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Executive Summary

Argent's Advanced Technology (AT) is a highly scalable, feature-rich and mature monitoring

product. Its Web 2.0-based user interface is intuitive, responsive and productive. AT's discovery

process is accurate, and its thresholds can express sophisticated networking situations.

Argent AT doesn't require agents, but it can minimize WAN link traffic by using them to collect

and forward network status information. In contrast to SolarWinds (either NPM or SAM), Argent

AT can automatically correct a wide range of network problems.

Argent AT’s clear, meaningful reports are perfect for tracking network failures, spotting imminent

performance issues, showing SLA compliance and analyzing capacity planning trends.

SolarWinds’ reports are tedious and labor-intensive to create.

Argent's Advanced Technology is a highly capable monitoring product appropriate for networks

of any size.

  

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Introduction

Argent’s and SolarWinds’ monitoring software products differ in several significant ways. This

white paper identifies these significant differences. This comparison evaluates Argent AT and the

combination of two SolarWinds products, Network Performance Monitor (NPM) and Server and

Application Monitor (SAM).

Argent AT and SolarWinds vary in

Operating system support

Virtual environment (hypervisor) support

Application support

Network discovery

Root cause analysis

Monitoring

Notifications

Corrective actions

Reports

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Supported Operating Systems

Argent AT supports more operating systems than SolarWinds, as shown in the following table.

Collects Detailed Information From These Platforms Argent AT SolarWinds

Windows 7, 8, Windows Server 2008, 2012 Unix

Linux

ISeries and AS/400

SolarWinds’ support for Unix and Linux is merely SNMP-based. SolarWinds polls Unix and Linux

machines via SNMP queries, then interprets responses according to MIBs supplied by SolarWinds.

This approach provides far less detail than Argent’s agent-based technique.

NOTE: SolarWinds’ Packet Analysis Sensors (Network or Server) require 64-bit Windows (These

SolarWinds components do not support 32-bit operating systems).

Supported Virtual Environments

Argent AT works with more virtual environments (hypervisors) than SolarWinds.

Virtual Environment (Hypervisor) Argent AT SolarWinds

VMware vSphere (ESX/ESXi)

Citrix XenServer

Microsoft Hyper-V

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Supported Applications

Argent AT and SolarWinds can both monitor a wide range of applications.

Be aware that SolarWinds requires that you license and learn how to use a separate product,

Server and Application Monitoring (SAM), if you want to monitor specific applications.

Argent AT has the advantage that it is feature-complete and doesn’t require third-party

integration.

Application Argent AT SolarWinds

Exchange

Web server (IIS, Apache, etc.)

Oracle

SAP See Note

SharePoint

SQL Server NOTE: SolarWinds requires third-party Icon Software Integration to monitor SAP R/3.

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Device, Node and Network Discovery

Argent AT’s discovery feature is far more accurate than SolarWinds’. In a series of tests, Argent

AT correctly identified over 99% of network entities. SolarWinds managed only 92%, as illustrated

in the following chart.

Root Cause Analysis

Argent AT’s root cause analysis feature uses SNMP, WMI and other protocols to find and

diagnose network failures and performance problems. In each case, Argent AT zeroes in on the

source of the problem (the root cause). Argent AT’s automated root cause analysis points you to

the real problem and lets you ignore the cascade of downstream linkage faults and errors.

SolarWinds lacks Argent AT’s intelligent, automated, advanced-technology analysis and

identification of the original source of problems. To perform even rudimentary network

troubleshooting, a SolarWinds customer must license the separate Server and Application

Monitoring (SAM) component and then acquire the SAM “AppStack” module.

85

90

95

100

Argent AT SolarWinds

99

92

Discovery Accuracy(Percent)

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Root cause analysis with SolarWinds is a manual, tedious effort. SolarWinds provides the data,

but a network engineer or troubleshooter provides the analysis. SolarWinds displays syslog data,

traps, events, and alerts to give network engineers and troubleshooters the opportunity to perform

manual event correlation and basic, manual root-cause analysis.

Network Monitoring

Argent AT organizes network status conditions into five clear, meaningful categories:

Acceptable Operation

Approaching Limit

At Limit

Exceeding Limit

Major Overload

Argent AT’s real-time monitoring and root cause analysis quickly pinpoint network problems.

Argent AT's sophisticated set of thresholds greatly facilitates the task of keeping the network up

and running. With these thresholds, an administrator can specify, for example, abnormal traffic

levels and unhealthy server behaviors by time of day and day of week.

