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Orion Wish List – Top 5 features

FormerMember

Hi everyone. I’m the new product manager for Orion. Josh has already given you some ideas about what we’re going to be delivering in Orion 8.0. One of our goals is to provide a longer-term roadmap so that you have some idea of what’s coming in future versions.

Consequently, while we are finishing up 8.0, I am thinking about Orion 9.0 and beyond. I’ve been contacting customers individually regarding what they’d like to see in the future. I’m also about to send a survey out to a random sample of customers asking them similar questions.

I know those of you in the forums frequently ask for features, and we do read the forums and take note of those requests. But since I’m working on the roadmap right now, I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask folks to take a few minutes and share your wish list.

Give me your top 5 requests. Please think broadly. These features might be changes to Orion or they might be add-ons to Orion that address new network management problems.

Denny LeCompte
Sr. Product Manager, Orion
SolarWinds

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smcdonald

Couple of things we'd love to see (so we can get rid of some of the other 3 monitoring systems we use!)

1) Auto Discovery for Map making - doing it by hand is too time consuming - we gave up and use Openview NNM instead

2) MAC Address to IP & DNS Name resolution for switch ports so we can see what device is on the end of each port - perhaps even automatically link to the node in solarwinds if it recognises the name - a huge help for our helpdesk - we use another 3rd party product to do this currently

3) The ability to monitor a port/device LIVE so I can actually see the traffic levels/CPU/Memory as it happens when I need to closely monitor something instead of having to go through the management interface and adjust polling etc and then remember to scale it back later...
Again - we use a separate 3rd party monitoring utility to do this - using things like the Engineering Toolset doesn't work for us since it needs to be installed on every PC - we have a regional support team in several countries and we're often moving around the building using various PCs - anything that runs purely from a web browser is seriously helpful!

4) Dynamic Application monitoring - the ability to see say the top 10 apps running on a server without having to add them to start with - that way I can see why my server is 100% before I even log into it or add individually all the processes that server runs to the App Monitor plugin

5) FULL Web based management so I don't have to keep logging into the server to make changes...

Thanks!
Sean

smcdonald

Oh - one more thing

We'd really love to see port descriptions from CatOS Cisco switches to come through on Orion - I see it only works for IOS devices right now - but majority of our 100+ switches are CatOS and will be so for a very long time to come...

Thanks!
Sean

Network_Guru

Hi Sean,

Number 2 & 3 are already possible using the Solarwinds Engineering edition software which now integrates with Orion.
The Switch port mapper is still a manual process, but the results can be exported to a web page which can be linked to or hosted on the Orion server.

-=Cheers=-
NG

adezoete

Denny,

I have some wishes with the broadband version of Orion, as we use this to monitor CMTS's, switches and cable modems.

1. the possibility to make sub-dirs in the orion system manager so you can bundle the equipment.
2. an sort-option of the equipment and interfaces. For a CMTS you have a chassis, blades and on the specific blades a number of interfaces. By adding or deleting interfaces the interfaces are displayed randomly now.
For instance:
Downstream 1/2/1 (stands for chassis 1, blade 2, downstream 1)
Upstream 1/2/1
Upstream 1/2/2
3. At the moment we see some differences in values using the report writer and the orion system manager. For instance measuring the Signal/Noise ratio. It would be nice that the same values are displayed. Even better in graphical format.
4. I forward alerts via email and SMS to PDA's of our suport engineers. When alerts occur on CMTS or switch interfaces (simultaneously), it would be nice to have features like deduplication, filtering, correlation, delaying of sending a SMS or email. Deduplication and delaying notifications could be interesting for us, because sometimes Solarwinds misses some returning SNMP messages when it polls nodes or collecting data. So in that case you want to deduplicate alarm messages of the interfaces to 1 message (with a counter of the number of bundled messages and secondly wait till the next poll or collecting the data has occured before sending a notification/alert to the support engineer. Now the system sends for each interface of a CMTS or switch a SMS and email when an alarm raises (and clears).
5. The last one would be the option to configure particular broadband alerts. The only options you can do now has to do with node or interface alerts of CMTS's, switches, routers or servers. It would be nice to have alerts like for instance signal/noise ratio problems.

bleearg13

Two features that would be extremely helpful:

1. Built-in Report Scheduler. In this day and age, it doesn't make sense that one of the most useful features for Orion is an unsupported application.
2. For some reason in Outlook (not Outlook Express, or any other email application, for that matter), the 'http://hostname/'; gets stripped from all URLs that are sent in the reports. I'm not sure what causes this, but it would be helpful if it worked.

torrielw

A little more intelligence with Auto Discovery would be great. We monitor the loopback address of all our routers (over 1600) When discovery runs it will add existing devices forcing me to manually delete duplicates. Discovery should look at more than the ip address before adding a device to the DB. I hope that the import list function will be fixed in the new release.

