What is the main difference between EE and Orion?

Epsil0n

Hey everyone, I'm new here... Hi!

I am trying to figure out the main differences between the EE toolsets and Orion. It sorta looks like Orion has similar features as the EE-Network Performance Monitor... except that Orion publishes the information to a webserver in real time. Is that the main difference?

It seems like essentially you could just let the EE-Network Performance Monitor run on a box all the time and collect data. You would still have alerts, historical data, etc. If you needed to access the info from another computer you could just connect remotely via VNC, etc. Is that right?

Is there more to Orion that I am not realizing? What are the main selling points that people find useful that the EE tools don't offer?

Thanks!
Epsil0n

DannyMc

Epsilon,

Your comment regarding EE and using VNC... I have that very setup today and have been doing it for 2 years now. Another product with EE that I use heavily is Switch Port Mapper.

Not only do I use EE and access it remotely with VNC, I just bought and installed a 500 node version of Orion. You are correct, it does basically the same thing but publishes it to web pages. I also bought a more robust server to go with it.

I bought EE on the cheap for around $1k. That was a year after I bought HP OpenView and CiscoWorks for around $30k and realized how complicated both were!! For what I needed, EE replaced OpenView and CW and it was cake to figure out. I do miss the VLAN listing of all IP's and Hosts across the entire network versus Switch Port Mapper doing only one switch at a time as well as Cisco configuration archival and scheduled configuration deployments. However, I cannot justify $20k plus for the later two items twice a year.

I added Orion:
1) To give others in my group visability to nodes, reporting, alerts, etc.
2) The mapping product to give visual representations to support staff.
3) Stores data in an SQL database. The MSJet database in EE can only hold so much.
4) I started to hit a breaking point with monitoring in EE. Database maintenance would cause monitoring to randomly stop.
5) Reporting

I'm waiting on the ability to define custom MIBs at this point. I have some devices that are not very common and would like to monitor SNMP elements of those devices. IE: The SNMP boxs that attach to my Exide UPS's. I would like to monitor power conditions, time on battery, spikes, load for planning purposes, etc.. I would also like to monitor aspects of my Avaya phone systems, AS/400's and what ever else business systems that I have deployed.

I spent more money on Orion than I did with OpenView but once I did the discovery, I got get WAY MORE information out of it box with Orion than I could figure out in OpenView after a year. The web presentation in Orion for management and support personell is WAY more intuitive than OpenView.

It all boils down to what you need and how deep your pockets are.