *fixes* than feature requests.
1. Have the Custom Properties "Update All Report Schemas" with each upgrade automatically. It's pretty frustrating to get emails from 25 people the day after an upgrade because reports went out all broken.
2. Fix issue with Orion Report Scheduler not being able to send out reports with links to images not on the Orion server itself. This used to work fine in Windows 2000 Server, but the upgrade to Windows 2003 broke it. See .
3. Fix issue with emailed reports and how they interact with Outlook. When reports are received through email, for some reason, Outlook strips the "">http://orionservername" from the links and replaces it with its own ?link?. This only happens with Outlook and I know this has been discussed before. It's stupid and annoying and I despise Outlook because of this.
4. Fix issue with Syslog Server not storing syslogs in the syslog tables properly. Syslog server's usefulness is greatly diminished because of this problem. See .
I would really like to see the alerting system reworked.
1. Have each user account have two email address. Notifications and Normal Email address
2. Have it so that alerts are setup to use these email address' using a selection method like a check mark next to each you would like to use.
3. Have it so each account can have alerts disabled (someone on vacation) so they dont receive these alerts.
Don't know if this has been mentioned yet. The list is getting rather long to search each time you think of something new.
The ability to monitor ports of a switch and mark them in a manner that the switch won't show an error if the port is down. I want to monitor switch ports that users are connected to, but the ports will show as down when the users power off their PC during the evening. This will make the device show errors and it makes things look worse than they actually are.
We have a number of kiwisyslog machines forwarding messages to Orion. I would like Orion to have the ability to utilise the "Original Address=xx.xx.xx.xx" tag that kiwisyslog can insert into the message (i.e. log the message using this host address rather than the forwarding address).
I know kiwisyslog can spoof a UDP syslog - but this option is not available to us behind firewalls...
Sav.
I would like to see an addition to the e-mail alert function: The ability to send "summary" e-mails instead of an e-mail generated for each and every alert. Give the user the ability to set the frequency of when the e-mail is generated, for instance how many per day or week, and send at some requested hour of the day.
Also, it's upsetting to find that I can't use my entries from the custom property editor in my alerts that I created from the syslog viewer and trap viewer. As an example, I created an custom property entry called "NodeName". Using the syntax ${NodeName} works well with Map Maker and I created an alert to generate an e-mail within Orion and used the syntax with no problems. However if I try to do the same with syslog viewer or trap viewer then the variable no longer seems to work...Is this a bug or does this feature need to be implemented?
1. Use SVG for graphs (e.g. client-side/dynamic) instead of server-side generation. If anyone has a Linksys WRT54G (wireless router) running the Tomato Firmware, you've seen how cool SVG can be.2. Ability to graph functions, i.e. count the number of arp entries on a router (per vlan).3. Ability to use MySQL for as the database-backend -- would be nice. MySQL has a memory-only configuration -- that would really increase the speed of Orion. We're having a lot of slowness problems with our current database (our SQL box is Quad 3GHz Xeon, 4GB RAM, 1TB RAID 1+0). Perhaps because I have no background in Microsoft SQL... Anyway, to my understanding, google uses the MySQL memory-based table configuration -- and we've all see how slow they are... ;- )
4. IPv6 support! We're investigating the planning stages, for IPv6 adoption, today.
Ditto from other postsFrom EveristM -- 1. Database/system-manager: Ability to chain nodes together: parent/ children. This would be VERY nice for us too. 2. System Manager: Stream-line the node addition process. Good idea. From jbaulsir -- Custom MIB Poller: Get table. From aLTeReGo -- Map Maker - Network WeatherMap Like integration System Manager - Web Based Administration + AJAXified? Based on Qooxdoo? (could be easier for Orion programming team; Qooxdoo appears to have a friendly license agreement) + Easy to use/navigate, like facebook. Application Monitor - Windows Service Monitoring (Started/Stopped/Paused) Application Monitor - Intelligent Network Application Monitoring for MSSQL MSExchange/MAPI RADIUS LDAP MySQL DNS FTP HTTP HTTPS SMTP TIME/SNTP/NNTP POP3/SPOP3 IMAP4 / SIMAP
Thanks for asking!
Map Maker - Network WeatherMap Like integration
/quote] Hi, I just downloaded the trial version of Orion with the intention of figuring this out (I write a Network Weathermap package that uses plugins to collect data). Hopefully I'll get it in the next release, although it's not such a high priority for me as I don't use Orion (actually it seems kind of heavy and clunky, but I guess you guys like it ).
That's fantastic news! I really look forward to seeing this type of integration. If you need any testers etc please let know. I'm happy to help out anyway I can.
When/if you're done can you post back here or PM me to keep us updated?
It would be nice if you could have different device maps that go along with the specific devices; but have the actual Interfaces on the map. For example you click a node that is an 1841 router and it bring you to the node details page but also has a map on the top that shows an 1841 router with the FastEthernet0/0, Serial0/1/0, etc for the actual sites' router interfaces. Then I could see what's down in the router; I mean I can figure it out, it'd just be a good tool for our NOC guys that don't have as much Cisco experience.
Another feature that I'd like to see is a node tree that would show nested maps, so that I could use the nested map features without having to click on the nested maps.
The ability to generate reports based off SNMP Trap information would be very helpful. We are trying to generate reports in Orion based off trap information received from Veritas Backup Exec. I opened a support case for help with this only to discover that you can't write reports using Trap info. He suggested that I post a feature request for this, so here it is.
Kevin
Couldn't you do it now? Create a Trap Alert that writes an Event Log and sends a Syslog message. Then create a custom report that pulls the events or the syslogs from the database. I may be missing something, but it seems like you should be able to get what you want with the existing product.
Couldn't this be done using Custom SQL?
It would be nice to be able to suppress alerting for a node/interface more easily. For instance, a context menu item of "Suppress alerting for this node/interface". Something on the order of unmanaging a node, but for alerting only.
It would be very usefull for us to allow a user class that could unmanage/manage devices, interfaces, volumes... without giving them the "Allow Node Management Rights". So unmanage/manage alone could be enables for a user. We have a somehow big SolarWinds deployement (around 3500 devices / 15 000 elements) using IP SLA, NCM, APM... We have a dedicated help desk that manages alarms and events and for maintenance periods we would like to have them unmanage/manage nodes without giving them complete device management rights.
Hi PSI--
I've marked this for the PM to review.
M
