Monitoring Network Devices

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Network devices are Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) version 2c enabled network devices and computers running operating systems other than Microsoft Windows that are discovered by using the Essentials 2007 console. The Essentials 2007 management server provides remote (proxy) agent functionality for the devices.

Device manufacturers can create Management Packs that contains rules and tasks for their specific device. If the vendor of your devices has not yet created a Management Pack, you can still configure Essentials 2007 to discover hardware devices on your network within a specified range of IP addresses and at the same time determine which protocol version it is using.

The following are the most important general tasks to complete on a regular basis in Essentials 2007:

  • Discover new network devices.

  • Display the network topology.

  • View alerts.

Discover New Network Devices

To discover network devices for Essentials 2007 to manage, use the Computer and Device Management Wizard. This wizard is a required initial configuration step, but you can run the wizard again at any time from Computers in the Essentials 2007 console. For more information about this wizard, see "System Center Essentials 2007 Computer and Device Management Wizard."

Display the Network Topology

It is often useful to see the complete topology of the network devices managed by Essentials 2007. Use the following procedure to view the topology diagram.

To view the network device topology diagram

  1. In the Essentials 2007 console, click Monitoring.

  2. In the Monitoring pane, expand Network Devices and click Network Topology.

View Alerts

Use the nodes under the Device Management node of the Essentials 2007 console Administration pane to perform the following tasks on the selected managed objects:

  • Open views, such as an Alert view, for the selected managed object.

  • Delete a managed object from an Operations Manager 2007 Management Group. Deleting a managed object removes it from the Essentials 2007 database. The managed object is not deleted from the reporting database. Deleting a managed object is the only method to remove network devices from the Essentials 2007 database.

  • View the properties of a managed object.