WhatsUp Gold Premium Edition

Overview:

WhatsUp Gold® Premium Edition provides an extensive, cost-effective, out-of-the-box SNMP network management and WMI application monitoring solution for networks of all sizes. Get a more intimate view and complete control of your network with WhatsUp Gold.

In today’s business environment, the network is the business. Without it, doing business as we know it would simply not be possible. From e-commerce, email, and IM to VoIP, video, and collaboration, a robust, well-managed network is vital to achieving business success.

WhatsUp Gold Premium Edition provides a comprehensive, easy to use application to network managers. With an enhanced discovery engine and powerful mapping capabilities, WhatsUp Gold shows you your entire network within minutes of installation. Predictive SNMP and WMI monitoring, along with powerful alerting and notification features help you quickly identify and resolve network problems. With the Alert Center, you can easily organize and manage all of your alert and notification information. Intuitive Windows and Web-based interfaces use dashboards to deliver real-time access to more than 200 reports, giving you vital information on keeping your network strong and healthy. WhatsUp Gold also offers mobile access to the status of your network, as well as enhanced SNMP security with SNMP v3 discovery and traps.

Manage and configure all alert information and notification policies with the innovative Alert Center.

Intelligent and Easy to Use

With WhatsUp Gold’s intelligent management platform, you will have complete visibility into your entire IT infrastructure with minimal care and feeding. If a problem occurs, WhatsUp Gold quickly informs you if network resources are being taxed beyond their intended use, enabling you to proactively respond and correct the situation before any service is disrupted. Using the latest standards in network management protocols, WhatsUp Gold makes your job easy – by ensuring your infrastructure is running and performing at the desired level of service.

Extensive Network Monitoring

WhatsUp Gold does not rely on just the basics for managing your network. Instead, a sophisticated strategy of both active and passive monitoring mechanisms is used to track the status and health of network devices. For example, periodic active monitors like Ping or polling an SNMP MIB can provide availability and performance characteristics. Enhancing that data, WhatsUp Gold can preemptively alert you to changes in device status by listening for SNMP traps and analyzing syslog messages from the devices which comprise your infrastructure.

Going Beyond Availability

WhatsUp Gold performance monitoring extends your network visibility beyond simple up-down availability. Performance metrics like CPU, memory and interface utilization provide deeper insight into the health of all networked devices over time. Configurable threshold monitors enable predictive monitoring of devices, systems and services so you can prevent failures from occurring in the first place.

Comprehensive Troubleshooting

WhatsUp Gold’s network, system, and application monitoring capabilities provide context-based visibility into performance problems, enhancing your triage skills and enabling you to minimize the time spent on problem resolution. For example, with a quick glance you can see which services and applications are impacted if the device goes down. With this information in hand, you can quickly prioritize trouble tickets and deal with the most business critical problems first.

Scalable Product Family Architecture

WhatsUp Gold Premium is part of the Ipswitch™ WhatsUp Gold family of network management solutions that also includes WhatsUp Gold Standard, WhatsUp Gold Distributed, and WhatsUp Gold MSP. The WhatsUp Gold product family grows with you as your network expands in size and complexity. This smooth, transparent migration path supports your needs and delivers the lowest possible total cost of ownership. There’s no need to evaluate, configure, and learn a new product as your network changes. Product functionality is extensible though the addition of plug-ins for Flow Monitoring, VoIP Monitoring and Layer 2/3 Discovery and Mapping. From single-site to multisite networks, WhatsUp Gold provides a consistent user interface, management structure, and reporting capabilities.

