Network performance monitoring 

The IT landscape has witnessed a proliferation of small and medium scale businesses (SMBs) over the years, and this trend is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. SMBs demand and depend on a robust network infrastructure for internal and external communications, service delivery, and operational continuity. So for them, network performance is of paramount importance, as it can make or break their businesses.

However, not all businesses are equipped with the right resources or possess a dedicated IT operations team to manage their networks. This becomes detrimental as networks are susceptible to performance degradation over time. So the next best alternative for businesses to manage their networks are managed service providers (MSP).

Being an MSP offering network monitoring and management services, it's imperative that you have the right network performance monitoring tool in your arsenal. The right network performance monitor empowers your technicians and helps you offer quality services to your customers, meet SLAs on time, and differentiate your service from your competitors.

Benefits of deploying the right network performance monitor

The following are some of the benefits that can be derived from commissioning a proper network performance monitor:

• With the right network performance monitor, MSPs can proactively monitor the performance of their customer's network. This helps identify performance issues and fix them before they blow out of proportion and cause downtime.
• The right network performance monitor helps MSPs reduce the mean time to repair (MTTR) their clients networks by swiftly identifying performance bottlenecks. This speeds up troubleshooting and, in turn, helps minimize disruptions in service delivery.
• Each client is different, and so are their networks. The right network performance monitoring tool enables MSPs to monitor the performance of devices from multiple vendors and manage physical, virtual, and hybrid environments. This helps MSPs adapt to their client's networks to better serve them.
• Using a network performance monitor, MSPs can generate network performance reports offering actionable insights for better decision making.

OpManager MSP Software: The ideal choice for network performance monitoring

ManageEngine OpManager MSP is a comprehensive network performance monitoring tool specially designed and developed for managed service providers. With OpManager MSP, you can manage physical, virtual, and hybrid network environments, and monitor a deluge of network components from multiple vendors such as switches, routers, and servers for performance, availability, and health. OpManager MSP software enables you to manage multiple customers concurrently with a probe-central architecture.

OpManager MSP software's network performance monitoring capabilities include:

• Real-time network performance and availability monitoring
• Out-of-the-box support for multi-vendor network devices
• Alerts and notifications
• Network visualization for availability monitoring
• Customer-specific performance reports
• Customer-specific performance dashboards

Real-time network performance and availability monitoring

OpManager MSP's network performance monitor helps you monitor the performance of multiple client networks simultaneously. With OpManager MSP, you can monitor crucial performance metrics such as memory utilization, disk utilization, CPU utilization, and many more using the SNMP/WMI protocols.

Using OpManager managed services software, you can choose from a wide range of performance monitors and associate the desired monitors to your customers' network devices for monitoring. Monitor association can be automated with the help of device templates, which associate a set of performance monitors automatically to network devices upon discovery.

OpManager MSP's device snapshot page offers a glimpse of the real-time performance data at the device level. Also, you can create custom SNMP performance monitors on obtaining the SNMP MIB files from the vendor when the default monitors don't suffice.

Out-of-the-box support for multi-vendor network devices

OpManager MSP software supports network devices from multiple vendors, making it one of the most adaptable network performance monitoring solutions in the market. With more than 53,000 vendor templates and over 9,500 device templates, OpManager managed service software is compatible with almost all major vendors and devices in the market.

Alerts and notifications

OpManager MSP lets you set multi-level thresholds for performance monitors and generates alerts when these thresholds are violated. This helps you proactively detect faults and fix them before your customer's device or service crashes.

Alerts generated are color coded based on severity levels. OpManager MSP also helps escalate alarms to appropriate emails/IDs when they haven't been addressed. OpManager managed service software can be configured to notify your technicians instantly about faults by setting notification profiles. Alert notifications can be sent via email, SMS, Slack, SNMP traps, and more.

Network visualization for availability monitoring

Visualization of network topology and links between network components can help you keep tabs on their availability. OpManager MSP's network performance monitor can help you to represent your customers networks in various formats such as business views, maps, rack views, and floor views. Additionally, using OpManager MSP, you can create separate visualizations for all your customers and swiftly toggle between them with ease. This helps you quickly spot broken links between devices and fix outages before they severely cripple operations.

Customer-specific network performance reports

Assessment of historical data can help you generate actionable insights, which can help with making better decisions. OpManager MSP generates vivid network performance reports containing historical stats on the performance of clients' networks. Using OpManager MSP, you can create separate reports for all customers either on-demand or have them scheduled at defined intervals. Reports can also be exported in multiple formats such as PDF, CSV, and XLS.

Customizable dashboards for network performance

Switching between tabs to monitor performance metrics can be a handful for technicians. This inconvenience only multiplies for MSPs, as they have to handle multiple clients simultaneously. OpManager MSP tackles this challenge by offering customizable dashboards using which your technicians can keep tabs on all critical metrics from a single window without having to switch between screens. Moreover, OpManager managed service software lets you create separate dashboards for all your customers, making things easier for your technicians.