Best software for monitoring Cisco Switches and routers

I am looking at Orion from solar winds, we are looking for performance monitor we sub out most of our major cisco work as none of is in my department are even up to the CCNA level. I am looking for something easy to use and easy to interpret. We need this for Sox compliance we will be audited by earnest and young. If anyone can provide feedback on Orion or another product that would be helpfull.

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Comments

Pash

CNA is quite good if you have a valid cco account to login on the cisco website with. Set the switches and routers up to be in the same snmp community community and its fairly clean and readable. I have no experience with Orion so I cant comment there.

If you need help configuring the snmp community community commands or setting up CNA gimme a shout.

chmod

Use ipswitch software.

bmauro

I use SolarWinds/Orion at work and have no complaints with it. Setting up new sites is highly repeatable - so once you do a site or two it will become second nature. The polling engine/web interface is self-explanatory. We have many level I techs or other IT employees that aren't network savvy, yet they can log onto the SolarWinds site and understand the information displayed.

Support for SolarWinds is also good. I just had a problem the other day with their MapMaker application, created a case with their support, and had a correct response within a couple hours.

garv221

DarbyWeaver wrote:

For PIC/SOX --> Ecora

PRTG and MRTG are good in general.

I use KIWI for backups and syslogging with trap notifications.

I get reports and get emails.

I use Cisco Works and Cisco ACS for companies that can afford it.

I 2nd that

Mrock4

We also use SolarWinds. I have no complaints about it. A lot of guys here had little to no experience with it, and learned very quickly.