Thanks to all who replied. Due to ease of deployment I will probably go with the Cent)S based server and tools and modify things as I need it afterwards.
Best of luck, Vitto, On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 4:00 PM, Claudia de Luna <cldel...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Vito, > > I"m currently consulting to the state of California corrections department > on their wan and this question continually comes up. > > My recommendation is to get started with CactiEZ as you SNMP management > tool. CactiEZ is a CentOS based Cacti server that essentially loads > everything you need to get up and running. If you already have an > authoratative and complete list of all your network infrastructure equipment > it is then a simple matter of adding the devices to the server. > Out of the box you get your syslog server (essential) with some basic > search capabilities, your monitoring for bandwidth utilization, errors, > latency (ping based) and router CPU. > > You can grow from there with notification (it's pretty basic but better > than nothing), availability reports, and even a weather map. > > As someone else already said, use the OS you are most comfortable with. > Running monitoring on a network is a full time job in and of itself so don't > complicate things! > > Tools like OpenNMS and Nagios are a little more complex. The CactiEZ CD is > pretty much turnkey and gives you most, if not all, the tools to get you up > and running. From there you can see what needs it does not meet and grow > from there. > > Claudia > > > This link lists the "plug ins" available out of the box but there are > others as Cacti has a very good plug in architecture. > http://cactiusers.org/wiki/Homepage > > Example WeatherMap > > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* vitto malitani <vmalit...@gmail.com> > *To:* nanog@nanog.org > *Sent:* Tuesday, December 9, 2008 9:17:40 AM > *Subject:* Net Mgmt Tools and supporting OS > > I am fairly new user of nanog mail list so I am not sure if the question > below is appropriate for this list. If not, please excuse it. > - I am building a new low-budget customer WAN/LAN network and need some > ideas for network management tools. I've seen couple of email threads > regarding all sort of "net goodies". However, since I haven't used them > all, I am not sure which OS would be the most appropriate for these aps? > Can anyone share their ideas in regards of apps and supporting platforms? > I would be most comfortable with free distribution of linux, but I am not > sure which distro supports most of the tools? Is the paid OS required for > all these tools, like RedHat Server or SuSe or Windows platforms? > > Thanks much, > > Vitto >