Features:

With WhatsUp Gold Premium Edition, you get:

• High-performance predictive monitoring of networks, systems, applications, and services, including wireless networks
  
• Over 200+ network and infrastructure reports providing real, actionable intelligence
• An industrial strength management architecture using the most advanced standards (SNMP v1-3, TCP, ICMP, SSH) available
• Comprehensive out-of-the box support for WMI, supporting complete Windows service monitoring*
• Agentless monitoring for Unix and Linux systems using SSH*
• Integrated application (MS Exchange, NT Services, and MS SQL) monitoring capabilities delivering critical process and performance analytics*
• Rich capability for synthetic transaction monitoring ensuring application performance and integrity
• The industry’s leading alert management platform, featuring easy to use alarms, alerts and notification capabilities for real-time operations support
• Split second graphs and InstantInfo feature supporting real-time troubleshooting activities*
• A highly flexible, automated, and comprehensive network discovery and mapping platform
• Quick navigation with intuitive Web and Windows consoles, which provide 360° visibility
• Air-tight security and configurable role-based management
• A platform installed in just minutes and designed to be simple and intuitive to use right out of the box
• Support for FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) 140-2 standards – combined with AES 256-bit encryption ensures compliance with security and regulatory regulations.

*Not included in WhatsUp Gold Standard Edition. For WMI, the Standard edition supports custom monitoring via Jscript or Visual Basic.

What's New:

Make more from your WhatsUp Gold investment

The new WhatsUp Gold v14.3 is even faster, easier and scalable than ever before. Packed with new usability features that ensure rapid time to value, and new innovations across multiple plug-ins – your WhatsUp Gold investment is designed to make IT Management simple!

New in WhatsUp Gold

WhatsUp Gold v14.3 offers many new capabilities –

• Pre-configured views tailored to support common tasks such as remote site management, active, passive or performance management for rapid time to value
• Easy copying of existing monitoring settings to new devices for faster deployment and time to value
• Consolidated report views on all monitors for a device, or, for all devices per monitor for improved usability
• Multiple changes to database storage, optimization and querying techniques for marked performance improvements
• Added support for standard SQL clustering to enable enterprise level data resiliency
• New SMS alerts with more information on affected devices to enable faster troubleshooting and resolution

WhatsUp Gold v14.3 also includes new innovative capabilities in individual plug-ins including WhatsUp Gold WhatsVirtual, Flow Monitor and WhatsConfigured.

New in WhatsVirtual

Managing dynamic VMware environments in a separate console from your physical servers creates gaps in visibility since you can’t properly track and isolate problems as your physical server to VM mapping shifts over time. So when problems happen, you don’t have an understanding of:

• Which servers are hosting which virtual machines (VM’s)
• How the servers have performed over time
• The cause of their failure, say, through automated restarts via VMware HA (High Availability)

This lengthens problem resolution times and makes optimal capacity planning impossible.

WhatsVirtual v2.0: Complete, reliable and seamless physical and VMware virtual environment monitoring from a single pane of glass now extends coverage to dynamic virtual machine live migrations.

WhatsVirtual v2.0 adds new capabilities as follows –

• VMware vCenter Support
  • WhatsVirtual 2.0 will discover, monitor, report, alert and control all virtual resources through the VMware vCenter for complete accuracy and reliability.
  • WhatsVirtual will also monitor health, availability and performance of vCenter, which is the nerve network of your VMware infrastructure investment
• VMware vMotion Support - WhatsVirtual 2.0 will track VMs as they move across physical servers, to offer a complete and accurate mapping of VM to physical server relationships at all times, including real-time and historical information reporting and alerting.
• VMware HA (High Availability) Support - WhatsVirtual 2.0 will offer complete access to VMs as they are automatically restarted or moved to other physical servers due to hardware or Operating System failures.
• VMware Virtual Clusters Support - WhatsVirtual 2.0 will offer complete access to VMware Clusters including:
  • VMware cluster configurations --so users can perform manual associations and cluster grouping right from the WhatsVirtual interface
  • New out-of-the-box Workspace views to provide deep visibility across virtual cluster entities in a matter of minutes
  • Alert Center thresholds configurable at the virtual cluster level to rapidly find out of issues detected anywhere in the infrastructure
  • Web Reports with virtual cluster information, so users can access VMware related performance information anytime and from anywhere

With WhatsVirtual v2.0, you can truly harness the savings and agility of your virtual environment without missing a beat. Evaluate or buy your WhatsUp Gold (includes WhatsVirtual) license today!