MapMaker could use a little more intelligence also.
Would be nice if it could add devices to states based on custom property. Or tell you that a device has already been added preventing or/allowing for duplicates.

Alert suppression is entirely too complicated. Especially where there are multiple dependencies.

And what's up with the "leave a msg and we will call you back"? Last week I couldn't get assistance because my maintenance agreement had expired. This week I'm a paid customer and can't get you to answer the phone. Wish you had of made that change before I paid!!!!!!!

quote:Originally posted by smcdonald

Couple of things we'd love to see (so we can get rid of some of the other 3 monitoring systems we use!)

1) Auto Discovery for Map making - doing it by hand is too time consuming - we gave up and use Openview NNM instead

2) MAC Address to IP & DNS Name resolution for switch ports so we can see what device is on the end of each port - perhaps even automatically link to the node in solarwinds if it recognises the name - a huge help for our helpdesk - we use another 3rd party product to do this currently

3) The ability to monitor a port/device LIVE so I can actually see the traffic levels/CPU/Memory as it happens when I need to closely monitor something instead of having to go through the management interface and adjust polling etc and then remember to scale it back later...
Again - we use a separate 3rd party monitoring utility to do this - using things like the Engineering Toolset doesn't work for us since it needs to be installed on every PC - we have a regional support team in several countries and we're often moving around the building using various PCs - anything that runs purely from a web browser is seriously helpful!

4) Dynamic Application monitoring - the ability to see say the top 10 apps running on a server without having to add them to start with - that way I can see why my server is 100% before I even log into it or add individually all the processes that server runs to the App Monitor plugin

5) FULL Web based management so I don't have to keep logging into the server to make changes...

Thanks!
Sean

casmith32

another one I came across while updating my alerts:

I'd like to see a action or notification template for alerts. for example, I could create an "alert profile" that would define the type of action, it's relavent settings (i.e. email, programs, etc). Then as I create alerts/notifications, I can simply assign an action profile to that alert.

This accomplishes a couple of things:

1) As I setup alerts, I don't have to constantly enter repetative information. For example, setting up email alerts... adding the same email addresses, server, etc.

2) Changes - this one is a biggie. I could simply change the profile properties, and those changes would be propagated to all alerts that use that profile. For example, right now as per the way we have to alert on a per site basis w/ dependencies on the local wan router, we have approx 60+ alerts. Each of those alerts send email notification to the same addresses, server, etc. Sure would be nice to be able to simply change the email address or server in a "profile" and have that rippled through to every alert, instead of hitting and updating every alert manually as I have to do right now.

mkocsis

I'm not sure if this will be covered in V8, but how about the ability to schedule maint (non-managed) time. Right now I have to get up at 3:00 AM to put a server into maint.

Also, the ability to put just one interface into maint instead of the entire device.

Michael K.

jrichards04

Biggest enhancement for me would be fixing the discovery piece. Issues are as follows:

More intelligent about device additions, if a device has multiple interfaces do not add it multiple times. Even the ability to group interfaces under a single device would be great.
More intelligent about device removal. If I delete a device from Orion it gets added back in on the next discovery. If the device is not found for more than a certain amount of time it should be auto deleted from the discovery database. This timeframe should be something the user can set.
The ability to run the discovery as a service. This is a huge issue for us. New equipment added to the network is much more likely to have an issue or be mis-configured. If Orion picked the device up quickly after being added to the network we would detect problems immediately.
Add the newly discovered or correct community string to a device already in NPM. If a device gets discovered and the community string had not been set it has to be manually changed in NPM. Also, we periodically change our community strings, I have not found an easy way to do a wholesale change like this.

pancamo

A complete Auto Discovery environment for large environments.

Basically I would like a auto discovery tool that will allow the administrator to manage changes daily. Discovery would run 24/7 (required) and show changes to the network/servers and allow the admin to turn on or off monitoring very quickly.

sdesmarais

Alert Manager

1.) I would like to see within alert manager the ability to setup templates to work off of without losing any on the information when you copy the alert.

