Launched today, SolarWinds ipMonitor version 9.0 is a feature-rich package for monitoring network assets, and alerting administrative staff to glitches in applications running over the network and problems with network hardware. For instance, if a switch goes down or high CPU utilisation is detected on a critically important server, ipMonitor will sound the alarm.

OS support includes Windows 2000 Professional, Vista, XP, and Windows Servers 2000 and 2003. We installed ipMonitor on an XP Professional system to check a home network comprising a broadband router, switch, a wireless network and a mix of desktop and laptop systems. We also installed ipMonitor on a Windows Server 2003 system in IT Weeks labs, where it monitored two servers, a router, a wireless network, two switches, a printer and several desktop and laptop systems.

Simple interface
After the install, ipMonitor goes through a first-time configuration wizard, which runs through basic settings including licensing, user accounts, alert and monitor defaults, and port assignment.

IpMonitor’s web-based management interface has four tabs across the top of the page: dashboard, devices, reports and configuration. Initially users will see the dashboard, designed to give network administrators an overall picture of the state of their network.
With a single click users can drill down from the dashboard page to a range of windows showing, for example, all the devices on their network, devices being monitored that have problems, current network operations and the top 10 devices by ping availability.

From the dashboard, administrators can choose to either manually scan the network for devices or use ipMonitor’s Auto Discovery function. After a scan, the discovered devices are presented and the user can then choose what to monitor. With the manual option, users can choose to scan a specific IP range, a standard Windows Network Neighbourhood, a DNS Zone or systems specified on an imported Hosts File. For the specific IP range scan, we could also specify further subnets if required.

IpMonitor works by having the user assign individual monitors to check specific system parameters, such as memory usage. In other words, monitors perform a single dedicated task, which could be checking whether a particular router is up and running, or at what level web server CPU utilisation is. For other server systems, users could choose to deploy a monitor to check system memory usage or disk space remaining.

To help users decide what monitors to deploy is the role of ipMonitor’s SmartMonitor Recommended Settings feature, which makes recommendations based on the results of the Auto Discovery scan. For instance, if SmartMonitor detects a Lotus Notes server, administrators can set up monitors to check its availability and a client’s ability to connect to the server. There are many monitors defined by default by SolarWinds, which include the ability to monitor Active Directory, Exchange servers and also to check environmental variables on critical servers such as fan speed and temperature. Monitors can be set to alert users through a variety of mechanisms, including email, pager and SMS.

For both the home network and labs tests, we chose to scan an IP subnet and picked up all devices connected to that subnet. In the lab we chose to monitor our Windows Server 2003 install for CPU utilisation, system memory usage and for disk space remaining on all partitions. Shortly after, ipMonitor picked up a drive on the server with only three per cent space remaining. This drive was being used as a temporary storage area for old system log files. After deleting the files, ipMonitor cleared the alert.

Specialist tailoring
A neat feature of ipMonitor is the ability to organise all the network information that it gathers into SmartGroups. By clicking on a SmartGroup button, users can see status information relating to that particular set of de vices. If, for example, your firm is a Cisco-only shop, you could define a group called Cisco-Kit to monitor all your Cisco switches, routers and other appliances such as virtual private network (VPN) concentrators. We set up a SmartGroup called Wireless-Kit to monitor the wireless installation in our labs network ­ a 3Com AP7250 access point connected to a Zyxel ES-3148 10/100Mbit/s switch. We opted to monitor our Zyxel switch using a simple Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) ping, and elected for the system to send an alert via email in the event of the switch being down. Another handy feature of the package is that it can be configured to send email alerts to the member of staff best able to fix a particular problem or piece of kit. For instance, ipMonitor could be set up so that when it detects problems with hardware in the Wireless-Kit group, it emails an alert to a wireless specialist.

One feature we would have liked, and which is present in SolarWind’s LANsurveyor package, is the ability to automatically build a comprehensive network map.
The reports tab on the management interface lets administrators compile reports on devices, groups of devices and also the ipMonitor server’s system status. We found it simple to compile and email a report on the network traffic being handled by our Zyxel switch over a specified period. We could also easily schedule reports, over any timescale, and have them emailed to our Lotus Notes account.

Custom Tags are GUI features that can be used to provide administrative staff with additional information to help them fix problems.

Apart from the main GUI, there is also a small standalone one allowing administrators to run the initial configuration of the system, add specific administrator accounts, and also license the software. Users can also set up Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security to allow protected data exchange across non-secure networks and set up SSL certificates, without which not all monitor credentials can be accessed.