What's most important to you when choosing an NMS?

I’ve worked with a few different network management systems in my career, some commercial and some open source. Based on my experience with each one of them, I’ve developed certain qualities that I look for when deciding on which product to recommend or use.

One common theme that always seems to come up when comparing experiences with my peers is how easy it is to implement and operate product $A vs product $B?

In my opinion, implementation and operation of a product are critical when accessing any product, not just a NMS. If it’s not easy to implement, how are you ever going to get it off the ground? Will training be necessary just to install it? IF you ever do get it off the ground and running, will it take a small army to keep it going? Will you have to dedicate time and resources each day just to cultivate that product? How can you trust a product with the management and monitoring of your network environment, if it crashes all the time or if you have to be a Jedi to unlock all of its mystical bells and whistles?

With that being said, what do you look for in a network management system? Easy to install? Intuitive interface? All the features you could wish for? Is cost the ultimate factor? I’d love to hear what you all think.

Regards,

Keith

  • - Amount of capable data

    - Reliability

    - Support

    - Stability

    - Security

    - Cost

  • Keeping it as simple and realistic as I can, at least in my world, this is how it plays out for us.

    Through the admins/users point of view:

    1. Reliability
    2. Ease of use
    3. Support/Training

    Through the people writing the purchase orders:

    1. Money
    2. Does it show us flashing green lights
    3. Do we really need all those things that make it work, or can we just get something we do not need?
    4. Nevermind about the money... If you need it, and it will do 100% what we need, then there is no money in the budget. However, if we do not need it, AND it will not do what we need it to do, then let's get 2 of them.

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    Okay, so maybe that is not exactly how it goes... but my brain is telling me that is close enough...

  • I would say first is reliability of the solution, then followed by tools that allows you to accomplish the goals of your organizations NMS, whether it be basic monitoring of up/down, interface utilization, etc.  Finally being able to get it setup how you like and letting it do it's things, have a solution that doesn't require a lot of maintenance/management after the setup is key to me since this isn't my primary/only responsibility.

  • 1. Amount of training required by staff to utilize

    2. Reliability

    3. Cost

  • Having the unique situation where I can see monitoring tools in multiple enterprise environments weekly, I would personally rank the following:

    1. Ease of use for the NOC
    2. High level of detail available to the upper level engineers
    3. Ease of reporting and trending for management and stakeholders
    4. Customization options (this should include open access to the database, the web interface, AND a good API)
      • There is no such thing as an out-of-the-box "right tool" for an organization. There is a best tool. Allowing me to hack, slash, modify, and automate that tool is what makes it become the right tool.

    Realistically, we are at a point with monitoring that there is not much that any one tool has over the others as far as the basic technology goes. SNMP/WMI/ICMP don't change much. What really sets things aside are how the different offerings "fit" in an organization. Oftentimes, what makes SolarWinds so darn great is that it can either be a simple PnP solution that is stood up and operational in a few hours; or it can be a lifetime career with unending possibilities for the engineers and the business. emoticons_wink.png

Thwack - Symbolize TM, R, and C