Re: Grouping Devices

cbrimmer · ‎06-18-2003

I was curious if there was a way to group devices for ease of use. I'll give you an example:

We are monitoring our QAM devices on the system. There are about 10-15 per office. We'd like to be able to group all those devices in an "office x" link so that we could place them on the network map or to have another page to look at. Has anyone done this or looked at doing this?

Thanks.

Christopher Brimmer
Broadband Network Technician
Time Warner Cable - Milwaukee

BryanBecker · ‎08-18-2003

Ok Don...based on your response :

1. If v7.0 is almost ready does that mean 6.4 is the last V6 version and then will go into v7.0? I thought I read that v6.5 is coming out soon.

2. Will v7.0 reguire upgrade $$$ or is it covered under mainteance?

3. What is the eta on v7.0?

4. Any way to tell use what's coming with this new version?

Thanks.

BB

DonYonce · ‎08-15-2003

Product update notice from Don ...

The next major release of Network Performance Monitor (v7.0) will include a number of methods to group Nodes. This is one of the most frequently asked for enhancements.

The development for Arbitrary Node Grouping is complete, but still requires the NPM v7.0 engine. Most of the development for NPM v7.0 has been completed and is in testing and documentation now. SolarWinds will be publishing a release date as soon as the schedule has been finalized.

Thanks,
Don Yonce
SolarWinds Founder and Chief Architect

Isaac · ‎08-15-2003

Take a look at the response below. By the way most of these new topics being launched detailing feature requests already have threads open in the Feature Request Topic.

In reference to number 1:

I realize that you are looking for something a bit more detailed but this should get your brain moving.

I have modified the 01-AllNodes.Resource file to display the device vendor type icon and also to order the list first by vendor and then by caption. You could just as easily use the SNMP location field to order devices. If you use defined location labelling schemes for SNMP this would allow you to order by location, vendor, and caption.

If you need assistance with this let me know. I have been ripping through the resource files ever since rix gave me the heads up. We now have a whole list of customizations running on the web interface that greatly improve the utility of the product.





<%
Title="All Nodes"
HelpPage="AllNodes"
DoResourceHeader

Set SQLResource = NetPerfMon.NewSQLResource
SQLResource.SQL="Select NodeID,Caption,Nodes.GroupStatus,Nodes.VendorIcon From Nodes Order By Vendor,Caption"
SQLResource.Execute
%>

<table border="0" cellPadding="2" cellSpacing="0" width="100%">
<% Do While Not SQLResource.EOF %>
<tr>
<td class="Property" vAlign="center" width="20"><%=SQLResource.GetProperty("GroupStatus;SmallIcon")%> </td>
<td class="Property"><a href="https://thwack.solarwinds.com/NetPerfMon/View.asp?View=NodeDetails&NetObject=N:<%=SQLResource.GetProperty("NodeID")%>"><%=SQLResource.GetProperty("Caption")%></a> </td>
<td class="Property" vAlign="center" width="20"><%=SQLResource.GetProperty("VendorIcon")%></td>
</tr>

<%
SQLResource.MoveNext
Loop
%>
</table>
<br>

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by rcouget

We are running Orion with approximately 30K elements sread across 2 front end pollers and 1 backend 4.6 GIG Enterprise SQL database. I have a few feature requests.

1. The ability to group elements on the Home page by folder as opposed to maps. We are a large ISP and the ability to group elements based on market, and type of CPE would be tremendously helpful.

2. Orion today will auto discover "NEW" elements of a node but will not start polling these automatically. We are provisioning daily on our routers and having to list elements and then do a select all on 40 nodes with up to a thousand interfaces per node. This is a tremendously time consuming task.

3. When an element for a node is deleted, the node shows up as unknown as opposed to auto deleting out of the database.

4. We need the ability to mark an element as not wanting to be polled. Today we have to go to the node, and delete elements we don't want to poll. It is to cumbersome to have to handle these in the current methodology.

5. We need to be able to not poll an entire group of interfaces based on type. I.E. we use ATM sub-interfaces, the router gives up an atm sub-if element and a aal5 element for every atm sub-interface creted for a customer. There is nothing informative about the sub-if of the 2, the aal5 has all the info about the sub-interface. This has added approximately 8000 elements that are being polled and do not need to be, adding a lot of overhead on the pollers.

gonzajoh · ‎08-12-2003

The point is, the product can't group devices, which is quite a major omission. If I've purchased Orion SLX, I don't want to see 2000 nodes listed in the one overview page, that's rediculous. When are we going to be given the ability to group devices into user defined groups?

Network_Guru · ‎07-15-2003

Since the nodes are listed alphabetically, we use prefixes to group
our devices - DNS-xxx, MSG-xxx by device type or WA-xxx, CA-xxx
for state or Office location. This also allows us to create web
accounts with views and maps of only certain device according
to the prefix assigned.

NG

BryanBecker · ‎07-02-2003

I asked Tech Support the same issue awhile ago. I would like to see on the main site on the left had siade under All Nodes some sort of grouping capability (tree-like). We have over 200 devices and it would be nice to group them just like they are one the maps.

JWilliams · ‎06-19-2003

I've done something similar to this by putting them on a default map, and choosing "List of Objects on Network Map" - works fairly well.

So, you'd put your 10 devices on some map, then add that list of objects to the view?

Woodzy · ‎06-19-2003

I don't think you can group them on the webpage. That feature would be really nice, but I have just been naming my devices by Region, Provider then City. It helps a little bit when using the system manager or the web page to scroll through 100's of nodes

For Example:

USA - Worldcom - San Jose T1
USA - C&W - Chicago T1
Canada - Bell - Toronto DS3

cbrimmer · ‎06-19-2003

No it isn't totally wrong. I was also wondering if there was a way to simply sort the devices within the webpages themselves without using map nesting.. I was poking around for a few hours yesterday and there doesn't seem to be that feature.

Thanks.

Christopher Brimmer
Broadband Network Technician
Time Warner Cable - Milwaukee