Wireless Technologies and their Impact on IT Management

With the wave of improvements in Wireless technologies and the increasing deployment into areas not considered "high-tech" such as healthcare and education, IT departments will need to rethink the methods they use to service these new users.

We now have the ability to create vast wireless networks in places where previously infrastructures were not cost effect.  These include rural areas, 3rd world countries and older architecture which was previously not cost effect to upgrade.  Additionally, nearly all new buildings are being supplied with built-in wireless routers and infrastructures.

With all this capability, users will soon demand the same reliability they are use to with fixed wired networks.  How will network management teams and IT departments handle this change?  Many sites could be miles away from the IT department.  It won't be cost effective to send teams to the site to fix the problems. 

Additionally, there is a hugh influx of devices that can be attached to the network "on-demand."  Once you distribute the wireless access key to your employees or customers, they can attach all kinds of devices to the network.  This can quickly become a management and security nightmare. 

So what should a IT Manager do? 

• First, create a policy of who is responsible for each level of support for all these devices.  State specifics of what IT will be responsible for managing and what the user is responsible for maintaining.
• Build a management solution that is flexible enough to handle the rapid changes on available devices to put on the network and their impact on network traffic patterns.  No one thought about IPads and Tablets being everywhere 6 years ago.  The next wave could be watches, smart devices you wear, or something beyond. 
• Security is critical and should be incorporated into your IT policy, not a side issue or dealt with by a distinct group that does not communicate with the rest of IT.

Remember with any new technology, there will be trade-offs.  Be open to new technologies and the benefits it can bring to you and your users.  That's what makes this job so interesting.

 

Flexibility is Becoming a Must in Network Management Software

With the proliferation of remote access capabilities along with intelligent mobile devices, it is easier than ever for network administrators to respond to system issues promptly. However, with the ease of access also comes an increase in service level expectations and also the need for even more flexibility with network and system administration. Is your network management software flexible enough to meet increasing demands and shorter response time requirements?

Flexibility is not limited to being accessible via a remote device. Flexibility also means growing your ability to resolve issues remotely - not just receive a message then rush to the office. Can you not only receive notifications and alerts remotely, but can you also resolve many issues using remote devices or connections?

Flexibility also means increased intelligence with your network management software. Not only must network administrators address security issues surrounding an increasing number of smart devices that connect, interact, and then disconnect rapidly - administrators must also understand the massive amounts of data that is transferred and how applications respond to varying amounts of communications. Does your network management software have the ability to understand various states of network traffic and applications, and then interpret and analyze issues proactively?

A contemporary finite state modeling system gives network and system administrators a significant advantage. Not only does the system monitor basic network traffic but it also intelligently analyzes application performance and security. NerveCenter by LogMatrix is the intelligent answer to network and application administration with state of the art analytic and diagnostic capabilities that handle all your needs coupled with remote access and resolution options. Contact the experts at LogMatrix to get flexible with your network management.

Being Timely with your IT Management

There was a time when computers and technology were alien to many business people. While business managers knew that information needed to be entered into computers in order to do business, they preferred not to be involved with any “hands on” software development, network planning, or integration projects. This left IT departments practically on their own to plan out projects and respond to issues using their own internal IT management software.

This “technology island” approach may have been nice in some ways because the IT departments could make their own priorities and decisions regarding support and projects. But in many ways this was detrimental because IT may not be aware of business priorities or the impact of system failures on productivity and profits.

Subsequent IT management software solutions involved a full-time staff of IT support people who camped out inside a computer room, waiting to respond to incidents or working on projects. This was an improvement because businesses had dedicated IT staff, but balancing support with projects and the costs associated with keeping technical personnel on hand can rapidly become less cost effective.

Then, service level agreements (SLA’s) evolved that articulated clearly the expectations of business along with the capabilities of IT. What was lacking was the ability to meet the ever increasing expectations of timely response to support issues.

The advent of the Internet coupled with exponential improvements in mobile technology and system diagnostics brings a new generation of IT management software solutions. These solutions give technical people the ability to rapidly respond to incidents or requests via almost any mobile device.

Finite state modeling software that can monitor and track network and application activities as well as allow remote notifications and responses gives IT management the capabilities to meet business expectations regarding requests while effectively managing costs. For more information about IT management software that can increase your incident response time, contact LogMatrix regarding their NerveCenter solution.

