NetCrunch watches heterogeneous networks from a single console

What are you using to monitor your heterogeneous, NetWare-centric network? Do you need a few minutes to create a list of the products you use? If so, how would you like to be able to monitor the whole network from one console? If that sounds like a good idea, read on.

Many – I hope most and wish all – of you use AdRem’s Free Remote Console (see my thoughts on it at https://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/netware/2003/0526nw1.html) as a secure replacement for NetWare’s Rconsole remote console access tool. It’s great, and the price (free) is fantastic, but that’s not all AdRem has to offer. The company actually sells products, too. One of those is the recently released NetCrunch Version 3.

NetCrunch is a network monitoring facility that allows you to see and control, from one console, systems running Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, NetWare 3.x, NetWare 4.x, NetWare 5.x, NetWare 6.x, Linux, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, and any platform or device supporting SNMP v1 or v2. Did AdRem leave anything out?

Well, what can you do with NetCrunch? Here are a few of its features:

* Automatically discovers and builds an accurate inventory of network devices along with the services running on them.

* Creates dynamic maps of the logical and physical topologies of your network.

* Defines and compiles your own network views that allow you to look at your IT infrastructure by business process, location, host type, vendor, IP address, and several other criteria.

* Accesses consolidated information about the real-time health of critical systems via filters, live charts, tables, graphs and gauges.

* Tracks host and service availability.

* Enables you to be alerted via e-mail, modem, pager, ICQ, SNMP trap, cell phone text message when hosts/services fail or thresholds are violated.

* Automates remote corrective actions such as NT service restart, system reboot, and running of Windows commands, Linux scripts, or Novell NLMs.

* Uses diagnostic tools including graphical traceroute, ping, port/service scanner, bandwidth scanner, and SNMP browser.

* Views live trends to identify utilization patterns and chronic bottlenecks.

* Schedules daily, weekly, or monthly performance reports and have them e-mailed to specified recipients, printed, or exported to multiple formats.

Most monitoring products, especially ones that are as comprehensive as NetCrunch, are licensed based on the number of managed systems. You have to choose between monitoring every device at a huge cost or you can keep costs down by only monitoring a handful of devices. Once again, though, AdRem shows it can be very user friendly.

NetCrunch is licensed according to monitoring stations. Use one console on one PC and you only need one license no matter how many devices are on your network. Should you want multiple people to simultaneously monitor the network, or have monitoring stations geographically disbursed, then multiple license are available at a discount (starting with the second one). No one else offers as many features monitoring as many systems for such a low price.

Browse to https://www.adremsoft.com/netcrunch/ – check it out and do it soon.