ManageEngine OpManager: Network Monitoring and Troubleshooting

This article provides an overview of ManageEngine OpManager, a network monitoring software that helps administrators manage network routers, firewalls, switches, and more. It discusses the importance of network monitoring, the troubleshooting process, and the applications of OpManager. It also compares OpManager with another network monitoring tool, PRTG network Monitor.

NETWORK APPLICATION MANAGEMENT
TEMAOS

Table of contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
PART 1: ManageEngine OpManager..............................................................................................2
Network monitoring management........................................................................................................2
Why OpManager is a perfect fit for network monitoring......................................................................2
Troubleshooting process and network monitoring...............................................................................3
Server monitoring..................................................................................................................................3
Network fault management..................................................................................................................4
Data center management......................................................................................................................4
PART 2: Applications of ManageEngine OpManager.....................................................................4
Real-time monitoring and availability....................................................................................................4
Network traffic analysis.........................................................................................................................5
PART 3: Comparison of ManageEngine OpManager with PRTG network Monitor........................6
Similarities between PRTG network monitor and ManageEngine OpManager.....................................6
Differences between PRTG network monitor and ManageEngine OpManager....................................6
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................7
1

Introduction
A ManageEngine OpManager is an end to end network monitoring software which provides the
network administrators with an approach for managing network routers, firewalls, switches,
printers, servers, domain regulators and other IT infrastructure devices. An OpManager is widely
used monitoring tool due to its accuracy and speed it helps the larger initiatives and service
benefactors to control their data centers and information technology infrastructure efficiently and
its interface offers real-time availability feedback, and thorough monitoring and analysis of
information from the switches, routers and servers. This report discuss the Manage Engine
Opmanager as a network monitoring tool, its importance, how it is used in monitoring and
troubleshooting, its applications and its similarity and differences with the other network tools.
PART 1: ManageEngine OpManager
Network monitoring management
The network monitoring involves OpManager discovering devices which include routers, switches,
firewalls, wireless access points via CLI protocols and monitors performance metrics such as
interface traffic rate, errors and discard rates, buffer hits and misses, response time, memory and
packet loss. It keeps a tab on all network devices performance and ensures they are available all the
time as the network is vulnerable to many errors which can affect its performance [1]. This,
therefore, gives a necessity of continuous monitoring the network performance to detect issues and
prevent incidents that may occur and to provide smooth functioning of critical applications. It
involves detecting and troubleshooting network problems prior to being obvious or revealed to the
end-user and dynamically removing threats.
Why OpManager is a seamless tool for network monitoring
The OpManager is an appropriate tool for network monitoring since it provides dynamic network
monitoring solution and it has features that allow the network administrator to resolve network
problems easily and faster and take charge of the network. In the OpManager there are net flow
plugins where user can modify the link to interfaces and choose different time sections for
comparison due to different multiple protocols supported. It also provides the tools to troubleshoot
the affected network components, virus fissures, worms, and other security weaknesses. It can also
be used to segregate if it is broken element inside the network or some anomalies that have excess
bandwidth consumption[ 2]. In this way, the network administrator can use these tools to reroute
request and load balance in order to stabilize the network. Since OpManager offers the essential
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tools that the network administrators automate troubleshooting measures through the compliant
workflow feature, the output the network performance administration can be used for making
decision and capabilities planning of the network for assigning the amount of budget to be used for
the bandwidth.
Troubleshooting process and network monitoring
The troubleshooting process and network monitoring entail the following processes.
Network monitoring and troubleshooting process
Server monitoring
The server monitoring is the process of monitoring the server resources like the memory
consumption the disk usage, CPU usage, network, and the input and outputs. It allows the
identification of performance related issues like the resources utilization, app downtime and
response time. The need for server performance monitoring is that it monitors the availability and
data loss, the responsiveness of the server, to know the server capacity, user load and speed of the
server, to detect and prevent issues that might serve proactively. The OpManager provide support
for the organizations to monitor servers and applications in-line with their processes through SNMP
and WMI protocols ensuring that they are up and running at their optimum level of performance. It
also stores all the data for historical performance tracking and troubleshooting, therefore, getting rid
of many server monitoring tools.
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Monitor network
Fix issue
Analyze root cause
Identify issues
Monitoring network
enables administrator
to be alert on issues
that might arise
Network monitoring
tools enables the
administrator to
remove network
related errors
Analyzing means
administrator need to go
through the entire network
using the monitoring tools
in order to notice the main
cause of the problem
Errors or issues in
the network needs to
be identified which
may include
hardware
performance error
and configuration
error

