How does Xian Network Manager 2012 Licensing work?

We get often the question how Xian Licensing works. Let us explain it a bit. It is actually quite simple.

License Types:

For SNMP monitoring

Basic SNMP License: This one gives you the license to monitor one standard device. Standard device are all Generic Devices and HP  Printers

Standard SNMP license: This one gives you the license to monitor one standard device. Standard device are all Cisco Switches except Nexus, Cisco Routers, Cisco ASA, Cisco Wireless, HP Procurve Switches,

Advanced SNMP license: This one gives you the license to monitor an advanced device. Advanced devices are Cisco Nexus and F5 Big IP

Netflow monitoring licensing.

For Netflow monitoring you need local IP licenses. This is basically the number of local IP addresses that will be monitored by Xian NM Flow Monitoring. So if your Netflow monitoring is limited to a certain segment then you only need the number licenses that represents the number of local IP addresses in that segment.

Topology Discovery License

If you also want Xian NM to Discover the relations between network devices and Windows Servers you can optionally obtain a topology license.

What do you need to buy?

Bundle

When you purchase Xian NM, you will be offered always the Xian NM Suite Bundle. This bundle includes:

- 10 standard SNMP licenses

- 400 local IP address licenses for Flow monitoring

- 1 Wings client license

- All the server modules you need

The server bundle starts at 1950 USD and has all you need to start monitoring.

If your environment has more devices to monitor you can purchase additional licenses. The prices of these vary a little bit and it is the best to contact sales to ask an exact quote on this.

Additional licenses

- SNMP Licenses

- Local IP Address licenses for flow monitoring

- Topology license

Software Service Agreement: This is an optional part, which gives you

-          Full technical support for a year

-          Free upgrades

For more information contact our sales people. 

How to monitor the configuration of a Cisco Switch

The following is a very typical user story. A user shows up complaining that suddenly he lost connection to a server, however nobody has any idea what could have been the cause of it. Checking around and asking if anybody was working on something doesn’t give any clues. Wouldn’t it be great if you had a system that warns you when anything changed on the configuration of a device? This is now possible with Xian NM 2012 SP1. It includes configuration monitoring for Cisco Switches and is an easy feature to configure.

After you discover a Cisco Switch through SNMP, you can go to the properties of the device and click on the ‘Configuration Monitoring’ Tab. You will get a screen like the one below.

At this point you select the Telnet Protocol and fill in the credentials Xian NM will use to obtain the configuration. After this action, you select the schedule in which you want the configuration to be checked. Now you can click on view configuration to see if everything is running according to plan.

If at one moment the configuration is changed, you will receive an alert like the one below.

Now you can opt to accept this change or to change the configuration back to what it was before, which will resolve the alert.

You can accept this change by clicking on ‘View current configuration’. Xian NM will now show you all the configuration changes. Click here on ‘Accept Changes’ and a new baseline will be sent and the alert will be resolved in Operations Manager.

If however, you will change the configuration back to the old one, you can click on ‘Discard Changes’. This will resolve the alert and gives you time to change the configuration. However, if you skipped this step, the alert will be repeated the next time the configuration is checked.

Click here for more information and a free trial. 

What to do when you get Non processed counters/events alerts in OpsMgr

The data collected by Xian NM Io or 2012 from the monitored devices such as events and counters are sent to OpsMgr through the Xian NM connector module. If the Connector Module Server doesn't receive any events or counters per 20 consecutive intervals of 3 minutes (one hour), it will generate an error alert in OpsMgr in order to notify that no data was received within this interval of time.

Causes and solutions:

• No relevant data has been collected from the devices within this interval so the alert can be ignored.
• A Xian NM Management Pack is missing in Operations Manager so no data can be inserted into OpsMgr until the missing MP is imported.
• You discovered devices within the Xian NM environment but didn’t apply any monitoring rules so no monitoring data is been actually retrieved from the devices themselves.
• The Xian NM connector module was not properly initialized. Restart the System center management server.
• The Xian NM or OpsMgr services are not properly running or not running at all. You can restart the 4 Jalasoft Xian NM services along with the OpsMgr services in order to re-establish a communication.
• Wrong configuration or no communication between the Connector and Connector Module: it could be possible that the Xian environment is pointing to a wrong IP address or that the account used by the Xian NM services doesn't have administrator privileges so no data can be properly sent or inserted. You can reinstall Xian NM in order to properly make it point to OpsMgr and then provide an account that is an OpsMgr administrator.
• The Xian NM or OpsMgr services accounts don’t have full permissions against the MS message queuing service. Open the server manager console then review the properties of the queues listed under the following node ‘features >message queuing>private queues ’ in order to make sure that the Xian NM and OpsMgr accounts have full permissions.
• The defined threshold for Non Processed counters is too low for the environment: just override the threshold value of the "Non Processed Counter Monitor" to a proper value
• This alert is auto-resolved if any new counters or events are later on received.

Service Pack 1 for Xian Network Manager 2012 is now available!

