I was so happy when I got hold of the EE tookit and the network performance monitor (NPM), as it gave me what I was missing - the continous pulse sound of my network.. you know the one you need to be sure everything works allright
First I just tested from a Compaq Deskpro EN (933MHz P3, 392MB RAM, 100Mbit link to core). I got to the point where I had 23 network node elements in the list and 2400+ interface elements. Polling interval was set to per minute for network node elements, and 10minutes for interface elements.
Response was increasingly slower, and I always had outstanding SNMP queries. I checked the network traffic to see if I was killing it off, but nope - just 50Kbit/sec throughput and not an alarmingly high PPS count.
I have at least 60-70 network nodes that I want to monitor though, so where to go from here?
I figured that I needed to test using a server, but the only server my manager had for my immediate use, was a Compaq Proliant 1850R with dual P2 400MHz's and a gig full of RAM - running Windows 2000 Server.
I was worried about it, and I was proven true; this server hardware was even performing worse than my little desktop computer.
I hope to get my hands on a HP P4 pizzabox server some time in the future, but I will be testing a HP P4 2.4GHz desktop first.
Just a few words on my experiences with the NPM.
I would really appreciate feedback from others that are using the NPM, especially related to performance and how you are tuning your systems.
My network consists of about 1600 client/server nodes, tied together with about 70 switches and routers. A medium-sized network for my region I'd say.
Best regards,
Ørjan Sandland