Unlike the majority of netflow collectors, Solarwinds Orion Netflow Addon requires the device to be monitored in Orion via SNMP.  You still need to configure the device to forward netflow data to the Solarwinds Server just like any other collector but unlike any other collector you need access to the SNMP community string.

This causes alot of issues for those of us that can not obtain the SNMP from third party vendors that aren't always willing to provide SNMP community strings (not even the read-only).

Solarwinds as a company has one focus and that is for monitoring and notifying you when something goes wrong.

Several companies have compared Solarwinds, Opsware, Openview and they all say the same thing.  Solarwinds is the best tool on the market with a growing number of features and strong reliablity and ease of setup make it the leader.

I big waste of money are the external "mobile" drives that go by the name of SimpleTech.  Usually these contain a Western Digital Hard Drive and connect to your computer via USB connection.

Due to the cheap components that SimpleTech uses to create this external drive and the lack of airflow, these have not been lasting long.

With a new job comes new standards and you learn and develop new ideas from the good and bad you see that others have done.

In the world of naming conventions I have developed a standard that appears to work no matter where you apply it when it comes to naming network devices (meaning not including workstations, printers, etc).  Keeping in mind that some devices have limitations in the name so we keep our standards to the lowest set characters which is 15.

My office has switched me from the very reliable AT&T Blackberry Curve to a Sprint Treo 800w because Sprint is giving the company I work for the service at such a huge discounted rate.  Also my company saves money by not using the Blackberry service (a comparison of $25 per month versus $5 per month). 

Of course it doesn't matter that you are paying the extra for reliability and quality.  With the AT&T service I had worldwide coverage and I had a signal 98% of the time, never dropped calls and my blackberry never locked up unlike the Microsoft OS phones I have which every one has locked up on me forcing me to remove the battery to reset it.

There is many different internet browsers our there. I have tried them all and reason being is I couldn't stand Internet Explorer. It seemed to crash alot and when it did it took my whole system with it. Reason being is I learned through time that Internet Explorer is VERY part of windoz. Meaning that if windoz has a problem, well your in trouble and should just plan on rebooting. If Internet Explorer has a problem, windoz has a problem and so you may as well reboot.

Anywho, there had to be a solution so first stop was Netscape. I liked it but it was still bulky and seemed like it had problems and was kinda of slow. Not slower then Internet Explorer just not fast.

Then started playing with Mozilla and then Firefox (which is based on mozilla). Now, Firefox has a lot of features that are customizable. You can install options to customize it to your flavor (which Internet Explorer is copying with there new version of IE) Also what is great about Firefox is the Tabs... meaning you can have multiple website up and only one window. It has only locked up/crashed a handful of times in the years I have used it and when it locks up I just end task and it doesn't effect windoz at all. AWESOME.

I went to a mac because of the many issues I was experencing with my windoz machine and just knew there had to be something better and guess what... there is soemthing better. It's called a mac made by Apple. Now forget the idea of what you have in your head about Apple computers. Usually its of the 1990's when you couldn't get software for it and they were in there own silo. Not true anymore. Apple changed there entire operating system to be based on the most secure operating system in the world, UNIX.

The point I am trying to make is it comes with Safari (mozilla based) which isn't bad and also rarley locks up, but I still prefer Firefox over it. The world is realizing that Microsoft doesn't necessarily mean a good thing... I believe Microsoft has had there time and now we want quality and functionality over name brand.

There are many new flavors of web conferencing in attempt to become the one leader in this arena.  In my travels I have come across many of them and have tried many of them.

I like the idea of webex and it is currently the leader in web conferencing.  Very friendly interface and pretty easy to use.  The big black negative checkmark on webex is you can not host a meeting if you are running mac OS X.  So those of you that know me know that I do not support any service that targets everyone but requires you to use only certain software (Windows, Internet Explorer, etc)  I am not giving up on webex because at least they do have a Mac OS X viewer so you are able to join a conference, you just can not host a conference or take the controls.