So we just managed to have Service Pack 1 ready before the holidays! SP1 is a not just a service pack. Of course we fixed some issues but we also added some new features that we are sure you will like. Below an overview of the most interesting things that we have added.


Name resolution of ports and IP Addresses
If you use Xian NM 2012 for Netflow monitoring you will be happy to know that now the alerts and counters in Operations Manager will show you names of your public IP addresses and application names of the ports. Like that you can have a better control on who is using the network.

Configuration Monitoring
A typical problem. Users suddenly start complaining about network problems, but nobody knows about any configuration changes. Xian NM 2012 now monitors the configurations changes on Cisco Switches and will alert you in OpsMgr when something changed.

Noise Monitoring
Within Netflow monitoring we have added the option to be alerted when a new port/application becomes active. It might be something you don't want on your network. You have time to take action and stop the application or approve it to not be further alerted. A great way keep an eye on applications running on your network and to have some extra security.

Full Dashboard support
Operations Manager 2012 has a great dashboard tool and now you have the option to build great Xian NM dashboards. A great way to keep an eye on your critical network connections, applications running on the network, visited websites, top downloads etc!

You can now download it from our website and see it for yourself on your own environment. Also you can request access to our handsonlab and play with the new features.

click here to see the official Press Release

Some questions we received about Wings HD

We got some questions about Wings HD. Let us try to answer them here:

How does it work?
Well, Xian Wings HD has two components. First is the Wings HD client that you install on your iPad through the App Store. This is free and easy. Next you download the Xian Wings Server from our website and install it in your SCOM environment, making sure it can connect to the SCOM SDK (2012 or 2007). Also make sure there is an open external port that the Wings HD client can use to communicate with the Wings Server. You don't need much memory for the server. Max 400 MB of free memory is sufficient.

How much does it cost?
At this moment each device that you connect to the Wings Server costs 300 USD and it does not matter if it is a Wings HD (iPad) client or regular Wings (iPhone, WP or Android). For a quote contact our sales team. http://www.jalasoft.com/contact/wingsquote

Is it secure?
Yes, communication goes over HTTPS, although if you feel comfortable and it is for internal use you also use HTTP. Beside that, the server acts as a proxy between Internet and your SCOM SDK, so no body will ever be able to connect from outside to your SDK.

Can I test it without installing the server?
Yes you can. The easiest is to request the credentials of our Wings Server on our website. http://www.jalasoft.com/xian/wings/wingsservertrial Next you install Wings HD on your iPad and use the credentials that were sent to you.

Xian Wings HD is now Available!

Many of you probable know already Xian Wings. It is that simple and easy to use tool for your smart phone, to control System Center Operations Manager from any place, any time. See states, alerts, graphs etc.

Well, now we have something new! Xian Wings HD! A Wings version specially made for iPad. It takes advantage of the hardware features of the iPad like the screen size, the memory and the speed to give you the best and I must say the coolest mobile Operations Manager Dashboard you can imagine. Wings HD is so intuitive and fast that you will quickly forget the classic Operations Manager Console or even the webconsole, if you ever dared to use that one anyway.

Some of the features of Wings HD:

• Create your won dashboards in a few seconds
• Add alert, status, performance graphs
• Quickly jump from a widget to a full screen view
• Sent quickly an email when look at an alert or a graph
• Look at the actual performance data with just a click on the graph
• a special context sensitive object screen that adjusts to object you clicked on
• Execute tasks
• Put objects in maintenance mode

So how does it work?

1. Well it is easy. Just install the Xian Server in your Operations Manager Environment and make sure it has an open port to a publicly available IP address. Make sure you enable the Operations Manager users you want to give access through Wings HD.
2. Next you go to the Apple App Store and download and install Xian Wings HD.
3. Now you log in with the operations manager credentials and you are ready to go!

If you got curious check out the video below.....

 

For more information check http://www.jalasoft.com/wings

For the full press release click here

 



Why You Need Xian Network Manager 2012 for Network Monitoring with Operations Manager 2012

One of the questions we receive a lot is: “ Why do we need Xian Network Manager to do network monitoring if Operations Manager 2012 has it out of the box?”

Well we understand that it is very tempting to just rely on Operations Manager 2012 for network monitoring, and we think it is quite usefull if you have small network and you don’t really mind not knowing what is going on. However if you have a bigger network you should really think about the following points.

• If you have more than twenty network devices and you do need to some customizations, overrides might get difficult to control.
• If you want to have full control on how your topology diagrams are built, you can rely on the robust Topology Discovery of Xian NM together with the drawing technology of Savision Live Maps (www.savision.com)
• Do you want to know who is using the network, which applications, which websites are visited? Then you need the traffic analysis features of Xian Network Manager 2012. Take a look at the screenshot below. Can you get this information with OpsMgr 2012

 

• Xian NM 2012 has an easy user interface that will save you a lot of time when setting up monitoring policies. Changing a simple threshold of one interface, can be done in a few seconds in Xian NM, While the same might take you several minutes in OpsMgr.

www.jalasoft.com/networkmanager