New in WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor

New IP converged applications like VoIP, video conferencing or file sharing may be dynamically assigned UDP and TCP ports. Other enterprise or web service based apps may communicate via multiple ports and IP ranges. Your goal as a network manager is to ensure that you have full visibility into the nature of all application traffic and the bandwidth that they consume. Also, as you set policies for Quality of Service (QoS) you need to track pre and post policy performance. Only then can you be assured that your network is ready for optimal performance.

WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor: Powerful reporting, real-time alerting and broad flow monitoring support across all industry standard protocols now extends support for dynamic application usage and advanced QoS analysis.

WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor adds new capability as follows -

• Intelligently identify, classify and oversee NBAR (Network Based Application Recognition) traffic, including difficult-to-classify protocols and applications that utilize dynamic TCP/UDP port assignments.
• Provide full visibility into pre and post policy traffic usage, including dropped packets through advanced CBQoS (Class Based Quality of Service) support.
• Enable users to configure and associate multiple ports and IP ranges for any application, so top application reports will show real application usage from multiple data points.
• Visualize network traffic information and reports using new stacked time charts to fully understand traffic evolution over time.
• Dynamically change network traffic views and reports by adding or removing specific sources

With WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor, you can manage all your network and application traffic and ensure the success of network traffic prioritizations and other policies. Evaluate or buy your WhatsUp Gold (includes Flow Monitor) license today!

New in WhatsConfigured

• Export of WhatsConfigured information into external storage for archiving and compliance, to minimize risks and standardize internal operations processes.

New in Failover Manager

• WhatsUp Gold has been certified to be deployed in a SQL cluster offering such benefits as:
  • Improved enhanced performance of Failover Manager including both database and application redundancy.
  • The ability to use standard database tools for backup and restore activities
• Improved WUG database mgmt - Including data query optimizations and automatic table index defragmentation, to increase DB efficiency and performance

WhatsUp Gold Premium vs. SolarWinds Orion:

Features	Description	WhatsUp Gold Premium	Solarwinds Orion
Application Monitoring	Application monitoring included at no extra cost
IPv6 Support	Discovery and monitoring of IPv6 enabled devices and systems is critical to an overall effective network management strategy.
Built-in MIB Management and Validation	Drag, drop and validate standard and enterprise MIBs instantly. No requirement to access external vendor site to add MIBs.
Configurable Monitors	Provides the capability to develop unique monitors for custom monitoring.
Distributed and Multi-site Environments	Enable survivable multi-site monitoring with minimum impact on bandwidth
Configurable Dashboards	Built-in NOC-like views for instant visual status of up/down status, response time, and critical system details and addition of external web-site feeds.
Drag and Drop Web Interface	Configurable management interface provides maximum flexibility to move and add reports to access most relevant status information instantly.
Layer 2 Discovery, Mapping and Visualization	Integrated discovery, mapping and visualization provides port-to-port connectivity with automated creation of monitors for devices and links.
Bulk Monitor Changes	Rapid deployment of monitor configuration changes to common devices.
Configurable Split-Second graphing for both SNMP and WMI	Instantly access real-time information about status of devices, interfaces and services.
Reporting	Over 200 configurable reports with both real-time status and historical trending data.		Partially Included

 

System Requirements:

About Virtual machines
WhatsUp Gold can be installed and will operate on virtual machines powered by VMware and Microsoft Virtual Server, as long as the virtual server's resources meet that of the WhatsUp Gold system requirements.

Software Requirements:

