Feature Request: A "real" NOC style view

Count my vote too!

Chris first of all I love the ideas and as someone who managed a NOC for 6 years I have created several different views to accomplish some of the tasks you are referring too.

One thing I have been doing recently is utilizing Google Chrome for my browser when it comes to the views we put up on our Video Wall.  There is a chrome extension called Revolver.  It allows the browser to automatically cycle between the tabs and reload the pages.  This allowed me to use bigger pages with less info and cycle through them on a set schedule.  While this is not a solution for what you are looking for you may find it beneficial.  

Another method I did years ago was to have one of my web guys write me a simple framed webpage that simply called different pages within solarwinds to allow me to show screens from multiple solarwinds servers or from different systems at once.

I'm not by any means dismissing what you are asking for because I could definitely use some of these features myself but rather simply suggesting ways you could accomplish some of what you are looking for.  I have worked in a NOC environment for 12 years so I have heard several of these type of requests in the past and have taken some of the exact steps you are taking now.

Chris

We run a NOC here as well so I totally understand this request.  The problem is that most people will likely have a different idea of what a NOC view should contain depending on things such as what the NOC is responsible for, what types of displays are present in the NOC (we have had different types over the years) and personal preference.

I would personally just like to see more flexibility (and UI modernization) allowing me to build my own views the way I want them to be.

Thoughts?

@mdriskell, @byrona,

I agree with both of you. There are many ways to accomplish a NOC view (I've even employeed some of the ones suggested). I'm just thinking that it shouldn't be necessary to work outside of Orion in order to acheive, what to me seems to be, a primary purpose of the product.

I would like to see a more expansive and customizable view beyond what is currently allowed with the existing Summary View type. That way if I want to build out a 20 column page, with node summaries, alerts, application statuses, a weathermap, and anything else I can think of; I can. Furthermore, as I think you were alluding to Byron, it should take advantage of current technologies (ie AJAX, Flash, Silverlite, etc.) so that we're not limited to full page updates every X minutes.

I'm looking for highly customizable and dynamicly updating views into the status of my network and applications, all without requireing me to develop a wrapper or use some other outside product.

Furthermore, as I think you were alluding to Byron, it should take advantage of current technologies (ie AJAX, Flash, Silverlite, etc.) so that we're not limited to full page updates every X minutes.

This is exactly what I meant!  Several aspects of the WebUI feel very outdated from a technology standpoint.

I would personally like to see HTML5, AJAX is good too.  Microsoft has announced that Silverlite is going away (and frankly I never cared for it) and Flash isn't supported on too many devices.

Since I am a geek I like to talk about the technology under the hood; however, as a user it really comes down to what the WebUI is able to do and less about the technology that makes it possible.

In general I think we can all agree that views customization would be much better if it were more flexible and the interface even better if it had some more "real-time" aspects.

In general I think we can all agree that views customization would be much better if it were more flexible and the interface even better if it had some more "real-time" aspects.

I'm dealing with this particular issue right now as I replace a live java Openview Message browser with a web based message browser for Solarwinds.  I'm forced to use a browser plug-in to refresh that view every 30 seconds in an effort to get us close to where we were with OV.

Guys,

Some of this (The Entire Page Refresh Issue) is what I tried to convey here:

And would like to add that we would live more flexibility in the page layout, not just for a NOC tough.  I vote for HTML5 though too.  Need it to work on our Windows Phone 7.5 devices OOB.

I don't know if it's concidered uncouth or in violation of the rules, but I've finally got a working starting point for what I'm calling my Orion NOC application and am willing, if people want it, to post the source files here.

Basically, it's just a ASP.NET web application using SWIS to get the data and display it in some custom lists. Right now I only have Alerts and Node statuses, but now that I have the layout working and am getting the hang of this whole C# .NET programming I think I may start to build out the data types more...

I'm working in Visual Studio 2010, so if you need an older solution let me know and I will see what I can do to export. I'm developing in .NET 3.5 as that's what is most common here for IIS.

Chris,

It is absolutely not in violation of any rules... please post to the Content Exchange. Anything that helps our community is welcome. Community extensions of the product are great.

If you post it there, please make sure you create a link to it from here.

Thank you!

Michael

I've posted the current project here: