* Netcordia upgrades NetMRI
Netcordia wants to do it all – at a high level. The company makes an appliance that can plug in to any network and pinpoint performance problems across routers, switches, firewalls and other devices.
Still Netcordia doesn’t claim it will fix all problems, but it can show network managers where the problem is and get them well on their way to a resolution, according to company founder and CEO Terry Slattery.
“When I was a consultant I wanted a tool that I could use to get a broad picture of the network without a lot of integration,” he says. He designed the product based on what he needed as a network performance consultant and recently the company garnered venture funding to back up Slattery’s product. With $3 million in funding, Netcordia is set to update its product set.
Slattery says with the upgraded version of its software, NetMRI Version 1.5 – which comes loaded on all appliances – network managers can more quickly identify the location of the problem and reduce mean time to repair. The latest version enables network managers to group parts of the network, which Slattery says will help operations break down problems on a department level.
Next week at Interop in New York, the company plans to unveil the newest features of its products. NetMRI 1.5 can help solve firewall configuration issues that occur on access lists and more, and can tell network managers if the configuration on Juniper Networks devices as well as all Cisco gear is set up accurately.
NetMRI comes in three sizes to monitor small, midsize and large networks. NetMRI installs on a switch port or router interface and identifies network devices and the ports, or interfaces, being used to route traffic across a network. Network managers input blocks of IP addresses for the appliance to monitor, and the appliance begins collecting data such as CPU utilization, routing table information, virtual LAN activities, MAC addresses and port connections.
NetMRI Campus covers 200 routers and switches, or 5,000 interfaces, and pricing starts around $25,000. NetMRI Enterprise 500 handles 500 routers and switches, or 15,000 interfaces, and pricing starts around $50,000. NetMRI Enterprise 1000 can manage 1,000 routers and switches or 30,000 interfaces, and pricing starts at $85,000.
