THWACK [Mini] Mission: Network Management

There are gems in your network; you've seen them yourself. In the nodes and the data. It takes a special person to see them when they happen to reveal themselves, and an even more avid fan to go looking for them. You've made a career out of finding these hidden treasures – they appear to you as though you called them from the ether. 

You have a secret though – you're monitoring your network with a slew of products made specifically for your needs. You can find clusters of gems in the most convoluted of networks. This is your calling. Your mission. Your passion. While you've kept it to yourself in the past, this month, you're bringing your talents to the public. Ready to go digging for hidden gems?

MISSION SHORTCUT

Complete the mission shortcut between August 17, 2020 and August 30, 2020 to be entered to win a Telescope!

The Flow Tool bundle from SolarWinds is a versatile collection for your troubleshooting tooldbox, Netflow Generator, Netflow Replicator, and Netflow Configurator. You can use the NetFlow Generator to check firewall rules or load balancer configurations or to generate demo traffic to test NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. The NetFlow Replicator can be used to send a single stream of flow traffic from your network infrastructure to a single destination, and then consume it in multiple NTA instances. Lastly, NetFlow Configurator offers a simple method to set up basic NetFlow v5 on a single device at a time, and you can also consider trying Network Configuration Manager to automate mass changes in yourr network to enable NetFlow export.

Shortcut Steps:

1. Download the Flow Tool Bundle here: https://www.solarwinds.com/free-tools/flow-tool-bundle
2. Second, unzip the bundle. Inside, you'll find three installers—one for the Flow Replicator, one for the Flow Generator, and one for the Flow Configurator. To install one or more of these, execute the installer file, and follow the prompts. NOTE: You can install only what you need; you don't have to install all three on the same system.
3. For today's Shortcut, let's launch the utility for NetFlow Configurator.
4. Enter the IP address of the router where you would like to configure NetFlow v5. The utility will report if the device doesn't support this method of configuration. 
5. To read and modify the configuration, you can use SNMP v1, v2, or v3. Enter the appropriate credentials and select "Next" to read the current device configuration.
6. The current device configuration will show you the destinations for flow currently enabled or allow you to specify two destinations for the device to forward NetFlow records.
7. Select the checkboxes for the desired configuration and then select "Apply." 
8. Take a screenshot of your config and submit it here.

DOWNLOAD FREE BUNDLE  SUBMIT SCREENSHOT