SolarWinds LANsurveyor 10 (LS10) is a network management package that utilises Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) discovery to automatically lay out a network device map.

The resulting map can be interrogated to give details useful to IT managers, such as IP addresses and hostnames. It can also perform IT inventory management for Windows, Macintosh and Linux systems.

Neon Software originally developed LANsurveyor, but the firm was taken over in May by SolarWinds, another network management vendor.

New features in LS10 include support for all versions of SNMP and the ability to map Windows Active Directory domain controllers. The GUI has been cleaned up and the SNMP data can now be stored in the enterprise SQL Server database, whereas earlier versions used SQL Express. Another new feature is the ability to create user-defined groups of systems. LS10 adds further support for Microsoft’s Office Visio package, with enhancements including autosaving maps and support for Visio Smart Shapes – a method of allowing users to get system information while accessing network maps exported by LANsurveyor.

It took less than five minutes to install the package and users can run the system manually or install the program as a service. In the initial autodiscovery phase we could add the specific subnets we required for cataloguing devices. Polling a medium-sized network consisting of four printers, 100 desktop systems, two switches and a router took 15 minutes.

As well as picking up data from ICMP pings and SNMP requests, LS10 also picks up systems running Microsoft networking, SIP-based devices, systems running EMC’s backup software Retrospect and systems running the remote control software Timbuktu.

The LS10 requires users to deploy a software agent called Neon Responder to systems that need to be monitored. Once installed, the agent gives useful information on the applications and processes running on the system. Tr ouble-shooting is made easier thanks to its support for a range of screen-sharing protocols.

Creating user-defined groups is also simple but needs what SolarWinds calls a “repository” to be set up – a configuration and management database. We installed the repository after first installing the enterprise version of SQL Server 2005. After this we could, for example, set up a group whose members were all running Windows Vista systems and perform inventories of applications loaded and processes running on those systems.