2.) The ability to setup templates for Trigger Actions and Reset Actions, so that all you need to do is modifiy the templates and each currently setup alert would be updated with the new Actions and message.

Steve Desmarais

Debbi

Scheduling maintenance windows I have asked for for a long time. It amazes me that that has not been programmed into Orion yet.

The filters for alerting are not nearly as powerful as our much cheaper Kiwi syslog program. That is one reason we have not changed over to using Orion's syslog service. If you guys fired up Kiwi and looked at it you would get some great ideas for Orion alerting. Being able to just click on what hours to include or not, being able to get alerts if an event happens 4 times in 60 seconds, suppressing alerts for an hour after the first alert message - stuff like that would be great! -Debbi

tgoyette

I think integrating the support ID and password into the system manager would be helpful. I would also like to see something like Port Mapper integrated into Orion that could be accessed via the WEB interface.

tgoyette

quote:Originally posted by michael.buskin

Customer Area Intergration

I hate having to remember my customer id and password, so why not intergrated ith with System Manager, so a user would click a menu option and be automaticly redirect tot eh customer area

Regards,

Michael Buskin
+61415369688

tgoyette

I have been told that although there is no way to change the password online to something more to your liking you can call support and have them change it for you

quote:Originally posted by michael.buskin

Customer Area Intergration

I hate having to remember my customer id and password, so why not intergrated ith with System Manager, so a user would click a menu option and be automaticly redirect tot eh customer area

Regards,

Michael Buskin
+61415369688

DannyMc

1) Custom MIBs
2) Native Switch Port Mapper functionality in Orion.
3) Custom MIBs
4) Port Monitoring
5) Custom MIBs

Thanks,
Danny Mc?

FormerMember

DannyMc,

Just wanted to let you know that Custom MIBs will be in 8.0, which we will ship in mid-December.

The other features are things we are considering for our next release.

Denny

Denny LeCompte
Sr. Product Manager, Orion
SolarWinds

patwill66

I would like to see:

- Port Monitoring. We currently use Nagios to monitor ports on servers and I would love to be able to get rid of it.

- I would like to have the same type of control via the web as I currently do on the console. I would like to be able to add devices, change interfaces, etc... from the web instead of the console.

- It would be nice to have the same functionality of the syslog viewer in the web as you do on the console. Currently you cant search by IP address in the syslog messages via the web which would be very helpful.

- Audible alerts from the webpage when certain events happen

- It would be cool to be able to view syslog messages like they are viewed in Splunk.

AZ_Tech

I apologize if what I am covering has been covered I did a some looking but did not locate anything and wanted to get my two cents in. We have used Orion for years and have found it to be very usefull with the exception of a few things.

The first being custom mibs. We run wireless that uses V1 of the SNMP and I want to be able to just watch a single thing. We have to run two systems.

Second the alerts we have to run a second system because it is just not flexible enough. For instance if I want to monitor a server for high CPU I don't want to know about a spike, I need to know when it is stuck. Same with a down device. I want to know after it has failed three times and only be notified once or twice. I cannot control it and therefore don't use it.

Most other things work ok. Sometimes the mapping would be nice if there were a few more options to be able to actually draw some basic maps rather than having to do a visio, import etc. Seems like our maps lag because we don't have time to go through the steps. Being able to do it on the fly would be great.

Being able to configure more through the web is always nice. All in all it has been a good product and would be hard to live without. It is a little frusterating to have to run Kiwi to get the syslog functionality we need and run ipsentry for alerts etc.

But then we bought it for trend analysis which is does with the exception of the devices we can't get to without the use of the custom mibs.

Shirley E. Pulsipher

bosmeny

Denny,

I am confused. I am trying to integrate ORION with a third-party customer management system. On your website, you state: "Orion's Web interface is built for easy customization and includes methods for integrating third party application data or for referencing Orion's data from within other Websites via the fully programmable Web API."

I just got off the phone with tech support, who said the only functionality related to this is the custom HTML/Text fuction within ORION. While this is a useful addition, it is hardly a fully programmable API (not even close).

I can find no documentation anywhere on this. What's the scoop on this and how do we access the fully programmable API?

