I’m happy to announce that Solarwinds has become a supporting sponsor of this blog and the discussion forums.

Since our founding in 1999, SolarWinds’ (NYSE: SWI) mission has been to provide purpose-built products that are designed to make IT professionals’ jobs easier. We offer value-driven products and tools that solve a broad range of IT management challenges – whether those challenges are related to networks, servers, applications, storage or virtualization

Solarwinds has a plethora of management tools that cover application & server, network, log & security information, storage and virtualization. They have received numerous awards and are well respected among system administrators and network engineers alike. Solarwinds also has a vast number of free tools available at no cost to administrators and engineers. I won’t list every tool but I’ll list some of the tools that I’ve used in the past;

Network Management

• Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor
• IP Address Tracker
• Subnet Calculator
• Wake-on-LAN

Log & Security Information Management

• Event Log Consolidator

I do own a copy of the Solarwinds Engineer’s Toolset which I can attest is an awesome collection of tools for everyday use.

IP Address Management

IP Address Management solutions are critical to managing today’s growing networks and their ever busy network administrators and engineers. IPAM solutions look to break away from the traditional spreadsheet and wasted repetitious data entry by providing a single point of management for IP addressing, DHCP/BOOTP and DNS. What makes Solarwinds solution attractive is the competitive pricing and deep feature set.

Here are some of the highlights;

• Centralized DHCP and DNS Management and Monitoring
• Automated IP Address Scanning
• IP Address Preventative Alerting
• User Delegation
• Detailed Event Recording
• IP Address Reporting

IP Address Manager will manage and monitor your Microsoft DHCP and DNS servers. IP Address Manager will even allow you to monitor any Cisco DHCP servers.

I do a fair amount of consulting these days usually for smaller organizations that don’t have the staffing and resources to handle the large projects or highly technical problems. One of the biggest shortcomings I see in the majority of customers is the lack of an IPAM solution. And what does that lead? The dreaded IP address conflict should never really occur in a properly managed network.

I love the phrase “Say Goodbye to the Spreadsheet!” I would highly encourage anyone who has more than a 250 node network to seriously consider investing in a IPAM solution. It’s not going to break the bank and it will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.

Thank you to Solarwinds for sponsoring this site and the discussion forums. Solarwinds sponsorship allows me to continue to operate and expand both this site and the discussion forums and greatly helps offsetting the financial burden that I would otherwise incur.

Disclosure: Solarwinds has purchased advertising space on this blog and the discussion forums. I’m a Solarwinds customer and have no reservations recommending their products as they work and work well. I would suggest you evaluate their products as you should any product before making any purchasing decisions.

Cheers!