 

What is the Value of NAT in your Network Management Infrastructure?

 

What is NAT?

Network Address Translation [NAT] is a commonplace technology, but what is it and how does it impact your IT Operations responsibilities?

There are many variations on NAT, yet the main theme is that a gateway on your network provides a translation service, replacing addressing information on the traffic flowing through it.

The most common form of NAT is many-to-one translation.  This is used by a gateway to provide outward access for many systems via a shared point.  The environment external to the gateway sees only the translation addresses that the gateway is configured to use.  The gateway’s external addresses likely bear no relation to the addressing used behind the gateway, thus allowing for private addressing and private address management situations.

Why Use NAT?

While the direct benefit of NAT is the external address sharing mechanisms it provides, it indirectly benefits an environment by providing a protection barrier.  From the external environment, access into the address space behind the gateway is typically restricted.   Even if an external agent knows the layout of the private address space behind the gateway,the NAT mechanism and configuration very likely prevent accessing the internal systems except as explicitly allowed by the gateway.  The wall thus created by NAT becomes a first-line barrier against the wilds beyond.

NAT affects all traffic. As your local traffic consists primarily of IP-based TCP and UDP protocols, ICMP, and some RARP/ARP, know that all are being guarded by the NAT gateway from external visibility as well as external interference.

The Takeaway

The key points to know when working with gateways and NAT concern the provided functionality – both the abilities and the limitations.  NAT services vary from vendor to vendor.  Each provides outright and yet also sometimes subtle variations on the theme of address translation.  Of particular interest will be learning how to manage NAT in-coming traffic allowances. Request management, where the request is coming from a source external to the gateway, needs to be carefully configured and then managed across time.  It can be surprising to find how many allowances come to exist after a period of time and how easily they can be forgotten.  Stay on top of your gateway and NAT configuration.  Make sure your team knows the reasons for the allowances that have been made.  You will find NAT can be worthwhile service but it requires tracking and understanding.

The Future of Social Media in Network Management

As the workforce in the United States continues to become more mobile through the use of remotely connected smart phones, tablets, and laptops there is an opportunity to leverage this "always connected" trend for network management.

While social media is not always considered a tool for businesses, IT departments can utilize Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites to make sure the right people get alerted to networking issues.

For example, many businesses have their network administration personnel log in to a VPN or other secured connection in order to check for issues and resolve them.  While this does provide a consistent and secure process, those who are "on call" often have to go to a PC and perform this task, which is not always convenient in non-business hours.

Instead, think of a finite state system that monitors network activities and if attention or intervention is needed, send a text message or Twitter alert to the group that is on call for support.  "@MyMonitor Server ID has a failed network connection at 0100am EST" could be an example of the message.  Security can be provided by allowing only selected persons to "follow" or "friend" the monitoring accounts.

Social media can provide a faster response on network management and support issues while allowing network support personnel mobility and freedom regardless of their location.

 Are you using Social Media in your IT Department?  Would you consider ever doing so?  I would love to hear your thoughts.

NerveCenter 6.0 Release – Highlights of Exciting New Features

Building upon the performance enhancements of NerveCenter 5.2, the latest NerveCenter Release 6.0 is the first in a series of releases that will bring new functionality to NerveCenter.  See our website for a download of the full release notes on NerveCenter 6.0 (http://www.logmatrix.com/). 

A few of the new features are highlighted here:

-       MIB Browser.  The NerveCenter Client application now contains a MIB Browser. The MIB Browser can be run on a per node basis from the Query tab on the NerveCenter Client Node Window. Queries can be made by name or OID for all objects defined in the node’s property group.

-       AddVarBind.  A new feature called AddVarBind has been added in this release. AddVarBind is an API that allows the addition of varbinds to data received from an SNMP Agent through either a Poll or a Trap. Poll and Trap functions can be written to utilize the AddVarBind calls in order to enhance the data being reported by a NerveCenter system.

-       Windows Support.  The NerveCenter Windows full kit installation process has been updated to support installation and running of NerveCenter Server and Client on Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Windows 2008R2.

Contact us (http://www.logmatrix.com/contact-us/) for an evaluation copy of NerveCenter 6.0 and look for further new features in the upcoming 6.1 release to be announced in Q2 this year.

