Getting started with creating network maps on SW 2020.2.6

If I want SolarWinds to scan my network and build a map from the connections it finds, what are the requirements?

I have HFS, NPM HF3, NTA HF2. Do I need SNMP running on the switches? Do I need to monitor all the interconnecting interfaces>

I would rather not use outside of Solar Winds mapping products and then have to import as we did some years ago with Atlas, I believe it was.

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adam.beedell

The short but unhelpful answer is "Topology data", if there's some of that it can be auto-mapped to some extent.

You can get that from SNMP routing data, as well as other sources

If you want the full network map of everything I dont know of any one-step process to get there, usually you've got to not-do that because it creates a horrible laggy nightmare in an environment of reasonable size

What you can probably do is bring in some nodes you care about to a map, and see if SLW will connect the dots. If if doesnt, use the connected-stuff icon to pul in related things and drop in the intermediary nodes, build out from there

Probably someone's got a better workflow

Network atlas is still around and not deprecated yet, plans are on the roadmap to deprecate soonish, with orion maps upgrades to match.

I like orion maps a lot, but it's currently much better as a general-purpose UI tool than a network atlas 2.0

Come to think of it, i'm not sure what they're still called now the "orion" nomenclature has passed

John-AVUSD

As a start, I would like the site routers and their connections to show. That way, I can see what schools are up and still connected to our data center. So, if I have SNMP setup on those 15 sites, would that be enough to get a map of that? I don't know what Solarwinds needs to show both ends of the data-center to site link. If I have to manually pick those interfaces to monitor, I can do that. I just remember being told at Cisco-Live! a few years ago how the new version of Solar Winds would do maps automatically.

adam.beedell

The specifics can matter a lot here, but i'd expect if you had your 15 site routers and your datacenter edge and dropped em all in they'd probably get linked together without doing much else.

You might have issues if you have some sort of complicated routing inbetween where you're going through an unknown SD-WANs or VPNS and some equipment you dont own from an ISP or whatever.

Solveable problems if you have them though

John-AVUSD

The links from the data center to the schools are all BGP and we own those fiber links. I have the IP for each endpoint from school to school. The links to our ISPs I just have our local end, of course. Do I need to have SNMP running on those switches or just choose to monitor those interfaces specifically?

stuartd

The KB article for this is: https://support.solarwinds.com/SuccessCenter/s/article/Network-topology-considerations?language=en_US

The key takeaway from that is:

"NPM obtains topology information about your network using CDP or LLDP via Network topology as well as ARP and CAM. The data is polled from each device via SNMP and Orion does not do any invasive network scanning to obtain this data. Core routers using autonomous routing protocols may cause increased load on the Orion server when processing this information."

Also, do be aware, that any "auto map" you create will hide multiple links between the same two nodes. So if you have two links that are port-channelled and you monitor all 3 links, then you will only see one line on your map. Hovering over it in Network Atlas reveals all 3 are picked up and in Orion Maps if clicked on it should display all links on the right hand side.

John-AVUSD

I found that the simple shift-click method does not work on a Mac OS and it doesn't matter if you use the cmd-click or option-click. You can't select two nodes that way. If you can click and drag it does work. This is the case even in a Windows VM on a Mac. Using a real Windows PC was the solution.

Thanks for the help in this thread.

stuartd

Yup - I've found Shift +Click doesn't work - I HAVE to use Ctrl +Click or click drag the mouse to cove both objects.