Net Inspector

MG-SOFT Net Inspector Fault and Performance Manager

About the software

MG-SOFT Net Inspector is a powerful fault and performance network management application. Equipped with advanced web-based user interface, it offers a complete insight into almost all aspects of a modern multi-vendor IPv4 and IPv6 network operation including problems, performance and availability.

Net Inspector incorporates diverse data collection mechanisms by using SNMP, WMI, VMware web services, NetFlow/sFlow, and ICMP protocols and by polling a variety of network services (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, DNS, SMTP, IMAP, IMAPS, POP3, SSH, Telnet, NNTP, NNPTS, LDAP, LDAPS, SIP, H.323, IPP, LPD, MsSQL, MySQL and Oracle service) with threshold-based problem detection. The software continuously monitors the status and performance of network devices and triggers alarms when problems occur, e.g., if a device or service stops responding, if a metric crosses the threshold value, etc. This way, you are immediately notified of existing problems and warned about potential future issues before they occur.

The software is designed to be as scalable as possible. When deployed on smaller networks, all components of the application run on a single server host. When larger networks are managed, two or more remote polling engines can be deployed to facilitate efficient management of your network.

Net Inspector incorporates a modern, completely web-based front-end employing dynamic web technologies. This front-end will help you start using the software effectively in no time, thanks to its intuitive and user-friendly interface with a modern look and feel and with the ease of use of a web browser application. It provides a graphical presentation of user views, maps, dashboards and reports. Presented content offers a complete and quick insight into the status and performance of the monitored network and devices, as well as the capability to quickly drill-down to root causes when problems occur.

Net Inspector employs advanced network discovery methods and algorithms that let it automatically discover network devices and graphically present the layer 2 (physical) and layer 3 (logical) topology of the discovered network. Discovered devices are represented by icons that are automatically linked with connection lines and mapped onto layered maps that reveal how devices are logically arranged into networks and subnets on the IP level. In addition, the software lets you import device information from a CSV text file. All this lets you start monitoring your network almost instantly, without any special training.

Net Inspector supports discovering and monitoring the organization’s virtualization infrastructure, i.e., virtualization servers (VMware ESX/ESXi and vCenter and Microsoft Hyper-V) and virtual machines (VMs). This lets you effectively monitor your virtualization environment’s health and resources of virtualization servers and VMs, like the CPU load, memory usage, network utilization and traffic, datastore usage, etc.

In addition to fault management, Net Inspector incorporates also the full-featured performance management functionality, effectively covering both essential network management areas. The advantage of integrated fault and performance management is that full history of alarms and performance data is available in one location, which allows you to see a more realistic picture of the health of the network and let you bring educated decisions, based on trend reports, regarding its maintenance. Further advantage is that the integrated system enables you to monitor virtually any parameter available through SNMP (vendor-specific metrics, vendor-specific traps), and let you deploy distributed polling engines that enable load balancing and better performance of the management system. Distributed management also makes the system easily scalable without degrading its performance, so the management system’s capacity can seamlessly grow with your network.

Besides, Net Inspector incorporates NetFlow and sFlow monitoring that measures the amount and type of network traffic and offers detailed IP traffic statistics identifying the applications that generate the most traffic (in packets and bytes), endpoints (IP addresses) that receive and send the most data, protocols that are used most, etc. This information is obtained by collecting, analyzing and aggregating NetFlow and sFlow packets exported by network devices. Monitoring IP traffic flows effectively complements the standard network monitoring and together they offer a valuable insight into the network infrastructure and bandwidth utilization and let you easily identify the causes of congestions, determine where to apply Quality of Service, optimize resource usage, etc.

Furthermore, Net Inspector also lets you monitor the IP SLA statistics, including HTTP, FTP, TCP, DNS and VoIP Quality-Of-Service metrics (e.g., MOS, jitter, latency, packet loss, etc.) on devices implementing the IP SLA functionality (e.g., Cisco routers).

The software can automatically perform certain actions on events/alarms. Actions are primarily used for notifying network operators about events, e.g., by e-mail or by executing arbitrary commands (e.g., to fix specific network problems in an automated fashion or to notify responsible persons via some other means, for example, by emitting an audible alarm, by sending an instant message, etc.).

In addition to the standard user-based authentication mechanism and associated access rights, Net Inspector also lets you configure and assign different user views to users. User views differ in respect to what managed objects they contain. This principle enables effective delegation of the network supervision activities to different staff members and even end-users.

Net Inspector is available in four editions. The LITE edition is suitable for small networks, while WorkGroup, Enterprise and Carrier editions let you efficiently monitor the status, health and performance of medium- and large-sized networks.