Review: SolarWinds Gets It Right With Orion 9

The wrinkles reviewers encountered with the installation and configuration of a previous version of NPM have been smoothed out in Orion 9.

Total time for installation and configuration of the product was 25 minutes, maximum. The installation was done in a test environment preconfigured with SolarWinds' recommendations: a non"domain controller Windows Server 2003 RC2 machine, IIS v6, SQL Server and SNMP services installed.

Even adding license information was a snap in this version. SolarWinds proffers a username and password for customers to its Web portal. When prompted for the license, all that's required is entering that username and password and the license is downloaded from SolarWinds' Web site to the local machine. No e-mail text to copy and paste from and no paperwork to fuss with.

The SQL configuration was straightforward—Orion requires Mixed Mode Authentication and then a restart of SQL service. For testing purposes, authentication was kept at the default Orion SQL account. A new database was created within the configuration wizard.

One issue did come up, however. During database creation, the wizard stopped midway and gave a message that the database's compatibility level was required to be set at 80. This had to be done within SQL, so the wizard had to be stopped. When configuration recommenced, it completed all the way through without any further interruption. Reviewers questioned SolarWinds' engineers about this. They pointed out since the Test Center review was carried out using SQL Server 2008, and since Orion 9 has yet to be fully tested by them on SQL 2008, there may be some conflict with compatibility level.

Which makes sense: By default SQL sets new databases at a compatibility level of 100. Changing the Orion-created database to level 80 was not a big deal and caused no interference in continuing the install process or in running the application.

The Orion System Manager does all the work for a sys admin. From the Manager, a network discovery of all devices can be initiated. This is where SNMP community strings and subnets to be monitored are added as well. The Web console interface is what really impresses. Managing multitudes of devices across a country or even the globe can be daunting for even the most seasoned system administrators. Orion's Web console gives vital statistics on devices in a graphical, realtime and detail-rich interface. Want to tailor that interface? Not a problem—the interface is customizable (it is rare to see an interface with so much information that is so highly customizable). Yet, the default interface setup should meet many an admin's needs. Orion 9 has a winning design here—lots of detail without looking cluttered.

Some of the default views in the Web console: networkwide summary charts giving stats on percent utilization, frame relay information and on availability. Every device can be drilled down independently for further detail.

A tool called Mapmaker allows a user-chosen map image to be uploaded into Orion. On the map, devices can be placed representing their location. Not only does it look really cool, but it is a great way to get quick, at-a-glance information like up status and IP information of nodes.

The Web console has an Event feature that details all happenings with devices. There is even an embedded message thread to thwack.com—SolarWinds' user community—listing the latest posts in realtime.

In-the-box reports, a native report writer, an expansive help guide and a variety of configurable alert and diagnostics utilities all aid in rounding out the value of this product as a great tool for monitoring mid- to enterprise-level networks.