clubjuggle

I agree. I can't stand it when the person I'm on the phone with repeats EVERYTHING back to me, not least because I'm usually calling from a cell phone and using up minutes.

1. We're mostly an MS SQL shop. 2. Yes, but that is a recent development. 3. Mostly SAM from the NOC. I don't know what if any additional tools the database group itself uses. 4. No idea.

I often wonder what the use case would be for Kiwi Syslog Server when I already have NPM. The filtration concept makes perfect sense, and I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I hadn't thought of it before. Great idea!

Thanks jbiggley. I agree with what you said about cost-savings. We've pushed hard for that within our NOC and are fortunately starting to gain some traction in that area, especially with newer managers.

I'm cursed with idiotic memory. It sounds similar, but it's actually very different! I find that sticking with the truth means less stuff I have to remember later.

This was a fun round; looking forward to the next! I also thought that Darth Vader/Voldemort would be much closer, though I did expect Vader to win.

No problem, glad to help. Thanks for sharing this with us, it was very informative!

Trials are helpful, but to often it comes to waiting until there's a problem and pointing out how the tool I had been asking for could have prevented it or resolved it faster. Fortunately my management has been somewhat successful in getting us at least some funding for new monitoring tools. Hopefully that continues.

The best approach can depend in part on how large the incident response team will be, because that dictates the extent to which the organization can withstand the loss of that carefully-trained employee, and still have adequate depth within the incident-response area.

True. I don't think excessive detail is usually necessary, but owning up is generally more beneficial than harmful.

I think @d09h is talking about getting the change approved to install the software in the first place and integrate it with the production NCM environment within the time window allowed for the contest. It's also quite possible that his or her employer already has a suitable lab enviroment for testing, in which case,…

That approach really only works in... ...wait for it... a Tolkien Ring network.

I seem to be getting moderated on at least half of my posts. Is there something I could be doing differently to reduce this? The community team has been very quick to approve my posts, but I'm sure this is creating unncessary work for them, EDIT: This post seems to have gotten moderated as well. Q.E.D.

Unfortunately the environments I've been in have not monitored this as well as I would like. I'm curious to hear your suggestions for monitoring this proactively in future posts.

They're mocking us, I tell you! MOCKING!

I don't believe it does, but a typical barcode scanner essentially acts as a keyboard input. You just click in the appropriate field and scan.

What's sad is that in many cases, the system owners or management don't want to pay for the needed storage, but when that "aged-out" data is later needed, demand explanations as to why it isn't available and can't be reconstructed. It's funny how the funding suddenly becomes available once that happens.

Is there a competing product that offers this functionality? If not, most equipment has serial number bar codes on them. Could you use Bluetooth scanners to scan the device's serial number into your ticket?

We're not as geared to availability as we should be. From a network perspective, we're pretty good. On the application side, it depends on the extent to which the application owner wants it. If they do, we'll work with them to monitor the paramters they define.

Well, there's your problem.

It would be really nice (and an elegant solution to this) to extend the existing Manage Pollers functionality to support selecting an OID to override the default for System Uptime.

Some VPs tend to like the idea of monitoring users until they connect that they are users also and will be included in the monitoring.

I've been a user of NCM since the Cirrus days. In my experience I have found nightly configuration management and real-time configuration tracking to be tremendously valuable, and irreplaceable in the event of equipment failure or a critcal configuration error.

I think another, related point, is that a "checkbox security" item can lull an organization into a false sense of security (pun intended). When someone later suggests implementing an effective solution, management will tend to reject the idea on the grounds that the "solution" already in place is adequate. They'll claim…

Disagree. I think it's best to upgrade one module at a time. That way if I have a problem, I know where the problem is, or at least which support group to engage.

Ah, yes. Feeping creaturism at its best.

I hate it when I do that! Reminds me of this one:

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Thanks for putting this together. I'm a veteran user of the Solarwinds platform, but new to SRM. This is a very useful intro.