Aravind’s Blog

Hurricane Katrina has left behind a huge trail of damage & devastation. But whats coming to the fore is the way the never-say-die human spirit is handling it. People from across the world are contributing in their own way & the internet has come to the rescue yet again.

Some of the prominent sites offering help here :

Think NewOrleans - a wiki site that has a load of info on whats going on

Hugh MacLeod’s Hurrican Katrina Help Page

craigslist has some resources on the subject

Microsoft has Katrina prominently featured in its home page & this page has details of how you can help with the relief work.

My heart goes out to everyone affected.

Plan to give here a series of posts on Network Monitoring Software. Its just an open ended topic & please be warned that its just a blog, hence isn’t planned as such. Am letting it to develop for itself over the next few days. The target audience is anyone connected with maintaining a network - you can be a CIO, a System or Network Administrator, a Webmaster, a MSP offering clients network monitoring services etc. Remember we offer OpManager, a network monitoring software & this series of posts will draw heavily from it.

Without much further ado, let me get started by defining the terms involved. Network Monitoring & Network Monitoring Software can mean different things to different people. There is no concise definition for the term in general, lets check out definitions from the web.

The Wikipedia on ‘Network Monitoring’:

A bitpipe.com definition for ‘network monitoring software’:

We will stick with the Wikipedia definition & concentrate on monitoring of network devices. Most of you folks reading this would have set up, configured & been running your networks for quite some time now. You would want a software solution to monitor & to take care of your networks 24×7 with as little human intervention as possible. Many of you might even be experienced in deploying network monitoring solutions which may or may not be solving all your needs & are looking for the ONE that would save you all the trouble.

Network monitoring software market is quite a mature one and you get a plethora of solutions at very varied price points. Selecting a network monitoring software of your choice has never been easier and given the wide choice thats available now, tougher too. A search in Google for network monitoring software would get you quite a number of solutions. But be cautioned that many aren’t what they claim to be. (will post a separate post on this topic soon)

From a bird’s eye view, a network monitoring software should do just this - monitor various devices in a network & send alerts by email, pager, SMS etc automatically whenever a faulty network condition is detected. But most network monitoring software available today do much more than that.

The coming posts will explore the different facets of network monitoring in more detail. Something tells me that its going to be a real long series…

It always comes as a pleasant surprise when users mention OpManager in their blogs. The last we came across was this one by Jon Edmiston.

He explains how OpManager has helped him with monitoring the network. Some points in the blog that stood out -

1) the use of Google Earth/Virtual Earth as a map to describe his Switch Layout

2) how OpManager helped him identify the cause when his T1 internet connection became very slow.

3) how he was unable to ’see into his network’ with his former tool & how OpManager helped overcame this shortfall.

Thanks Jon. And, Caroline F Burns, one of the most ardent fans of OpManager had asked other users to share their Business Views in the OpManager Lounge. Here’s one provided by Jon.

Scoble got invited to the Google campus recently for interviewing Jason Shellen of the Blogger team. And, Google’s Blogger team had come up with an add-in that helps you post blogs from within MS Word. And a link that shows the Google’s Master Plan which is on Flickr, a Yahoo! company. Pretty interesting.

Think the Scoble interview with Jason isn’t available yet. Would like to hear what’s cooking in Googlesoft/Microgle. Hmm, interesting times ahead. And, the whole community benefits from such collaborations. Believe they do these more often instead of just wrangling.

Since Greg got appointed as the Indian cricket team coach, we get to see a lot of news stories about him. One such instance was an old PETA ad featuring Greg Chappell that I came across. What caught my attention was the juggling theme which is what we use in almost all our OpManager ads. (find both the images attached)

Btw, OpManager 5.6 got released last week. ServiceDesk Plus, our Help Desk & Asset Management software & NetFlow Analyzer, our indepth bandwidth analysis tool have been well integrated with OpManager now. You can now raise tickets automatically for your network faults, get to see an asset’s complete details & drill down to see the Top Applications/Sources on a router interface, all from within OpManager.

