> Has anybody had any hands-on experience with both Solarwinds and Xymon, who > can give me a short breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages of > Solarwinds compared to Xymon? > > Regards > Vernon
I used Solarwinds for monitoring a 1500 node network (all Cisco kit, mainly 1800 and 2800s, with a bunch of 3750s and some of the larger core routers) at $dayjob -1. It's pretty good as far as 'commercial' network monitoring kit goes, quite flexible, good support, sensible price. They had it running ok on a VM so the total cost was quite minor. While it we only used it with SNMP for monitoring networks, it can be setup to monitor servers.
I used to use HPs Network Node Monitor v8 and v9 prior to that, which was rather poor for the amount of money we threw at it. I think the initial cost was around 50k which included 3 years support. Overkill for what we needed at that time.
Currently using Hobbit 4.2.0 at $currentjob, compared to Solarwinds it's fine, does the job. Maybe a newer version of Xymon is a bit better. I do find the configuration files to be rather labyrinth and confusing, but then I've not really needed to look at them properly to set much up yet. But it does the job fine. Might be because I'm using an older version, I would say that graphically Solarwinds is much nicer. But to be honest all most people actually need is to know if there is a problem with something, so from that point of view the traffic light system is fine.
If you had to go for Solarwinds, then it'll do the job, it's easy to setup and their tech support are perfectly good. It's quite flexible really and I'm sure it'll do what you want it to do. I wouldn't say Solarwinds is a 'corporate standard' at all, however. I can think of anyone of a number of other companies that I'd go to for monitoring before going to Solarwinds.
I've always been an advocate of the right tool for the job and if that means that some companies prefer commercial software, then sometimes you have to go down that route. Some managers will always want to be able to blame another company for an IT problem, that's just a fact. So if the customer is dead set on it, then you're probably going to have to go with it, unless you can convince them otherwise. Maybe if you show them a nice shiny working installation of Xymon that might convince them that it's actually quite good.
If you do want open source IT support (in the UK) then http://www.siriusit.co.uk/ are worth contacting.
Cheers,
-- Matthew Moore Surgical Materials Testing Laboratory System Administrator Telephone: +44 (0)1656 752165 Email: matt at smtl.co.uk