What Is Network Management?

Network management refers to the processes, tools and applications used to administer, operate and maintain a network infrastructure. Performance management and fault analysis are also included in network management. To put it simply, network management is the process of keeping your network healthy, which keeps your business healthy.

What Are the Components of Network Management?

The definition of network management is often broad, as network management involves several different components. Here are some of the terms you’ll often hear when network management or network management software is talked about:

• Network administration
• Network maintenance
• Network operation
• Network provisioning
• Network security

Why Is Network Management important?

The whole point of IT network management is to keep the network infrastructure and network management system running smoothly and efficiently. Network management helps you:

• Avoid costly network disruptions
• Improve IT productivity
• Improve network security
• Gain a holistic view of network performance

THE FOLLOWING ARE THE NETWORK MANAGEMENT TOOLS

OP5 Monitor

OP5 Monitor is OP5’s Enterprise level monitoring solution. With OP5 Monitor you can monitor applications, networks, servers and storage, regardless of location, whether that’s on-premise, hybrid or in a private/public cloud.

Key features include:

• Unified Dashboard – Fully customizable and interactive dashboards
• Scalability- Unparalleled Scalability across Distributed Environments
• Automation – Endless Possibilities To Automate
• API- Developer Friendly Interface
• SNMP Traps – Read, process and generate alerts from SNMP traps
• Reporting – Custom, SLA- reports and availability reports.

ConnectWise Automate

Formerly known as Labtech, ConnectWise Automate is a new cloud-based manager and monitoring solution that can keep track of your IT infrastructure devices from a single location.
ConnectWise Automate discovers all devices in your network so they can be monitored proactively. The network visibility is improved because the tool interprets problems and initiates an automatic pre-defined action to mitigate the issue.

A cool feature of this software is the “Patch Management”, as it allows you to protect all your systems with simultaneous patching from a centralized manager. Use Windows Patch management or third-party software.

By extending the ConnectWise suite, the software can also allow a premier remote control. You can resolve issues quickly by allowing remote support, remote access and even remote meetings.
ConnectWise Automate is aimed at SMBs. The price of the software is based on quotes. You can get a price on their official site tailored accordingly to the size of your network.

Datadog

It is a monitoring service specially designed for hybrid cloud environments. Datadog can also monitor the performance of network, apps, tools, and services.

One of the highlights of Datadog is that it can provide extensibility though many APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) with very good documentation.

The software is very easy to install and can be up and running in on time. To make it easy, agents can download and install the software. The agents are available for various different platforms such as Windows, Mac OS, Several Linux distributions, Docker, Chef, Puppet, etc.

You can create custom graphs, metrics, and alerts in an instant, and the software can adjust them dynamically based on different conditions. Datadog prices start from free (up to five hosts), Pro $15/per host, per month and Enterprise $23 /per host, per month.

Incinga

It is another open source infrastructure and service monitoring tool. Icinga was developed in 2009 by the same team of developers that brought you Nagios.
It is a very easy to use and flexible tool for SMB and enterprise networks. The software focuses strongly on monitoring infrastructure and services. The tool also includes great threshold analysis and report/alert functionalities.

Icinga is popular at providing superior alters and reports of the general health of your IT infrastructure. All alert dependencies can be displayed in the dashboard and sent via email, SMS or mobile message applications.

Since Icinga is open source it is completely free. With its strong community forum, you can get all support you need.

Nagios XI

Nagios XI is aimed at a wide audience, from freelancers, SMBs (Small-to-Medium-Business), to large corporations. This makes Nagios’s XI pricing model one of the most flexible. They have a free version, open-source, one-time license and subscription. It is one of the few tools that allows an extreme flexibility (because of its adaptability to plug-ins) on what’s being monitored and alerted for a low cost.

Nagios XI focuses on monitoring. The key IT components that Nagios XI monitors are Network, Infrastructure, and Database. Although the software is easy to install, it will initially take some time to adjust to your requirements. This is because Nagios XI does not auto-discover devices. You have to configure each device that needs to be monitored with a configuration file.

Standard paid edition starts from $1,995 for 100 nodes. Nagios XI is supported only by Linux (or UNIX variants) OS.

ManageEngine OpManager

At its core, ManageEngine OpManager is an infrastructure management, network monitoring and Application Performance Management “APM” (with APM plug-in) software.
The product is well balanced when it comes to monitoring and analysis features.

The solution can manage your network, servers, network configuration and fault & performance; It can also analyze your network traffic. To run Manage Engine OpManager, it must be installed on-premises.

A highlight of this product is that it comes with pre-configured network monitor device templates. These contain pre-defined monitoring parameters and intervals for specific device types.
The essential edition product can be purchased for $595 which allows up to 25 devices.

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is easy to setup and can be ready in no time. The tool automatically discovers network devices and deploys within an hour. Its simple approach to oversee an entire network makes it one of the easiest to use and most intuitive user interfaces.

The product is highly customizable and the interface is easy to manage and change very quickly. You can customize the web-based performance dashboards, charts, and views. You can design a tailored topology for your entire network infrastructure. You can also create customized dependency-aware intelligent alerts and much more.

The software is sold by separate modules based on what you use. SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Price starts from $1,995 and is a one-time license including 1st-year maintenance.

Solarwinds NPM has an Extensive Feature list that make it One of the Best Choices for Network Monitoring, including:

• Automatically Network Discovery and Scanning for Wired and Wifi Computers and Devices
• Support for Wide Array of OEM Vendors
• Forecast and Capacity Planning
• Quickly Pinpoint Issues with Network Performance with NetPath™ Critical Path visualization feature
• Easy to Use Performance Dashboard to Analyze Critical Data points and paths across your network
• Robust Alerting System with options for Simple/Complex Triggers
• Monitor , VPN, Interface and Monitor on your Cisco ASA
• Monitor Firewall rules through Firewall Rules Browser
• Hop by Hop Analysis of Critical Network Paths and Components
• Automatically Discover Networks and Map them along with Topology Views
• Manage, Monitor and Analyze wifi networks within the Dashboard
• Monitor Hardware Health of all Servers, Firewalls, Routers, Switches, Desktops, laptops and more.
• Real-Time Network and Netflow Monitoring for Critical Network Components and Devices