Switch Monitoring

Switches are the backbone of your LAN. Any problem in your switches affects a large proportion of your LAN users. Switch monitoring is essential to maintain your network in a healthy state. It is crucial to monitor the hardware as well as the traffic through the switch. Network switch monitoring consists of switch port monitoring and mapping, switch perfromance monitoring, and switch traffic monitoring. There are separate tools available for each of these functions such as switch port monitoring software, switch traffic monitor, switch port mapper, etc. However, using multiple tools for monitoring switch becomes an annoying task for the IT admins as the tools require:

 

• Constant management
• Additional resources for continuous monitoring
• Substantial amount of time for learning

It is always better to have a unified switch monitoring software or switch monitoring tool that can accomplish all these tasks. Also, implementing a proactive switch monitoring system helps you detect problems early and avoid potential network pitfalls.

Switch monitoring with OpManager

ManageEngine OpManager is a comprehensive network switch monitoring software. With OpManager, you can monitor switch availability, health, and performance. OpManager's switch monitoring functionality automatically discovers switches in your network and places them on a special switch map . All the switch ports are also discovered and intuitively placed on the map.

Using OpManager's switch monitoring capability, operators can gain visibility into the status and availability of switch ports. OpManager actively monitors switch ports and quickly notifies operators whenever a switch port or the switch goes down. Operators can setup OpManager to monitor only critical ports, an industry best practice for Switch monitoring, that prevents unnecessary alarms from being generated. OpManager also offers visibility into spanning tree status showing which ports are blocked and which ones are forwarding.

OpManager Switch Monitoring Software Features

Switch and Switch Ports availability monitoring

With OpManager you can create business views (maps) to graphically visualize your entire LAN. OpManager can automatically send alerts when a link goes down.

OpManager's reporting functionality also provides you with a detailed availability report of your Switches and Switch Ports. You can use these reports to ensure that your SLAs are being met.

Port-wise Traffic Monitoring

OpManager helps you monitor and troubleshoot Switch Ports for traffic, utilization, errors and Service Level Agreement (SLA) verification. By presenting accurate information on port traffic and utilization OpManager helps you identify top talkers on the LAN.

• Monitor Port utilization and traffic with threshold alerts.
• Detect potential Broadcast Storms and pro–actively prevent the same.
• Identify highly utilized and under-utilized ports.
• Get alerted when a port start discarding packets

Switch Monitoring Tools

Real Time Switch Monitoring Tools such as Switch Port Mapper and STP Tool are bundled with OpManager.

Switch Port Mapper

The Switch Port Mapper is a useful utility that is embedded in OpManager. It helps you to quickly find out the list of devices connected to the switch ports.

STP Tool

Spanning Tree Protocol details for each port can be viewed using the STP Tool. This gives you valuable information about the spanning tree state of each port such as which ports are blocking and which ports are forwarding etc.