In Search Of The Best Monitoring Tool

Request from user:

My company wants the ability to perform the following tasks with one tool

• up/down monitoring (for those devices we do not have SNMP access to like 3rd party WAN routers)
  
• SNMP monitoring (SNMP provides access to a lot of valid information on network attached hardware)
  
• SYSLOG Collector (easy to search syslog collector, it would be a bonus if the syslog messages were displayed if I was browsing the device being monitored)
  
• Netflow Analyzer (some of our layer3 devices have the ability to provide netflow data. Would be a bonus if this data is displayed as I browse the device being monitored)
  
• Unlimited Custom Fields (having the ability to add custom fields related to a device would be handy so the team could search for a common field to pull all related items. Also easy for ALERTs)
  
• Alert Function (have the ability to send alerts on devices falling below a threshold or match a status (like up/down) or SNMP monitor (like heavy memory) or SYSLOG message (power supply failure))
  
• Reporting (admin reports and user/customer reports. Allow ability to create custom reports)
  
• Switch Config Collector (collects and keeps track of switch config files as well as provides an archive if a switch needs a restore)
  
• Search Function (allow ability to search any field known about a device to have all results display. Example: search for city = miami, maybe because a storm, all devices show up, create eyes on glass temporary alerting screen to watch devices while storm rolls through)
  

Now if I was designing the perfect tool, it would do all the above and when I add a device it would also ask for the mailing address of the device. The Tool would use this address to automatically place it on a network monitoring map. The tool would also pull weather from an online service that would show the team monitoring the devices the weather passing over the certain devices. You could zoom in on the map to see the individual devices. If many were at the same address then you could drag a box around the devices and they would show up below the map with street address, ip address, status, etc...

I know, I am wanting everything

 

You pretty much described Solarwinds Orion. You would have to purchase some add-ons they offer for all the functionality but I would say they can do about 90% of what you are looking for at a very low price and very little hardware (in comparison to the alternatives).

Extensions you would have to add include :
Netflow Traffic Analyzer
This extension will add the ability to collect and analyze netflow traffic

Application Performance Monitor
This extension will help you monitor your application performance

Network Configuration Management
This extension integrates with Orion and helps keep an eye and archive your network configurations (like your configs on your network hardware)

Orion itself lets you have unlimited custom fields for your nodes, when you search you can search on those custom fields or anywhere... its all in a sql database so its searchable. You can create a map but it doesn't (as far as I know) automatically add devices to the map based on the devices mailing address. Now that would be awesome!