SolarWinds Orion Network Performance Monitor: An Essential Guide to Installing, Implementing, and Calibrating Solarwinds Orion Npm

I was given this book by packet publishing and over the past 2 weeks compared the material to what I encounter on a daily basis using Solarwinds NPM, NCM, and SAM modules. I thought the book gave a lot of general over all good information. I thought the format and topics covered where good. I would've preferred a little more in depth on the configuring of nodes or using MiB walkers and creating custom pollers. Overall for someone just starting out with solarwinds, this would be a valuable resource.

I'll note up front that I didn't purchase a copy of the book myself. I received a copy of the e-book from Packt Publishing and I appreciate them giving me an opportunity to review the book and provide my feedback.I've been administrating SolarWinds Servers for the last 5 years and I was very excited when I learned that someone had written a book about SolarWinds Orion because I agree with the author that the vendor documentation at times is not as useful as it should be but over the years I've seen dramatic improvements made.At the company I work for, we are using SolarWinds Orion with the SAM module and SolarWinds Enterprise Operations Console. I ran the product through our test lab and wrote the standardized build documents we use for installing and configuring an Orion, EOC and SQL server. As part of training new administrators, I have them read the install and administrator guides for each product, and while they cover 80% of the issues my administrators and I run into on a daily basis, they don't cover the issues that you find yourself dealing with in day to day operations. I was hoping that the author covered many of the things that I ran into and still do to some degree even now. Things like:- How to enable SNMP on Solaris and other types of devices (i.e. F5 Load balancers and Environmental control units). Perhaps this could be added as an appendix?- A simple terms explanation of the function of the various Orion services contained within the Orion Service Manager and how they interact with each other.- Why Orion does NetBIOS lookups in addition to DNS on the nodes and how and when to turn it off.- An overview of the various logs that Orion generates, their location and the information they contain.- How and when to access Hubble for in-depth real-time diagnostics.- How to SSL enable your website (included in the Admin guide) and use PKI tokens for authentication- An explanation of the SNMPv3 credential requirements and how to enable SNMPv3 on routers & switches.I had high expectations before I read the book which were not fulfilled, however, I think this book is great for Admins that have a hard time understanding SolarWinds official documentation but at the current price point I can't recommend it over the official documentation. In my opinion, for the book to be an essential guide for installing, implementing and calibrating SolarWinds Orion NPM it needs to include explanations of the areas where the official documentation is lacking in easy to understand terms. Having said that, I look forward to future revisions of the book and will update my review accordingly.

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I was given a review copy of this book in digital form.I am very much enjoying this manual. It is easy to read, has more explanation for the various configurations and how the modules work within the entire Solarwinds Orion system!I like the Solarwinds documentation, instruction videos, and their Thwack support - all that is given free to support us all.I hope they still keep supporting like this!But I do find Joe Dissmeyer's book another excellent source of information!We have a large Solarwinds system (NPM, SAM, NCM, 3 pollers - soon to have 4, LEM, UDT, FSM, etc.). Joe, I hope you will publish another one soon on Solarwinds - perhaps a delving a little more on SAM templates with Linux - being more creative with monitoring mount points. And possibly more on NCM.Just a last note - I love your section on monitoring VMware hosts! Great explantions. I enjoyed reading and following along with our system.Thanks Joe!

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