What's Coming in Engineers Toolset 10.9 & Release Candidate Sign Up

We are nearing the Release Candidate stage of Toolset 10.9, so I wanted to share with folks some of the things we have done in this release, but also solicit customers who have Engineers Toolset with active maintenance for their help in testing out some new things we added.

Our Roots

Toolset is how SolarWinds started and over the years, we have added more and more tools to where we now have over 50 tools engineers can use in troubleshooting issues.  While this is great, unless I know exactly what I need and where it is, sometimes finding the right tool to troubleshoot a problem can be difficult. 

Launch Pad – the Next Generation

With this in mind we have expanded on a concept we introduced a while back called the Launch Pad, but this one is on steroids.  Some things you will notice right off the bat are a Google-like search to help guide you in finding the right tool to solve the problem you are currently working.

Second is organization.  As you see on the left hand side with the folders, these are customizable and you can even create your own folders and organize which tools are in them in a way that makes sense to you and how you work.

This leads me to the third and one of my favorite things about the new Launch Pad - the ability to import other tools.  Ex. If you own DameWare MRC or use PuTTY or any other tool outside of toolset, you can import or link them to the Launch Pad, which includes entering a description (which is then exposed to the search described above) and adding them to the folders. 

The new Launch Pad should be your one stop shop for all your tools based troubleshooting needs, whether the tool comes from SolarWinds, is Open Source, or you purchased from another vendor.

But wait, there’s more…..

For many years, many of the older tools only worked with Cisco. Which back in the late 90’s made sense, but this is a different world today.  With this being said, we have expanded device support for many of our tools to other Cisco OS’s but also Juniper, which was the most highly requested vendor.  Going forward we plan to add more based on your demand.

Great, how can I try this out?

This is where my request for assistance comes in.  As we approach our release candidate phase, we would love feedback on the new  Launch Pad, but also those of you out there who have Juniper or Cisco Nexus gear, we would love to have you participate in the RC and give us feedback and ensure the broadest support against all the various OS versions and models these vendors offer.  While we have a nice lab, we cannot own every device Juniper releases as much as I would love to have them all. Below is a list of the tools by vendor we added support for.

Juniper Support (JunOS)

• Interface Monitors
• CPU monitoring
• Memory Monitoring
• Router CPU Load
• Advanced CPU Load
• Netflow Realtime
• Switch Port Mapper
• IP Network Browser
• Neighbor Map

Nexus Support

• Interface Monitors
• CPU Monitors
• Memory Monitors
• Router CPU Load
• Advanced CPU Load

These are many of the main things coming in Toolset 10.9 besides bug fixes.  If you are a customer on active maintenance and are interested in installing the RC when we release it, please let me know by signing up here.