Do check out OpManager 5.6 which adds the much awaited Exchange 2000/2003 monitoring (through WMI) & Firewall monitoring (support for Cisco PIX, Fortigate & NetScreen firewalls).

Saw a program yesterday which featured a copter tour to a live & active volcano. It was bizzare next only to space tourism. 4 or 5 men from different parts of the world (and obviously who weren’t volcanologists) were taken to some place in Russia where a volcano had started spewing smoke. After 4 unsuccessful trips, the group finally succeeded in seeing volcanic activity. The sights were breathtaking & reminded me of some tornado videos.

That was the question the blogosphere was asking or answering to for the last one week or so. Ian Turner, moderator of one of the forums of the Webmaster World, got traced to being in Atlanta after he’d lost his passport. Many of the prominent blogs including Kuro5hin’s, Google’s, Seth Godin’s reported the news. Much of the drama as it unfolded, here.

Just an example of the far reach of blogs.

Techworld has come up with a list of 10 Common Mistakes that Network Administrators should do away with. Here’s a jist of the article given as Best Practices:

1. Change the UPS batteries every 2 years

2. Its always handy to have a kitpack that ranges from copies of every OS in use by your users to a roll of duct tape

3. Make sure that your OSs/Applications are patched with the latest updates

4. Always do a back-up check whenever you do a back-up

5. Take extreme care with your cabling

6. Always use branded hardware components

7. Make sure you have warranty contracts on all your hardware & label each one with the warranty contract number and support phone numbers

8. Always use a test environment before you do a software installation

9. Always plan your hardware for extra capacity

10. Whenever you do a change, take into account your users

And hey, don’t forget that you can use OpManager to monitor your UPS’ health and PatchQuest to keep you up-to-date on the patch front.

The year’s at the spring,

And day’s at the morn;

The brothers end their feud;

The BSE crosses the 7000 mark;

Its time for The Championships;

Our baby’s doing well;

Govind’s in Heaven -

All’s right with the world!

Hmm, its time to move on. The above’s inspired from Robert Browning’s Song, from Pippa Passes. Anyone knows the origin & what Pippa Passes mean?

Oh, it was a wonderful feeling looking at our cute, new born baby girl for the first time. She was born on June 10, 8:16 am IST. She weighed just 2 kg during birth. First day she was ok, but she got diagnosed for jaundice. The poor child has since been kept under blue light in an incubator sort of. Drips were given too, so were anti-allergic & anti-biotic medicines. She’s pulled through quite nicely till now & the doctors say there’s nothing to worry. But then as a dad of such a beautiful, delicately fragile little baby girl only 5 days old, can one stop worrying?

And to make matters worse, in the most cruelest tragedy, one of my best friends for years, Govindarajan, died in a car accident last Sunday night. He’d got married only 2 days before, on Friday morning, just when my baby girl was being born. Thursday evening, we friends from Annamalai were there having a funtime at his wedding reception. Friday afternoon, he’d called up and congratulated on me becoming a dad. That would be our last conversation.

Govind, Raja to his friends, was my room-mate in Annamalai for 3 years. We had a lot in common, reading books in particular. Just can’t forget the days when we cycled/walked to the small lending library. He was a voracious reader of Tamil fiction, particularly those based on history. Saandilyan & Kalki were his favorites. The days at Annamalai couldn’t have been more merrier - we slept on the same bed, woke up, went to class, took our food at the veg mess (where he was the rep), spent long hours at the Chidambaram Railway Station, ogled at & talked about our college girls, fought for the silliest of things, went for treats together with the same set of friends… the list is endless.

He was a studious guy, topping his class in many a semester. He excelled in NCC too, the high point being his long cycling expedition through many parts of Tamil Nadu. And Govind was the one who pulled me away from L&T to AdventNet. Had a memorable trip with him & his team to Ooty 2 years back.

Torn between leaving the baby in a critical situation & seeing Govind, couldn’t be there for his last journey to the cremation ground. The thought of not seeing him for one last time will haunt me forever