Top 5 network views for daily operations and diagnostics

What views are most popular for a quick network health overview? Tips from fellow engineers and sysadmins for starting your day well informed.

1. Active alerts

Depending on your IT team structure, you may have resource owners that want to receive only messages from the devices/servers used in their daily business. One of the IT managers recommends determining the alarms that each team member is responsible for, based on relevant monitoring packs. She set up different notifications based on the alarm levels (critical, warn & info), and then she could control how those notifications were sent to users (email or SMS, repeating or not). For example, when they stand up a new SQL instance, it was defined as a new node, got the SQL pack assigned and the resource owners would start getting their required notifications.

2. Custom network views and maps

A network engineer responsible for a school network recalls how layer 2 maps and switch port maps help him win over some students’ tricks who repeatedly try loosening network cables on classroom printers just enough to disconnect them but the cables are still in the socks so it does not look disconnected on the outside. Another problem he mentioned was LAN connectors that would paralyze the network at the cores with a short circuit, these were daily occurrences that he needed to be alerted about and fix on the spot. He found port mapping views useful for fast troubleshooting and localizing the disconnected cable and going directly to a particular printer to reattach it. He knew each part of the network, having built it himself, but automatic switch port maps helped him transfer his network knowledge, especially when preparing for his retirement and training a new colleague to take over his responsibilities.

3. Top charts

After identifying the most problematic nodes, systems, or services in your network, you can analyze their performance in the alert analytics window, which can help you identify nodes that may work right now but their overall performance is spotty or you wish to take a longer look to decide if you need to plan or prepare some action related to them in the near future.

4. Alerts: Analytics window

5. Monitoring issues

What are your favorite views or the ones that you find most informative? Please share it with us!

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AdRem Software makes award-winning commercial and freeware network monitoring & management software trusted by thousands of admins worldwide www.adremsoft.com

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AdRem Software

AdRem Software makes award-winning commercial and freeware network monitoring & management software trusted by thousands of admins worldwide www.adremsoft.com