Network fault management
The network fault management is the process of being updated with what is happening over the
network whether foreseen performance deprivation, detect, restore and bound the effect of failures
by using OpManager and helps one to isolate and resolve the fault [3]. OpManager can also be
configured in order to pass the notification to the network administrator when there is fault
detected in the network.
Data center management
Data center management involves managing a large volume of data centers. The ManageEngine
OpManager offers an integrated approach for data monitoring as it enables one to proactively
monitor physical and virtual server, applications and bandwidth and also manage their faults from
one console [4]. It provides a single alarm console where all problems are raised making it easier for
an administrator to identify the alarms in real time, drill down to the exact problem and start
troubleshooting it before the end user is affected and thereby greatly improving the efficiency of the
data center management process. In other words, the OpManager provides ultimate performance
monitoring of physical and virtual servers, real-time monitoring of the application using the
applications manager, monitoring of flow-based traffic with net flow plugin and data center
environment monitoring [5].
PART 2: Applications of ManageEngine OpManager
Real-time monitoring and availability
ManageEngine OpManager offers the organization a reliable real-time surveillance to ascertain all
the network devices, services, and operations runs continuously and effectively. It offers real-time
sights of convenience statistics and comprehensive monitoring analysis of facts from devices such as
switches, servers and routers. Modules that assist organizations in monitoring and real-time
availability are device availability monitoring, interface availability monitoring, WAN link availability
monitoring, service availability monitoring, windows services availability monitoring, website
availability monitoring, and process availability monitoring. These modules provide organizations
with the ability to identify any broken links, devices, network nodes, broken processes and the
applications that organizations monitor in order to attain the quality of service requirements
internally or externally.
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The module that monitors device availability screens the whole network for real-time and availability
by pinging the supervised device after two minutes. If the response is not received from two
successive pings the OpManager therefore considers the device unreachable.
For the interface availability, the OpManager offers an SNMP built interface obtainability and port
accessibility monitoring of each component in the enterprise network infrastructure. It provides
obtainability statement showing the interface obtainability on a routine basis to gauge your network
level obtainability and guarantee that your SLAs are being achieved [6].
The windows services availability monitoring ensures that the organization's management plan is
complete. OpManager provides exhaustive graphs and reports on the availability then the response
time of the TCP service that is being monitored. It also provides the windows service monitoring
services using WMI and also an administrator is able to configure OpManager to automatically
restart the services or the server when there is failure of windows service.
In website availability monitoring the OpManager performs the monitoring of the organization
website for the convenience and performance round the clock. It surveys the Https. Urls, intranet
sites web server farms, web application with a login, and NTML authentic websites. It also allows
one to look for particular content on the website and ensure the website is running and not affected
by any hacker.
The OpManager availability monitoring of the process allows the administrator to monitor and
manage operations that are running on servers. It uses a diverse protocols like SNMP and CLI to
monitor the operations running on Windows, Linux, and virtual servers.
Network traffic analysis
Network traffic analysis is a way of taking record, review and analyzing network traffic in aid of the
network performance, security and general network operations and management. Network traffic
analysis allows the user to see who and what is using network traffic in terms of bandwidth, permits
whether the application slows down, detect threats and possible security intrusions and whether
there is a need to fix the problem or trigger the proper alerts [7]. The OpManager has helped on
network traffic analysis in a way that; the network administrator takes an overview of the entire
network to find out the problematic link, notices the problem link and drills down to identify using
net flow charts a particular user occupies most of the bandwidth and identify the unknown
application is occupying most of the bandwidth and thereafter gets into managed switch which
connects all user's to the network and through the OpManager web interface he isolates the
problematic devices from the network by administratively turning the port down.
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PART 3: Comparison of ManageEngine OpManager with PRTG network Monitor [8]
Similarities between PRTG network monitor and ManageEngine OpManager
 Both PRTG network monitor and ManageEngine OpManager network monitoring tool are
easy to use by the users. This because is functionalities are made clear and one does not
need to learn much in order to understand its performance.
 They are affordable network monitoring solution and they both can be used in monitoring
network in a distributed network location. This feature allows it being conveniently used
widely and even in the remote areas where the network is distributed.
 They are both efficient network monitoring tools where it can be used in the monitoring
network, servers, and detecting network faults in case one occur thereby allowing the
network administrators to have an easy overview over the network.
Differences between PRTG network monitor and ManageEngine OpManager
 The PRTG is an all in one tool which includes all the function for comprehensive network
monitoring and its licenses are both transparent and fair and one chooses the license that
best suits the size of their network and number of things they need to monitor while for the
ManageEngine OpManager there is cumbersome task of selecting modules and when there
is need to upgrade one is required to incur cost of pay for it.
 PRTG is extremely affordable despite the comprehensive range of the features while for the
ManageEngine OpManager when users out together software packages the cost is a bit
higher.
 PRTG remote probes make it easier to monitor distributed networks where the probes can
be in the same network or in different locations. It is only required that they be able to
communicate uninterruptedly with the core server via the internet while for the
ManageEngine OpManager several licenses are required to perform such monitoring.
 The PRTG tool is intuitive and user-friendly compared to the ManageEngine OpManager as it
is simple to use, reliable in updating the users in any issue that crop up and also graphs such
as sunburst let you determine the status of your network at a glance.
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Conclusion
Upon the implementation of ManageEngine OpManager as network monitoring system software
there are several advantages that it provides to the organization. It enables the network
administrator the monitor servers, data fault management and even providing real time
availability. ManageEngine OpManager is a suitable tool and from the above research it is more
secure compared to the other tools thereby ensuring that the network cannot be hacked.
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