Not long after it was posted a WhatsUp Gold user commented and told us he was disappointed with our list. It didn’t provide him with the broader information of the Network Management universe he had expected to find he said. Instead he said he felt like our paper read a bit too much like marketing material for WhatsUp Gold.
Now, of course we’d love to see every network in the world monitored by WhatsUp Gold because we know the strength and versatility of our product and firmly stand behind its functionality across the board.
But . . . we’d rather have our customers leave a conversation with us, leave our web site, our blog, our community site, feeling like they got more than a sales pitch from us. We’d rather a customer, or a potential customer, leave with more knowledge about the NM space than they came in with than leave with a WhatsUp Gold service agreement.
And so we went back to work. We took a second look, a third and fourth look, at our Top Ten Requirements list and we added to it and altered it until we felt we had something you would be able to use a resource when researching the best possible Network Management Solution for your network.
Never Navigate Your Network Without an Accurate Map
So an important aspect of monitoring your IT infrastructure is having an accurate map of the network telling you where each device within the network is located, allowing you to make any changes, updates or repairs on devices faster and easier. It used to be that network managers had to manually map out their networks, which was obviously a long, tedious process. Be thankful that today there is software available to you today that automatically discovers and maps your network, saving you the hassle of having to walk around your office drawing a map of your IT infrastructure by hand. I mean, you didn’t go to school to study art, did you?
One of the plug-ins that we offer with WhatsUp Gold, called WhatsConnected, is designed to make your life as a network administrator that much easier by automatically discovering and mapping your network. It uses powerful discovery tools to locate every device on the network and to visualize device connectivity down to the individual port. On top of that, you will be able to determine critical device interdependencies.
Obviously, as technology has advanced at such a rapid pace, creating and enhancing IT networks has become a much simpler task. However, the downside of that is that, with that advancement, it has gotten more and more difficult toaccurately map these networks out. This can certainly create problems for network administrators and managers because if you can’t understand how devices in your network are connected, their interdependencies and their location, then locating and resolving problems in a timely manner is simply impossible to do.
With an accurate map that visualizes your network in a true-to-life way, that visualizes device connectivity and interdependencies, and that shows you the real-time status of all devices within your network, your job becomes much less stressful. I’m sure the thought of seriously decreasing the amount of reactionary e-mails to devices not working from employees and getting less flack from your boss for sub par performance from the network is a pleasant one. And really, you wouldn’t embark on a long road trip without a proper map of your route, so why risk monitoring and managing your companies network without an accurate topology in place?
Here is a quick video highlighting the benefits and features of WhatsConnected.
New Plug-in Module Provides the Key Functions Network Management Professionals need in order to Discover, Map, Search and Document Network Topology
WhatsConnected, for Layer 2/Layer 3 network discovery and network mapping. WhatsConnected together with WhatsUp Gold v12.3.1 provides network managers with the tools to understand their networks in-depth and develop effective management strategies.
“We are pleased that WhatsConnected is compatible with Microsoft Office Visio and we are very excited about this new product,” said Kapil Tandon, Sr.Product Manager with the Visio Product Marketing team at Microsoft. “We are confident that it will help IT managers visualize processes, systems, and complex information to help them comprehend their networks better.”
WhatsConnected is priced at $1895 for unlimited devices
WhatsConnected’s unique in-depth technology goes far beyond typical IP discovery and network mapping solutions by providing visibility into both physical and IP connectivity, including VLAN-specific information. WhatsConnected assembles information from every device in the network to discover and display detailed physical connectivity, device type, asset/inventory and configuration information in an easy to understand network map.
Removing the need for manual documentation, WhatsUp Gold WhatsConnected enables network managers to focus on managing networks more effectively, combining the power of layer 2 discovery, mapping and visualization with WhatsUp Gold’s comprehensive network management and network monitoring software. In addition to discovery and visualization, WhatsConnected allows managers to understand device interdependencies; how they are affected by failures and changes to the network. With this detailed insight, managers can quickly pinpoint issues to minimize downtime and also configure the network to optimize performance.
WhatsConnected automatically generates fully customizable topology maps and a simple right-click on any topology map will export device information from WhatsConnected to WhatsUp Gold and automate the creation of consolidated MapViews along with performance and active monitors for the connected interfaces. Any of these network maps can be published through Microsoft Visio and the inventory information on devices gathered during the discovery process can be exported to external applications.
WhatsConnected’s inventory capability provides platform identification and classification for devices from all the most widely deployed network equipment manufacturers, including: Cisco/Linksys, Foundry, 3COM, Extreme, Netgear, D-Link, and Allied Telesyn, and others.
Fully integrated within the extensible framework of WhatsUp Gold’s powerful management and network monitoring capabilities, WhatsConnected is the only solution available to offer this level of discovery, mapping and visualization. Other solutions, such as those from SolarWinds, rely on separate, standalone products with no layer 2 integration beyond cut and paste of bitmaps to provide a wallpaper background for icons to be placed on.
“We are very excited about the management aspects of WhatsConnected and very pleased with its ease-of-use,” commented Angus Sherwood, University of Calgary IT Operations Production Control Special Projects. “As our network is expanding at a formidable rate, we were looking for a tool to help us document and manage it. WhatsConnected performs this task extremely well and the visualization features help us to identify problems and weaknesses immediately. In fact, we have been amazed by its capabilities, which are more than comparable to some expensive monitoring tools we have evaluated.”
“We listened to our customers and learned they were dissatisfied with solutions currently offered by other vendors like SolarWinds. We continue to refine WhatsUp Gold in ways that make a difference. We’ve eased the pain of discovery and mapping with powerful new tools that provide significantly more detailed topology information than other mechanisms,” said Ennio Carboni, vice president of Network Management Division for Ipswitch.
