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How did you load balance?

I am about to add an additional poller to my network and would like some advice about load balancing.

I would like input both from users that have only Orion and from those that have additional modules installed.

If you have only Orion installed, what criteria did you use in deciding how to assign nodes to each poller?

If you have NTA, APM or VoIP installed, did you buy the additional poller versions of the modules for the new pollers so that each poller could monitor any node, or did you opt to save money by assigning nodes being monitored for those things on a single poller?

Any input will greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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FormerMember

i am about to purchase 2 addtional pollers, and i am purchasing APM pollers for them also. i was not aware that you could purchase VoIP and NTA modules for them....

neilmborilla

Recommendations:

1. Per Device ( ex. poller 1 = all cisco| poller 2=all servers| poller 3=other)

2.Per Site (ex. poller 1 = site A to B | Poller 2 = Site C to E)

If you have NTA, APM or VoIP installed, did you buy the additional poller versions of the modules for the new pollers so that each poller could monitor any node, or did you opt to save money by assigning nodes being monitored for those things on a single poller?

You can get more info on customer service

ElisabethZakes

Your sales representative can also advise you on what you'd need based on your environment and other variables.

freemen

Elizabeth, please check me on my original statement though. It is true, is it not, that one must purchase additional modules for each application that you want an additional poller to be able to run, correct?

freemen

neilmborilla,

I take it that you have implemented one or the other of these scenarios on your network. Which approach did you use and how many elements did each poller end up monitoring?

Anyone else want to describe their multi-poller environment and the how and why of how you load balanced?

Congo

I am currently at 3 pollers.

We have one poller that we keep servers, Cisco, APM, Voip, and the website on. We do this for ease of SNMP ACL management. It also logically keeps all of our 'core' equipment in one place. Sort of like placing all of our eggs into one basket, but we never run into problems. ~4000 elements

Our second poller delves mainly into customer prem equipment, so a lot of ICMP only nodes. ~5000 elements

Our third poller has 3 nodes total, but over 9800 elements!! This poller specifically monitors DSL terminations.

All of these report back to the same database. 18000 elements and rising daily!

So, we basically like to keep things logically, instead of geographically separated. Since all of our pollers reside in the same rack, there would be no benefit to us for splitting up by distance.

Really, load balancing would all come down to how your network is arranged. As we are an ISP and services provider, this seemed the best for our environment.

neilmborilla

Every design has it's own pro's and con's.

Like for congo's case, what if the poller engine that runs on all critical devices failed? You will then lose visibility on all of your critical devices.

Same thing with geographically setup or per site, You will know which sites are affected if that polling engine fails.

Unless of course, you are fully covered by hotstandby engine.

One best thing that our senior engineer's suggested is that lessen up the load of your primary server (w/ web server) that will help speed up the web site and other function.