Bill

zeeshanmasood

My Top 5 Wish List for new Orion version:

1> Customize MIBs
2> Full Juniper Product Support (Including Juniper Routers, Juniper Netscreen Firewalls)
3> Full Foundry Product Support (Including BigIron, FastIron & EdgeIron)
4> Servers and APplication Port Monitoring
5> Alert Ticker on Client Machines (These tickers should me customized and administrator can modify the message pattern and color and can configure these alerts at required user machines)

Dal

Hi!
I'm pretty new to Orion, and the first problem I encountered was:
Please make so that items in the network summary (like the network map) can span over multiple columns. I know I can change the whole page to be just one column, but I want to be able to have multiple columns below a wide big network map, for instance. (This should be easy to implement, please don't make me wait until v9 for this).
So, wish #1: More advanced customization for the web pages.
#2: Merge with Cirrus (and Netflow plugin

)
#3: Logon against LDAP/AD/Radius/etc.
#4: In MapMaker, on network links, we should be able to mark TWO interfaces, one FROM and one TO, so I don't have to make 2 network links for each connection.
#5: Complete makeover of the icon database in MapMaker. The y aren't exactly pretty

And there are too few.

This is what is on top of my head right now anyway.
Thanks for listening.

Oystein Gasdal
Norway

bob557

A display of the # of TCP connections active in the OS as a standard resource would be good. (MRTG does it)

vbowers

I know that I replied to this topic early on, but wanted to chime in again. I agree with several other posters in asking for better integration with Application Monitor. We should be able to imbed app monitors in our maps for alerting purposes just as we can network interfaces.

Again, agreeing with earlier posters, improvement in report writing to make it possible to create exception reports, on network resources and applications, would be a HUGE improvement. Exception reports are great, once set up, at helping you get a handle on your environment. Wish I could do that with Orion.

Mithrilhall

I'll ask for the impossible....

Support for other database systems (Oracle, MySQL, ...).
A rewrite of all the ASP code to PHP (PHP is much faster IMO and has tons of free add-ons).

hssrs

quote:Originally posted by rangertdc

First off I would like to thank you all for the new information about version 8, I'm really looking forward to it and was excited to see some new solid information about it.

Aside from the already announced features here a couple I woudln't mind seeing.

1) Make it easier to adjust time frames of graphs with a single click. I.e. to be able to move forward or backward 24 hours in time on the graph with a single click

2) Allow multiple interface graphs on a single page. I think this can sort of be done with reports at this time, but I know I often want to be able to see the past 24 hours of activity on all 24 or 48 interfaces of a switch on a single page for troubleshooting purposes. I haven't found a way yet to do this with custom views.

3) Netflow graphing and reporting

4) AD intergrated logins that support AD groups. I've gotten pass-through authentication to work, but I can't get it to work with a group instead of a username. I.e. if I have 50 people on my helpdesk, I would like to be able to create a single helpdesk "account" in Orion with custom views, etc, and then assign my helpdesk AD group to that account, so if any of those 50 users in that group log in they receive the permissions and views of the helpdesk Orion account.

BryanBecker

Alot of good suggestions in here. One of the things I really need is Cisco SAA functionality. In Ciscoworks they had the Internetwork Performance Manager where I could set up pings between devices using ICMP/SNMP/VoIP etc. I want to trend the latency between different WAN connections.

Thanks.

BB

FormerMember

quote:Originally posted by vbowers

I know that I replied to this topic early on, but wanted to chime in again. I agree with several other posters in asking for better integration with Application Monitor. We should be able to imbed app monitors in our maps for alerting purposes just as we can network interfaces.

Again, agreeing with earlier posters, improvement in report writing to make it possible to create exception reports, on network resources and applications, would be a HUGE improvement. Exception reports are great, once set up, at helping you get a handle on your environment. Wish I could do that with Orion.

vbowers,

I know you posted this a few weeks ago, but could you give me more detail on what you mean by exception reports. It's a common term, but it's used to mean slightly different things by different people

Denny LeCompte
Sr. Product Manager, Orion
SolarWinds

dedwards

Top 5 would have to be:

1)MySQL Support
2)Web Administration - add, remove, edit nodes etc.
3)Port/service based status (i.e. port 80 alive and delivering web page)
4)Node/network topology linking (parent/child relationships or similar, you could then configure alert suppression easily i.e. if parent down do not alert for children) - could also link automatically on maps?
5)Ability to acknowledge all alerts (advanced is now there but not basic) and add ticket ref etc in web interface (basically simpler customisation or an api for better integration to third party helpdesks etc.)

Thanks

cherrypicker

I would like to see...

1. incorporate basic and advanced alerts together
2. ability to acknowledge alerts within the Orion webpage
3. ability to import custom mibs
4. alert escalation - the ability to schedule time for an individual or group (on call/not on call)
5. integrate netflow stats with the report writer

CP