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How to test/evaluate network management tools?

rigobert over 9 years ago

Hi,

I want to test and evaluate the solarwinds suite and especially NPM.

The problem is that I have to evaluate it for a large and complex network but I don't know what is the best and most comfortable way to set up an appropriate test environment!

It is hard to set up a real/physical test environment which should be large and complex because I would need a lot of resources for that! Do you know if there is a more comfortable way to set up or maybe simulate a large and complex network without having to use real machines?

Thanks!

0 RichardLetts over 9 years ago

What do you mean by large and complex? Size of a European country? every network technology from DSL through 100Gbps DWDM? couple of thousand switches? couple of hundred routers? VRFS? lots of IPv6?
Answer these questions:
1. Can it manage everyhting we have?
2. Can it manage everything the way we have it configured (or do we need to change that)?
3. How will we scale it to meet out current and future needs?
4. Who will stop me from buying this?
5. Would I bet my job on this being the solution?
/RjL
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0 rigobert over 9 years ago in reply to RichardLetts

By large and complex I mean a network with couple of hundred network devices (switches and routers). Basically I want to have a test environment wich is equal to the network of a large company with several subsidiaries spread over Europe for example.
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0 vinay.by over 9 years ago

As far as I understand you have several demo links, but then you wont have admin access through it. You can only view what Solarwinds is capable. Is that what you are looking for or do you want an hands on as well ?
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0 rigobert over 9 years ago in reply to vinay.by

What are those demo links exactly? Just videos which show me what solarwinds is capable of?
Yes, I'm rather looking for a hands on solution where I can test Solarwinds by myself. So therefore I would need a testing environment with a certain scale and complexity...I don't know, are there maybe any network simulators that I can use and which make it possible to attach/connect Solarwinds to the simulated network?
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