Evaluation issues with Network Switches

Question

We are currently evaluating the Orion package.  We really like a lot of the features, but there are some things that really turn us off to the product.

One problem is that we would like to monitor our access layer switches and graph the traffic use on the user ports, but we cannot find a way to graph the port but not monitor the up/down status of the port.  So everytime a computer is shut down we get an monitor status of interface down on that switch.  This becomes a problem right away, because we could take the interfaces off the monitored device, but then I can't figure out how to still graph that interface.

Second issue is that we would like the ability to monitor services or open ports on Servers. We would also like to graph from a specified OID from snmp, that way we could graph things like temperature.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to make these things work in Orion, we would be very interested in hearing from you.  We are on the fence about purchasing the software.

Thanks Alot for any help

vhcato · Answer

We overcome the port state issue by limiting which interfaces are presented in particular views. We don't currently monitor workstation connections on access switches, but we have the same issue with server ports on server farm switches. Our group is primarily concerned with network infrastructure ports; however we do still want to be able view statistical information on server ports.

What we've done, is create a custom property for each switch port and allow or disallow the port to show up in various views, as appropriate for the audience. All the statistics are still available if needed, but these interfaces don't show up in the "Down Interfaces" list, or the other interface-centric lists on the views that our network operations group uses. On the other hand, views used by our server operations teams will show the status of these interfaces.

Network_Guru · Answer

Hey Jim,

Have you checked out the other Posts in the Forum?
Some of these features (port monitoring, custom MIBs)have been requested & are currently in development.
Try doing a search for "Custom MIBs"

www2.solarwinds.net/.../topic.asp
(see the last 2 pages for recent discussions on custom MIBs)

The disabling the interface status has been mentioned in previous posts, but there is currently no way to do this & still collect stats.

-=Cheers=-
          NG