Argent includes more than 2,000 pre-defined application- and device-specific rules in Argent AT.

Argent AT's True Round Trip Time measurement tests Exchange servers by actually sending and

receiving real e-mails and noting elapsed times. The result is early warnings of potential Exchange

faults and performance problems.

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In contrast to Argent AT’s understandable-at-a-glance status conditions, SolarWinds’ network

device status conditions can be confusing and uninformative. The SolarWinds AppStack (SAM)

status conditions are:

Other

External

Unknown

Down

Critical

Warning

Unreachable

Up

Both Argent AT and SolarWinds monitor for server CPU utilization, disk space, low memory and

network adapter issues. On Windows servers, they also monitor for Windows services, Active

Directory and system registry health.

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Alerts and Notifications

Both Argent AT and SolarWinds can notify one or more administrators when a problem occurs.

Both products can escalate alerts to additional people if no one attends to the initial alert.

Uniquely, if a problem situation stops (resolves itself), Argent AT can issue new alerts to cancel the

original Alphanumeric Pager Alert and/or Email Alert.

Corrective Actions

AT can automatically take corrective actions, either by running a program, running a script,

restarting a failed Windows background service or rebooting a server. It can even issue SQL

statements (to trigger, for example, the running of an Oracle process). Argent AT offers a broad

range of corrective actions that an administrator can choose from to set up automatic fixes for

many network failures.

SolarWinds lacks an automated corrective action feature.

Reports

Argent AT's reports are especially clear and meaningful. They're useful, out of the box, for

charting events, expressing service-level agreement compliance and detailing network devices,

computers and applications. They're an excellent source of data for capacity planning and

historical trending analysis.

Because Argent supplies a run-time version of the Crystal Reports design tool with Argent AT,

creating new custom reports is easy. Only a few drag-and-drop operations and a few mouse

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clicks are all that are necessary to produce a report containing just the information desired for

time period(s) that you specify.

An Argent AT report can be graphical or tabular. For a graph-based report, an administrator

specifies the network metrics to include, the network nodes to report on and a few report options.

These graph-based reports can, for example, show SNMP metrics, Linux/Unix data or VMware-

related performance.

The table-oriented reports can show alerts, change logs, events, file audit results, Exchange

mailbox activity, Exchange traffic activity, node details and summaries, performance data, Top X

traffic generators and SLA downtime data.

SolarWinds does not offer Crystal Reports. Moreover, an administrator must choose a SolarWinds

report template and compile the designated report before anyone can use the report. SolarWinds’

reports are tedious and labor-intensive to set up and use.

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Conclusion

Argent's Advanced Technology (AT) is a highly scalable, feature-rich and mature monitoring

product.

Argent AT supports more operating systems, virtual environments and applications than

SolarWinds. Unlike SolarWinds, Argent AT can automatically correct a wide range of network

problems.

Argent AT’s clear, meaningful reports are ready to use, out of the box, and creating custom

Argent AT reports is easy and quick. SolarWinds’ reports are tedious and labor-intensive to create

and use.

Argent's Advanced Technology is a fully capable monitoring product that is appropriate for

networks of any size.

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About the Author

Barry Nance is a networking expert, magazine columnist, book author and application architect. He has more than

29 years of experience with IT technologies, methodologies and products.

Over the past dozen years, working on behalf of Network Testing Labs, he has evaluated thousands of hardware and

software products for ComputerWorld, BYTE Magazine, Government Computer News, PC Magazine, Network

Computing, Network World and many other publications. He's authored thousands of magazine articles as well as

popular books such as Introduction to Networking (4th Edition), Network Programming in C and Client/Server LAN

Programming.

He's also designed successful e-commerce Web-based applications, created database and network benchmark tools,

written a variety of network diagnostic software utilities and developed a number of special-purpose networking

protocols.

About Network Testing Labs

Network Testing Labs performs independent technology research and product evaluations. Its network laboratory

connects myriads of types of computers and virtually every kind of network device in an ever-changing variety of

ways. Its authors are networking experts who write clearly and plainly about complex technologies and products.

Network Testing Labs' experts have written hardware and software product reviews, state-of-the-art analyses, feature

articles, in-depth technology workshops, cover stories, buyer’s guides and in-depth technology outlooks. Our experts

have spoken on a number of topics at Comdex, PC Expo and other venues. In addition, they've created industry

standard network benchmark software, database benchmark software and network diagnostic utilities.

Network Testing Labs has created this document for informational purposes only. Network Testing Labs makes no warranties,

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