VMware network monitoring

 

Packet Trap pt360 Tool suite is a Windows based free Network Diagnostic tools suite and a Network Monitoring tool. Packet Trap has a nice Dashboard with drag and drop dashboard components.

At the first look, Packet Trap is very impressive, simple, easy to use, easy to understand, simple and easy navigation and menu options. All the diagnostic tools are graphic and provides a great advantage as a one stop shop for most of the Network troubleshooting. What is even more impressive is that the monitoring system being integrated into a Network Diagnostic suite which allows an admin to monitor and troubleshoot all from one place and they all can export the results in nice HTML format.. The network diagnostic tools available in Packet Trap are:

 

• Ping Scan – To scan networks using ICMP
• Enhanced Ping – Detailed reporting on Ping Time, Reponse time, Average response time, status and packet loss details.
• Graphical Ping – Pings persistently and Graphs the response time in milliseconds over a period of time
• DNS Audit – DNS Lookup for a host with simple lookup details
• Whois Lookup
• Port Scan for a given IP or a range of IPs
• MAC Address Scan for a given IP or a range of IPs
• SNMP Scan – Supports SNMPv1/2&3 thereby any platform that supports
• SNMP are supportedWMI Scan – Windows WMI support
• Wake On LAN – Wake on LAN list of Hosts (hosts that support the option at the hardware level. For example, in BIOS for x86 systems)
• TraceRoute – with response times and Packet Loss info
• Traffic Jam – Traffic Generator on TCP and UDP ports with customisation options on the packet size, bandwidth
• TFTP server

All the diagnostic tools are also available as individual downloads, if you do not want a host of these features on your system. Although, the fully loaded suite is certainly not bloated. There is also a commercial PRO version of this tool which extends support to.

 

• Cisco Config Management
• Netflow Analyzer
• Opensource tools integration (like Nagios & Cacti)
• Remote TCP reset
• Syslog server
• Network Discovery
• Encrypted Password vault

If I have to point and select the best possible  feature, I would choose Wake On LAN feature which allows you to start a bunch of hosts which supports the feature. This can be of great help with remote access/administration when you need to start a PC which you know is shutdown. Departments may even adapt it for green policies. Also, all SNMP, Password and other credentials are stored in encrypted format on the disk.

Overall a great tool for simple network administration. If there is anything that one could call a downside it is that PacketTrap pt360 could have been Web-based Client-Server tool than desktop based. This would allow Small and Medium Networks and may be to a level Enterprise networks to adapt.

As a Network professional, I would personally recommend this product to my fellow professionals!!!

For more information and download, click here

VMware tries to expand throughout the datacenter and HP

 

I finally got around to reading the excellent post over on the Windows Virtualization Team Blog by Doug de Werd, Technical Marketing Manager (great title, btw ) for Windows Virtualization at HP. There’s not really much to even say about this post; Doug nailed it. It’s one of the only times I’ve read someone so aptly address the role of virtual platforms in the data center:

1. Virtualization is a means to an end, it’s not an end itself. There’s no reason to deploy ESX or Hyper-V unless you’re trying to solve a problem, just like there’s no reason to build a data center in the first place unless you have applications that need to get out over some wire.
2. The way we enable the virtual means is through management. These platforms don’t manage themselves; they need to be part of the entire VDC and managed together.

And it’s still so strange to me to see a sentence like:

Microsoft and HP are also working closely with Citrix in the area of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

Or this one:

The VDI stack incorporates Microsoft components such as Vista and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, along with Citrix XenDesktop, all running on Hyper-V and managed by System Center.

MS and Citrix working closely on VDI? XenDesktop running on Hyper-V? Hmmm…interesting, puzzling, hopeful, strange…all words that come to mind. But hey, it’s a solution, or at least the start of one, so I’ll stick with ‘optimistic.’

Anyway, that’s about it. Read Doug’s post and then start looking at Insight or another management platform for your new virtualization roll-out. Even if you look at it and decide it’s not for you, well at least you’ve started looking.