You can use Operations Manager to monitor physical and virtual network routers and switches, including the ports on those devices, VLANs (virtual local area network) and Host Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) groups that they are members of, as well as the status of supported firewall and load balancing devices. Specifically, you can use Operations Manager to monitor the following aspects of network devices:
- Connection health Monitor from the perspective of the network device and devices connected to the monitored network device.
- VLAN health Allows you to view the health state of switches that participate in a specific VLAN.
- HSRP group health View the health state of the devices that participate in a HSRP group.
- Port/Interface Monitor the operational and administrative status of device ports and interfaces.
- Processor utilization Monitor the processor utilization of supported network devices.
- Memory utilization Monitor the memory utilization of supported network devices.
- System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager supports monitoring the following numbers of network devices:
- 2000 network devices (approximately 25,000 monitored interfaces/ports) managed by two resource pools.
- 1000 network devices (approximately 12,500 monitored interfaces/ports) managed by a single resource pool that consists of three or more Operations Manager management servers.
- To perform network discovery and monitoring, you need to ensure that the following management packs are installed:
- Microsoft.Windows.Server.NetworkDiscovery
- Microsoft.Windows.Client.NetworkDiscovery
Discovered network devices are visible through the Monitoring workspace of the Operations Manager console. Under the Network Monitoring node, shown in Figure 1, you can view the following information:
FIGURE 1 Network Monitoring categories
- Active Alerts
- Hosts
- HSRP Groups
- Legacy Network Devices
- Network Devices
- Network Summary Dashboard
- Routers
- Switches
- VLANS
You can also view the following device-related performance information:
- Free Memory (Percent)
- ICMP Ping Response Time (Milliseconds)
- Interface Usage Statistics
- Port Usage Statistics
- Processor Utilization (Percent)
You can also use the following Operations Manager dashboard views when monitoring network devices:
- Network Summary Dashboard Provides summary information, including which network devices are experiencing the highest processor utilization, or which interfaces are encountering the most errors.
- Network Node Dashboard Provides information about each network device. Includes alerts generated by each device and information including processor utilization.
- Network Interface Dashboard Provides information about network device interfaces/ports, including alerts generated by interfaces/ports and traffic statistics.
- Network Vicinity Dashboard Provides information on the relationship between discovered network devices and computers with the Operations Manager agent installed. This is useful for determining the cause of network outages.
More Info: Network Device Monitoring
You can learn more about network device monitoring at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh212935.aspx.
