What Network Management Tool

[mrlee]

We only have around 400 Cisco devices to monitor on our Local LAN. It is a Hospital environment and we could do with the best product for the right money.

We are considering CiscoWorks LMS however on closer reflection we already have NI Observer and we can purchase an add on to give us the Campus Manager view equivalent.

There is no remote WAN traffic to monitor as we have Juniper boxes sat on either side of every WAN link.

I like the idea of the config updates of ciscoworks however KIWI CatTool can do this for 350 quid..

My question is this:

would I be better off buying a product like Solarwinds Engineers Edition and utilising NI Observer for the Topology/Campus view and using Kiwi for the config updates... or am I missing something here.....

Any honest input would be greatly received.

[m.sir]

we were in very same situation few months ago...

LMS (with campus manager and resource manager essential) is great tool but quite expensive ... So we decided for Whats Up gold for monitoring and Kiwi for config updates we are satisfied ... Kiwi is great tool ( I like it more than LMS backup function)..

So with LMS you get great tool with lot of tools .. I think LMS is for bigger organizations where you can create various roles for helpdesk, sysadmins etc..., create jobs, aprove jobs.. etc.. if you dont need this funcionality and you need only monitoring and backup solution you can use two different solutions for cheaper price

[mrlee]

Whats up Gold is another option!

It is a tough one and I really appreciate you taking time out to give me your opinion.

[omar.elmohri]

I have another question about that!

If I have a gateway as MS ISA, can I manage it using somethin special like CDP software or just using SNMP?

My real case is to use Automatic Teller Machines and monitor their state? any of these tools can do that?

[mrlee]

Yes you could manage it using SNMP however CDP is a Cisco Proprietry protocol so will only work with Cisco specific Software.

Pete