SolarWinds IPAM Takes Manual Drudgery Out of IP Network Management

by Frank Ohlhorst

The Configuration Dashboard offers a quick look into managed configurations and supports drill-down to gather additional information or monitor configuration changes.

Drill-down from the configuration screen brings up all the details of a specific node, including latency and packet information, making it easy to spot problems.

A configuration summary dashboard displays policy status, as well as change-management information. Other displayed elements include configuration backups as well as a recent change list, which allows administrators to track down configuration changes that may have impacted the network.

IPAM displays detailed compliance violations by drilling down from the Configuration Management screen. Violations can be sorted by node name, policy or status. Network managers can assemble physical reports directly from the details screen.

IPAM lets users create templates to manage configuration changes, ensuring that policy-driven changes are synchronized across the various network devices. Templates are fully configurable and can be created for any core networking capability.

Extensive inventory-reporting capabilities allow users to create multiple reports on an as-needed basis. The reporting capabilities include filtering, as well as other controls.

A device-tracker summary dashboard offers a quick look into the status of devices and how those devices are used. What’s more, the dashboard supports full drill-down capabilities, as well as active alerts and graphical representations of device usage.

A fully interactive management GUI makes short work of defining subnets and the associated IP addresses. Drill-down capabilities can traverse the network, giving details at the subnet level, device level and IP address level. Interactive charts and graphs add visualization to the IP Address Infrastructure.

The management GUI also provides information on automatically discovered subnets and the status of each of those subnets, including IP addresses in use and the type of assignment.

IPAM offers a roles and permissions module, which gives detailed control over a user’s management and configuration capabilities. Roles-based administration allows network managers to divvy up chores and grant reporting access to non-network managers.