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General Questions

Hi All,

I need help. I'm looking at a product to manage our network and considering the Orion product. Questions to all:
1) What do you like about this product?
2) Pros and Cons?
3) Found a review in Network Computing re: V6. What are the differences from V6 to V7?
4) How's the support?
5) Did you get training from this guys?
6) How long have you been using the product?

I've downloaded an eval copy and it looks good so far - really easy to use (compared to HP OV NNM.)

Thanks to all.

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Network_Guru

Orion is not a Network Management product.
It will only monitor your network.

1) For Newtork monitoring it's great.
2) See other threads in this forum & www2.solarwinds.net/.../topic.asp
3) See this page - solarwinds.net/.../OrionNPMUpdatesV7.htm
4) Support is quite good.
5) No training required - use the Video tutorials and on-line help - very extensive documentation.
6) Almost 2 years.

-=Cheers=-
NG

NatureBoy

Thanks for the info.

The Engineer's Edition looks like it would be a nice compliment to the Orion product (troubleshooting.) Have you had experience in this product also? What's your opinion?

Thanks again.

dimonet

We use the engineers edition as a supplimental troubleshooting tool. It has saved our butts on more than one ocassion and is definitely worth the cost. I highly reccomend it.

Regards,
Dimo

Network_Guru

It's a great tool for Cisco routers & switches.

The Cisco config tool is great. If you lock yourself out of a router/switch (password)
all you need is the RW SNMP string to over-write the config with a new password.
Switch port mapper is a great tool to verify what devices are plugged into all your
switch ports.
Lot's of other cool features, and most importantly, it's intuitively easy to use,
not like some of the other software out there.... (CiscoWorks 2000).

-=Cheers=-
NG

iunderwo

I'll throw my answers into the fray too:

1.) It's largely intuitive and easy to use and configure. The graphing engine is the best one I've seen used.

2a.) Pros: It's a limited NMS and what it does, it does extremely well. Web login gives myself and colleagues access to stats and figures of things we need to know that other platforms didn't (e.g. CPU / Memory Stats). Fairly lightweight polling requirements. Flexible per-node/per-interface polling interval. Custom property list for node and interfaces. Interface is very well-thought and slick.

2b.) Cons: It's a limited NMS and there's a lot that it doesn't do. Alert engine could be more versatile (multiple condition on same interface, expire alerts with no reset ability after a time). No SNMP trap / syslog receiver (which has been requested).

3.) v7 is a huge improvement over v6 in many aspects, particularly the addition of a custom properties field and improvements to the map maker.

4.) Support is pretty good, especially since I usually hit them with hard questions.

5.) Entirely self-taught, which is one of the nicest things about the package. It's getting more complex though, and I expect the manual to get a bit thicker as time goes on.

6.) Been evaluating for work for about 6 months and developing expertise in the software. Have used it personally since version 5. Full deployment begins in a week or so with 4,100 devices initially.

It is pricier than some other lower-end packages, but you do get what you pay for...no doubt.

// Ian Underwood - Service Management
// Level 3 Communications