• 32-bit and 64-bit support for the following OS versions: Windows 7, Windows Vista Ultimate (SP2 recommended), Windows Vista Business (SP2 recommended), Windows XP Professional SP3, Windows Server 2003 SP2 (or later), Windows Server 2008 SP2, or Windows Server 2008 R2
• 32-bit and 64-bit support for the following virtual server environments: VMWare ESXi 3.0 or later and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
  • Important: If WhatsUp Gold is hosted on VMWare ESXi or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, to avoid licensing issues, make sure that you assign a static MAC address to the virtual machine that WhatsUp Gold is operating on.
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (included), SQL Server 2005 Standard or Enterprise Edition, or Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise Edition (optional)
  • Important: If using Microsoft SQL Server Cluster 2005, 2008, or 2008 R2, WhatsUp Gold must be configured to use a remote database. Installing WhatsUp Gold to the cluster is not supported.
    Important: WhatsUp Gold does not support non-English versions of Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
• IIS 6, IIS 7, or Ipswitch Web Server
• WhatsUp Gold Web interface, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0, or Firefox 3.0
• WhatsUp Gold Mobile interface, Mobile Safari 2.2, Microsoft Internet Explorer Mobile 6.1, or Opera Mini 4.2
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 (required), Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 included in install
  • Important: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 is not compatible with Windows SharePoint Services 2.0. If you are running SharePoint Services 2.0, you should not upgrade or install WhatsUp Gold. WhatsUp Gold requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and automatically installs this package if not present on the system. For more information about the issue, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article.
• Microsoft Windows Scripting Host v5.7 (or later)
  • Note: Windows Scripting Host is installed with the Windows operating system. To verify your version, run cscript.exe at a command prompt. If you need to update Windows Scripting Host, refer to the Microsoft Windows Scripting Host site.
• Microsoft SAPI 5.1 (required for Text-to-Speech actions)
• WhatsVirtual plug-in supports virtual hosts and virtual machines running on VMware virtual environments including: VMware vCenter Server 4.0 and VMWare ESXi 3.5 or 4.0

Additional software requirements for WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor

WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor has the same base system requirements as WhatsUp Gold v14. In addition, WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor requires:

• WhatsUp Gold v14 Standard Edition, Premium Edition, MSP Edition, or Distributed Edition
• At least one routing device that supports NetFlow versions 1, 5, and 9
  - or -
  At least one routing device that supports sFlow version 2 and 5

Note: WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor performs well in most installations that use SQL Server 2005 Express. However, some large data collections, that require 4 GB of data storage or more or where data is collected and archived over a long period of time, may require 32-bit MS SQL Server 2005 Standard or Enterprise Edition, 32-bit or 64-bit Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise Edition, or 32-bit or 64-bit Microsoft SQL Server Cluster 2005, 2008, or 2008 R2 (all editions except Microsoft SQL Server Express edition).

Hardware Requirements:
 

	Recommended	Required
Processor(s)	WhatsUp Gold: Dual-core Flow Monitor: Quad-core	WhatsUp Gold: Single-core Flow Monitor: Dual-core
Processor Speed	2 GHz or more	2 GHz
RAM	WhatsUp Gold: 4 GB Flow Monitor: +4 GB	WhatsUp Gold: 2 GB Flow Monitor: +2 GB
Hard drive space for application, SQL Server Express Edition dbase application, and supporting framework	3 GB	2 GB
Hard drive space for dbase and dbase logs	WhatsUp Gold: 8 GB or more Flow Monitor: +16 GB or more	WhatsUp Gold: 4 GB Flow Monitor: +8 GB
Network interface card	1 Gbps	100 Mbps
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM	Required if installing from CD-ROM. Not required for download installations.	Required if installing from CD-ROM. Not required for download installations.
Video display resolution	1280 x 1024 or higher	1024 x 768
Sound card	SAPI-capable sound card required for Text-to-Speech actions	Not required
Modem and phone line	Required for pager, SMS, and beeper actions; modem pooling is not supported	Not required
GSM modem	Required for SMS Direct actions	Not required

Note: The WhatsConnected, WhatsConfigured, and VoIP Monitor plug-in system requirements are the same as the WhatsUp Gold requirements. Additionally, the VoIP Monitor requires Cisco IP-SLA compatible devices.

Note: WhatsUp Gold can be installed and will operate on virtual machines powered by 32-bit or 64-bit VMware ESXi 3.0 or later and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, as long as the virtual server's guest OS resources meet that of the WhatsUp Gold system requirements.

Screenshots:

MapView	Workspace	CriticalMonitors Backdrop
Wireless	Core Scheduled PDF Reports	Alert Center Home Acknowledged
Core Mulitple Perfmongraphs	Discovery	Flow Monitor ICMP Packet Reports

 

Documentation:

Download the Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold Distributed Datasheet (.PDF)