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IT management software specialist SolarWinds announced the latest version of its Toolset platform, a collection of 61 essential network diagnostic and troubleshooting tools, which helps network engineers to access its five most popular tools from any Web browser, including mobile, for diagnosis and troubleshooting.
For Enigineer’s Toolset 11.0, network engineers selected the five most essential tools to be ported to the SolarWinds Web console, including a response time monitor, which monitors multiple devices and provides latency and availability information in real time.
The Toolset provides network engineers with a set of applications and services they need to correlate user complaints such as slowness or connectivity issues with the performance levels of their infrastructure.
For example, a trace route feature included in the latest edition of the software analyzes the performance and latency of each hop across a communication path including running averages, minimums, and maximums, which is designed to allow faster troubleshooting of connectivity issues.
“Over many years, we engineers have provided feedback to the SolarWinds developers who have updated and added to the toolset, providing us with this must-have companion tool,” Napoleon Crowe, enterprise management systems architect and NOC engineer for FPP Business Services, said in a statement. “While SNMP MIB Walk and Scanner are my two most used tools now, over the years my most needed tools changed as needs appeared, which is the beauty of having so many quality tools in one package. The growth of the toolkit has kept up with our needs, such as the addition of NetFlow Configuration and DHCP Scope Monitor.”
Other features include a central processing unit (CPU) monitor, which provides warning and alarm thresholds for each device, captures CPU and host statistics, and enables users to see the CPU load and incriminate or rule-out device load during the troubleshooting process, and the ability to monitors memory utilization in real time and provide current memory utilization information alongside the total memory availability.
The fifth tool included in Engineer’s Toolkit 11.0 is an interface monitor, which captures and analyzes fast rate Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) data to provide real-time interface statistics, and facilitate correlation between interface load and user-impacting issues.
SNMP is an Internet-standard protocol for managing devices on IP networks, with devices that typically support SNMP including routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers and modem racks.
The platform is used mostly in network management systems to monitor network-attached devices for conditions that warrant administrative attention.
“SolarWinds embarked on its journey to provide IT Pros with powerful and easy-to-use products with Engineer’s Toolset nearly 15 years ago, evolving along the way to meet their needs as they converged across networks, systems and applications,” Chris LaPoint, vice president of product management for SolarWinds, said in a statement. “Now accessible via any Web browser, Engineer’s Toolset is continuing to evolve with the ever-increasing demands network engineers and IT Pros face, offering its tried-and-true dependability with modern convenience enhancements to help IT pros work smarter and faster.”