Solarwinds: An NMS that you don't need a PHD to use

Like everyone else, I am very busy at my job, and I tend to be a jack of all trades. I find myself running from fire to fire, getting things under control. I wish I had time to be more proactive and do everything according to the text book.  But, the reality of a short staffed global manufacturing company doesn’t always allow for such luxuries. 

Sometimes things are insanely busy and I don’t know how I get through the day, every once in a while there is a lull in the action and it’s during these times I try to focus on making my network management station better and catch up with a lot of proactive maintenance. I know that in the long run, every hour I spend on the NMS, will be multiplied my times over in stress savings and performance improvements

These lulls don’t happen very often and when they do, I don’t have months to learn an overly complex, high priced NMS, that requires a degree in computer programming in order to get the simplest tasks done.  I know what I need to get done.  I just need to translate that into a task in the NMS.

That’s why I really like the Solarwinds suite of network management products, they are cost effective, easy to use, easy to install, and very easy to run and maintain and if I ever have an issue , I can just go jump on over to the thwack community and find what I’m looking for quickly and efficiently.  There are so many great products from Solarwinds.

They are a company that truly gets it, they understand that I don’t have a lot of time, to spend on learning SQL programming or Oracle databases, or PERL reports.  I just want to monitor my network, with a user friendly graphical user interface.  A few clicks here and there and I am literally up and running. 

Network management is not the main part of my job, in fact it’s a rather small part. I need to run and protect the business and keep the lights on and the machines running. There is such a huge return on investment, with Orion, it has saved my bacon many times, while nothing is perfect , I have to say that I am very happy and sleep better at night knowing I got someone watching my back. I hate being woken up by the pager at 3am, but  that happens a lot less nowadays. I know now what the problem is and get to work on fixing it, instead of fumbling around wondering what happened, and having people asking me for status every 5 minutes.

How are you using your NMS, is it your full time job? I think most people are like me, they have a lot of other things to get done.  I am so thankful the product is so easy to use, it really makes my job that much better.

It’s hard to fix something if you don’t know what is broken. And my NMS is my eye in the sky. Those help desk tickets won’t stop coming in. The phone doesn’t stop ringing, but hey I got this. How bout you?