Cisco Systems Expert Network Consultants Network Management Solutions From CCIE and CCNP Certified Professionals
A wealth of network management tools from Cisco and other vendors highlights the importance and difficulty of maintaining networks. Progent's Cisco-certified network management consultants are expert at assisting businesses design network management strategies based on SNMP, Syslog, and NetFlow protocols to build effective mechanisms for understanding network bandwidth usage and latency, monitoring important router and switch operational characteristics, and identifying traffic patterns, processes, and devices that use network services.
Progent can help businesses to deploy a rich range of open source and license-based management utilities to maintain a Cisco network. Utilities used by Progent's engineers include MRTG, Cacti, Nagios, Cisco Cisco Adaptive Security Device Manager, Cisco Monitor Manager, Cisco Network Assistant, CiscoWorks, Cisco Security Manager, OpenView, Concord E-Health, AlterPoint DeviceAuthority, Advent and Firewall Analyzer, Solarwinds Orion, and Necordia NetMRI.
Network management platforms can enable organizations to be aware of existing network utilization and intelligently plan for future capacity expansion. Network management tools can also be used to highlight inefficient or inappropriate utilization of system resources, such as streaming multimedia, peer-to-peer file sharing, etc. that can eat up expensive or scarce network resources. A carefully crafted network management solution can also assist businesses to make intelligent decisions on network enhancements once they understand how much system resources actually required at specific times.
Having an effective network management solution in operation beforehand is essential to avoid severe problems that can follow DoS attacks and malicious viruses/Trojans. These assaults can leave the network unstable and without appropriate utilities it can be difficult, and sometimes practically impossible, to find the location of the problem.
Network Management Solutions from Cisco
Cisco provides a selection of powerful tools that should be the foundation for any network management solution. Utilized in combination with the top third-party tools, Cisco's network management software can improve the competitive value of networks for companies of all sizes by helping with key areas such as resource utilization, performance, resilience, security, repair, and scalability. Cisco's most popular network management tools include:
Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM) is a web utility that lets you configure and monitor the management utilities on network appliances. Cisco Adaptive Security Device Manager is loaded by the Cisco device, and enables you to set up, track, and control the device.
Cisco Monitor Manager is a comprehensive management solution developed to meet the requirements of small and midsize companies. Monitor Manager continuously monitors key device processes on voice/data environments used by 5 to 250 workers and equipped with as many as 250 IP phones. Cisco Monitor Manager provides:
Up-to-date scanning of key device processes on Cisco SMB-class network appliances, Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express, Unity Express, security appliances, WAPs, and Cisco Unified IP Phones
Support for the Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series for organizations with as many as 50 users
Monitor Manager scans the network on a 24x7 cycle and periodically polls and gathers identification and operations-monitoring data from the monitored devices in the system. Monitor Manager is a Microsoft Windows-based utility and is entirely invisible to system operations and does not deploy any agent software on managed devices. Monitor Manager offers a variety of useful features including:
Network discovery and topology
Physical and process looks at Unified Communications deployment
System wide device identification logging and reporting
Advanced security and dependable operation
Appliance performance tracking
IP Telephony monitoring
Connection status and data traffic tracking
Real-time alerts and notifications
Reports
Setup archive
Cisco Network Assistant is a PC-hosted management application designed for for wired and wireless LANs (WLANs) for expanding companies with up to 40 switches and routers. By utilizing Smartports technology, Network Assistant simplifies configuration, deployment, and continuing administration and support of Cisco-powered environments. The application offers a unified network view and permits IT administrators to employ its features among switches, routers, and WAPs.
Security Manager is a feature-rich but simple to operate application for centrally provisioning all aspects of device set up and policies for Cisco PIX and ASA security appliances, virtual private networks (VPNs), and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS). Cisco Security Manager efficiently manages even small networks consisting of fewer than ten devices, but also expands to control large-scale systems with thousands of devices. Scalability is achieved via smart policy-based management techniques that can streamline administration. Key features of Security Manager are:
Supports control of Cisco routers running a Cisco IOS security image, ASA 5500 Series adaptive security appliances, PIX security appliances, Cisco IPS 4200 Series sensors, and Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series security services modules
Respond faster. more rapidly to attacks: specify and apply new security policies to many hundreds of appliances in a few easy steps
Rich graphical user interface offers exceptional ease-of-use
A variety of looks that provide flexible ways to manage appliances and security policies such as the option to administer the security environment visually on a system topology image
Comprehensive video help for the new user to speed up training time
Globally specify which policies are common and inherited by new appliances to make sure corporate policies are configured consistently, at the same time providing sufficient flexibility to modify policies at the local device level
Ability to create a single firewall rule table for all Cisco platforms with intelligent evaluation of firewall policies to detect conflicts in the rule base
Easily configure site-to-site, hub-spoke, full mesh, or extranet Virtual Private Network links by means of a few mouse clicks
Integration with Cisco ACS for granular role based access management to appliances and management services
Operation with security MARS to associate events with related firewall rules to help with faster management decisions and increased network availability
Ability to assign particular jobs to each manager in the course of the deployment of a rule, with structured change management and tracking; allows the security and network operations team to act in sync as a cohesive unit with effective coordination
How Progent's Cisco Certified Experts Can Assist You with Network Management
Progent's Cisco-certified network engineers can help you to utilize Cisco's network management utilities in combination with a variety of effective open source and proprietary programs to develop a comprehensive management toolkit to keep your network operating dependably, consolidate valuable resources, guard your data, recover quickly from hardware breakdowns or malicious assaults, and allow you to expand or reassign system resources effectively and economically as your business evolves.
Progent can also help you to use network management applications to analyze and categorize network data to enable traffic shaping, which permits you to configure routers to impose different throughput restrictions on certain classes of processes according to the priorities you assign. By buffering and sorting data packets that exceed your contracted volume, and by assigning priority to critical applications, traffic shaping can prevent Internet Service Provider excess usage charges from spinning out of control and/or eliminate lost productivity resulting from brute force enforcement of your network traffic volume limits during peak use.
Progent's CISM, CISSP, and ISSAP security professionals can show you how to develop a comprehensive security strategy that encompasses your network management solution, and Progent's remote and on-site network experts and Cisco CCIE-certified engineers can use advanced network monitoring and analysis technology to isolate and fix problems rapidly to keep your network running smoothly.
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A wealth of network management tools from Cisco and other vendors highlights the importance and difficulty of maintaining networks. Progent's Cisco-certified network management consultants are expert at assisting businesses design network management strategies based on SNMP, Syslog, and NetFlow protocols to build effective mechanisms for understanding network bandwidth usage and latency, monitoring important router and switch operational characteristics, and identifying traffic patterns, processes, and devices that use network services.