2011: A NerveCenter Engineering Year in Review

This past year was a busy one for us in NerveCenter Engineering.  We finished up several releases and added a number of enhancements to provide a more sophisticated, robust solution for building a Network Management solution.

Here are some of the hightlights as we in engineering see things:

• New analytics that let you see what your NerveCenter server is doing - I love this one, makes things so much easier to know what is going on.  I especially like the ability to grab the log data from client without needing to log into the NerveCenter Server at all.
• Updated Perl modules supported
• Support for newest releases of Windows Server 2008R2 and Windows 7
• Major enhancements for polling - including AddVarBind - user definable varBinds for use in Polls and building Alarms.
• New and Improved ICMP and SNMP query tools including MIB Browser. - we all love this one.  I actually like the TTL features on ICMP query too.  Comes in handy when checking out system behaving a bit oddly.
• Per Node timeout and retry controls
• Payload sizing for ICMP polls.  Who doesn't love that.
• Improvements to autostart with new automated scripts.  No need to setup or source anything.
• A revved up Polling engine for the NerveCenter Server - enough said.

 

 

 

Next Year should be even more exciting.  Looking forward to sharing it with you.

 

ICMP Message Handling within NerveCenter Part 2: ICMP Responses

Part 1 of ICMP Message Handling described the ICMP defined message types supported in NerveCenter.  Part 2 covers the ICMP replies that can be received by NerveCenter. 

Today we cover the possible ICMP replies returned by devices as the result of an ICMP or SNMP poll attempt.  The context of the traffic issued by the management application defines the range of potential ICMP replies.

 

ICMP provides a means of outcome reporting for a number of scenarios:

• Routing to the the intended destination cannot be carried out.
• The request contains some element which prevents its delivery. (ex: its TTL parameter is too low, making it incapable of reaching the destination)
• An administrative prohibition has been placed at some point(s) of the network that the poll attempt to traverse.
• The destination is reachable but cannot handle the request.

 

Download the Whitepaper NerveCenter ICMP Messages (pdf) to learn more about the ICMP message types returned during SNMP Polling. 

What's up with SNMPv3?

I try to track what is being said about SNMP v3 in the news.  That is a interesting thing to do, because compared to other topics, the answer is not much.  I was intrigued when I ran across this article on Packet Pushers by Lindsey Hill called SNMPv3 Do It Now.

As I read it I was thinking of course we should be using SNMPv3 but why aren't we all doing it now?  Yes, I do know lots of folks that are using it, but what is holding us back from moving to SNMPv3?

Here are my thoughts (guesses):

1. It is really hard to implement.
2. It slows down processing of requests.
3. My site is secure so I don't need to use it.
4. I have never heard of it.
5. My devices don't consistently support SNMPv3 (some support DES but not AES, or some have MD5 and some not)  Some don't support SNMPv3 at all.

So what should we do about this.  Well for 1 through 4, the problem is clearly a mindset problem.  There are lots of IT tasks we do every day that are hard, but we still do them.  Nearly all networks and devices are so fast today that the extra time to process the request should be negligible especially when using GetBulk for large requests. 

In the case of number 3, I would bet your site is not as secure as you think it is.  I am not even going to discuss number 4.

So that leaves us with the final problem: the vendors.  Well, you are their customers and they should be providing what you need.  So if you want SNMPv3 and they won't provide it, you need to make clear your desires.  SNMP v3 has been around for 10 years. No company is likely to ignore a large chorus of requests and still be successful.

Application Monitoring: JBoss with NerveCenter

When most network administrators think of protocols, SNMP is typically at the top of every list. While SNMP is the protocol used by a vast majority of networks, SNMP is not always the most adept at proper application monitoring. While SNMP can give you basic network information such as packet size and frequency, you may not get all of the details needed to perform more comprehensive application monitoring tasks.

The following is an example of using NerveCenter to monitor JBOSS and display the results to the Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer.  A NerveCenter model using Perl collected the statistical information from JBoss and forwared it to the Analyzer for display on the Dashboard.

 

Check out this video to learn more about JBoss.

For more information on NerveCenter and how it can help your network and application monitoring process, contact the experts at LogMatrix to find the solution that is right for your business.