Computer Network Management and Monitoring
If you use Network Printing devices you have to check wath protocols you need to access that printer. Network Protocols Standard Network protocols on HP Printdevices are: TCP/IP IPX/SPX DLC/LCC AplleTalk Use only the ones that your really need! If you run a TCP/IPBased network without Apple Computers or Novell Clients just set the TCP/IP Stack. Disbale all the others so they don't send all kinds of network packets over your … [Read more...]
If you want to get a good overview of the Printers installed on you network, you really want this Free Software from Hewlett Packard. Not only does it give you a great overview of all your printdevices, but you can also see several other things. For Instance: How many pages are printed on that printer How full are the toner catridges at the moment Is there new Firmware to install What is the serial number of the device One … [Read more...]
If you build a Network Monitoring system you will find out that there is a lot of information that you can get via the SNMP Protocol. You have to make some choices on what you want to monitor and when you want to receive a notification about a certain event and how you want to receive it. Start by making a basic monitoring plan, think about what you want to see: For example: Disc space usage on Servers, SAN or NAS devices CPU usage … [Read more...]
There are several tools with which you can monitor your network. First, what has Network Documentation to do with Network Monitoring? More then you might think! Because you need to now the ins- and outs of your network you look at your doumentation to find out what critical devices you got. Depending on that information you can start building a monitoring system. Here are several tools that you will find very usefull: Use the … [Read more...]
The basic structure of the NetworkDNA System is as follows: Section 1 - Non Network Information Section 2 - Network Globals Section 3 - Network Infrastucture Section 4 - Network Devices Section 5 - Peripherals Section 6 - Software Section 7 - Administrative Section 8 - Service Level Agreemets SLA Section 9 - Diagrams … [Read more...]
This Blog is about Network Documentation and Network Management Information. It Originated from my Dutch website http://www.netwerkdna.nl/ where I Inform Dutch IT Managers and alike about how to set up and maintain Computer Networks. The Site is based on the Methodoligy NetworkDNA from Don Krause. But over time it expanded to more than just Network Documentation, cover all kinds off aspects involved Computer Networks, Administration, … [Read more...]
I like Hewlett Packard for their whole range of products including their network printers. Now a days it is almost difficult to get a printer that is NOT network ready... but for a nice stable network without to much collisions and traffic towards those network printers there are some features that you might want to close down on those printers. Hewlett Packard and other manufactures support several protocols on their network interface. To … [Read more...]
The basic structure for your Network Documentation is as follows: Section 1 - Non Network Information Section 2 - Network Globals Section 3 - Network Infrastructure Section 4 - Network Devices Section 5 - Peripherals Section 6 - Software Section 7 - Administrative Section 8 - Service Level Agreements SLA Section 9 - Diagrams Each of these objects will be reflected in the page’s that you can select from the top menu. You need to have … [Read more...]
The Network Documentation Process always starts with an inventory of your assets. That means you have to identify every piece of hardware that builds and connects to your network. To do that you want to use a tool that will ping and list all the IP addresses in your network and possibly give more information like the name and operating system of that device. You will find out that there are a lot of tools to do this, but my favorite one to … [Read more...]
Monitoring a computer network requires thinking and planning before implemanting a monitoring system. Think about what to monitor You could start monitoring every aspect of your network, but does that make sense? Do you really need to know if a printer is up every minute? Or is a check one an hour enough. Is checking the CPU load on you main server once a day enough or do you want to keep that und a close watch? Or do you want to know the … [Read more...]