Code for Realtime Map View

Question

Hi Folks, I am currently in the evaluation stages of Orion NPM, and so far I like the platform. One of the issues I ran into some time back was the necessity of a realtime map view, projected on a screen in our NOC, so our staff could see network events the second they happen. Since we are a wireless provider, this is helpful in situations where a storm posses a threat to our network or an instance where a lot of events are occurring within a small amount of timeframe. I'd hate to compare it to this (don't laugh too hard), but similar to the WhatsUp console interface. I am familiar with the MapMaker and Map displays on the Orion Web interface, but it lacked continual refresh of the content. Solarwinds support offered a code snippet for me to use, but it strobed the screen causing annoyance on a 80 inch screen (and potentially epileptic seizures) :) In lieu of this, I created a javascript page of my own that performs a 2 second refresh without strobing the image, and I just thought I would share the wealth in case someone else out there is looking for this. Caveats: * It will increase the load on your server * It does not possess the same functionality as the MapView screen* Website general templates do not show on this screen. * No interaction with nodes on the map (can't click to bring you to a node or interface details screen) * No node/interface summary at the bottom of the screen. This was purely made to be a presentation screen only. * Download the attached file, unzip MapView2.asp, and place it in your NetPerfMon web directory (most likely C:\InetPub\SolarWinds\Orion\NetPerfMon) * Log into Orion NPM and go to Admin -> Web Console Settings. Change the Map Cache Timeout to 2 seconds. * Call your map with the MapView2.asp. (ie: http:///NetPerfMon/MapView2.asp?Map=M:) Again, this will increase load on your server as you change the Map Cache Timeout, since your server will be regenerating images every 2 seconds. You can modify the refresh rate to whatever you'd like by changing the Map Cache Timeout in the admin screen, and the value of t in MapView2.asp. (line 34) I hope this is useful to someone looking for this same idea implemented. Mike MapView2.zip

mike.d · Answer

Hi EY,

The link is right below the title of the original post.  Alternatively, you can download here:  http://thwack.com/forums/storage/9/43997/MapView2.zip

Mike

ExpatYankee · Answer

Hi Mike,

I'd like to download your file, but I don't see the attachment!

EY

mike.d · Answer

Hi LC,

It really depends on how you have it deployed.  We have ours setup to poll nodes every 10 seconds.  However, you could go with the default 60 seconds and still benefit from this with the following understanding:

If you have 1000 elements being monitored with 60 second poll intervals, and all of those elements generate a network event, you could potentially see up to 16 change events per second if the polling is evently spread across that timeframe.

So, with that in mind, if you have a sizable network, I wouldn't suspect that you'd need to change your polling to benefit from this.

To answer your second question, I haven't really scientifically measured the difference, but what I had noticed in a passing glance is an increase in CPU and disk writes.  I'm assuming the disk activity is from the continually expiring map cache files.

I'm interested to see how this works for you.

Mike