ISPPlanet NMS Series - Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold 5.0

Show Me the Network:
WhatsUp Gold 5.0

by Lisa Phifer VP Core Competence, Inc. [August 15, 2000]

Keeping watch over your entire network can be a daunting task. Even if you're able to collect timely data from hundreds of devices, this mountain of raw data must be condensed into a "picture" of network performance. Ideally, data collection and presentation should reflect relationships between network devices and services. When performance is declining, why waste scarce resources polling devices that lie beyond the point of failure? Why be overwhelmed by symptomatic alerts when one alert would be far more productive? Wouldn't you rather have a monitoring system that identifies "hot spots" and provides diagnostic aids to help trouble-shoot the problem?

Here, in part five of our entry-level NMS series, we take a look at WhatsUp Gold from Ipswitch. Small-to-midsize ISPs can rely on WhatsUp Gold to maintain a 24x7 vigil over network and service reachability, making status readily available and raising alerts in the event of failure. Moreover, WhatsUp Gold understands network connectivity; it won't flood your network with pointless polls when a supporting resource is out of service.

WhatsUp Gold 5.0 $695 Ipswitch, Inc. Lexington, Mass. http://www.ipswitch.com

Intstallation and Setup
WhatsUp Gold ($695) is primarily a discovery and monitoring tool for TCP/IP, IPX, and NetBIOS networks. On Windows 95/98, it runs as an application; on Windows NT and 2000, it can also run as a service. We installed WhatsUp Gold 5.0 on a PIII 500 running Windows NT4 SP5, using the supplied setup program.

Installation is quick and painless. The only catch we spotted: WhatsUp Gold performance graphs require ODBC. You must make install ODBC before WhatsUp Gold, because graph support cannot be added later. Also, if you plan to run WhatsUp Gold as an NT service, you'll want to discover your network in "regular" mode first.

A "demo network" is included to help first-timers get familiar with WhatsUp Gold (right). This demo provides an excellent overview of WhatsUp Gold features and navigation. The User's Guide offers simple, step-by-step instructions on how to get your feet wet by creating a map of your own. These introductory features make WhatsUp Gold quite approachable; most users will grasp the basics with little effort.