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> Has anybody had any hands-on experience with both
Solarwinds and<br>
Xymon, who<br>
> can give me a short breakdown of the advantages and
disadvantages of<br>
> Solarwinds compared to Xymon?<br>
><br>
> Regards<br>
> Vernon<br>
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<br>
I used Solarwinds for monitoring a 1500 node network (all Cisco kit,
mainly 1800 and 2800s, with a bunch of 3750s and some of the larger
core routers) at $dayjob -1. It's pretty good as far as
'commercial' network monitoring kit goes, quite flexible, good
support, sensible price. They had it running ok on a VM so the
total cost was quite minor. While it we only used it with SNMP for
monitoring networks, it can be setup to monitor servers.<br>
<br>
I used to use HPs Network Node Monitor v8 and v9 prior to that,
which was rather poor for the amount of money we threw at it. I
think the initial cost was around 50k which included 3 years
support. Overkill for what we needed at that time.<br>
<br>
Currently using Hobbit 4.2.0 at $currentjob, compared to Solarwinds
it's fine, does the job. Maybe a newer version of Xymon is a bit
better. I do find the configuration files to be rather labyrinth
and confusing, but then I've not really needed to look at them
properly to set much up yet. But it does the job fine. Might be
because I'm using an older version, I would say that graphically
Solarwinds is much nicer. But to be honest all most people actually
need is to know if there is a problem with something, so from that
point of view the traffic light system is fine.<br>
<br>
If you had to go for Solarwinds, then it'll do the job, it's easy to
setup and their tech support are perfectly good. It's quite
flexible really and I'm sure it'll do what you want it to do. I
wouldn't say Solarwinds is a 'corporate standard' at all, however.
I can think of anyone of a number of other companies that I'd go to
for monitoring before going to Solarwinds.<br>
<br>
I've always been an advocate of the right tool for the job and if
that means that some companies prefer commercial software, then
sometimes you have to go down that route. Some managers will always
want to be able to blame another company for an IT problem, that's
just a fact. So if the customer is dead set on it, then you're
probably going to have to go with it, unless you can convince them
otherwise. Maybe if you show them a nice shiny working installation
of Xymon that might convince them that it's actually quite good.<br>
<br>
If you do want open source IT support (in the UK) then
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.siriusit.co.uk/">http://www.siriusit.co.uk/</a> are worth contacting.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Matthew Moore
Surgical Materials Testing Laboratory
System Administrator
Telephone: +44 (0)1656 752165
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:matt@smtl.co.uk">matt@smtl.co.uk</a>
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