A. Cisco Monitor Director 1.1.2 is a centralized, Web-based, proactive network management application for Cisco managed service providers planning to offer 24-hour a day, proactive voice and data network monitoring and management services to their SMB customers. It works in conjunction with the Cisco Monitor Manager application, which is deployed at many SMB corporate headquarters and remote offices. Cisco Monitor Manager collects customer network data and reports it back over a secure communication channel to Cisco Monitor Director, giving managed service providers secure access and visibility into the customer's network.
Q. What is Cisco Monitor Manager?
A. Cisco Monitor Manager 1.1.2 is a management application designed solely for the needs of SMBs. It forms an onsite component of the VAR managed services offering and provides monitoring of key device parameters on Cisco SMB class routers, Cisco switches, Cisco voice gateways, Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express, Cisco Unity® Express, Cisco security appliances, Cisco access points, Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series for Small Businesses and Cisco Unified IP phones. In addition to monitoring Cisco devices, Cisco Monitor Manager also provides support for any SNMP-capable and IP addressable multivendor device. It monitors the network 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and periodically polls and collects inventory and performance monitoring data from the managed Cisco devices and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)-capable devices in the SMB's network. Data assimilated and filtered by Cisco Monitor Manager is then sent to Cisco Monitor Director for central management and reporting at the partner's network operations center
Q. Does Cisco Monitor Manager support multivendor devices apart from supporting Cisco devices?
A. Yes Cisco Monitor Manager 1.1.2 does support SNMP-capable multivendor devices and any IP-addressable devices. Cisco Monitor Manager supports three levels of management in the application. These three levels of management are as follows:
• Premium support for supported Cisco devices
• Generic SNMP-based management for SNMP-capable multivendor devices
• Basic monitoring based on Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) ping for non-SNMP-capable devices
Q. How does Cisco Monitor Director work with Cisco Monitor Manager?
A. Cisco Monitor Director works in conjunction with the Cisco Monitor Manager application to provide efficient, centralized network management across multiple distributed sites. Using multilayer filtering, Cisco Monitor Manager filters network monitoring alerts from the various SMB sites and then sends those alerts over a secure connection to the Cisco Monitor Director application, which resides at the managed service provider's service center. Cisco Monitor Director establishes an overlay filtering scheme to give managed service providers only the targeted messages and alerts needed.
Q. What are the principal features of the Cisco Monitor Director?
A. The Cisco Monitor Director provides the following key features and benefits to VAR managed service providers and their SMB customers:
• Ease of use and low initial investment; does not require time-consuming training
• Distributed architecture and intelligence for present and future network scalability
• Secure, reliable communication between VAR MSPs and SMB customers
• Web-based access from anywhere on the Internet
• Central customer portal for VAR MSPs
• Branding of customer portal
• Support for Cisco devices, SNMP-capable multivendor devices, and ICMP ping-based monitoring
• SNMP and secure HTTPS-based communication with managed devices
• Voice and data network discovery and topology
• Networkwide inventory collection and reporting
• Cisco device performance monitoring
• In-depth syslog reporting
• Cisco Unified IP Telephony monitoring
• Interface status and traffic monitoring
• Reports
• End-customer access to online customer portal
• Multilayer alert-filtering capability
• Real-time alerts and notifications through e-mail and paging
• Configurable e-mail and pager addresses based on time-of-day setting
• Alert escalation
• Interface to common trouble-ticketing applications
• End-of-sale and end-of-life database reference and notifications for selected Cisco devices
• Scheduled HTML-based automated e-mail monthly reports that include network alert summary, device-availability analysis, Top N Utilization reports, and network topology
• Integrated license report
• Data export for customer inventory, Syslogs and End of Sale device
Q. What new features are available in Cisco Monitor Director 1.1.2?
A. Cisco Monitor Director 1.1.2 comes with a variety of new features, including:
• Web-based access
– Browser-based access from anywhere on the network
– End-customer access to online reports
– Different user roles for administrator, network operations center (NOC) engineer, and end customer
• Branding
– Branding of customer portal and reports with MSP company name and logo
• Alert escalation
– Escalation of alerts to help ensure resolution of network issues in a timely manner
• Localized report
– Localized monthly network summary report to serve diverse SMBs
– Report available in Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish
• Support for external database
– Choice to use common database for several applications.
– Cisco Monitor Director optionally connects to an external database on local or remote server
Please refer to the Cisco Monitor Director 1.1.2 data sheet for further details on the newly supported features.
Q. What new features are available in Cisco Monitor Manager 1.1.2?
A. Cisco Monitor Director 1.1.2 comes with variety of new features. These new features include:
• Cisco Discovery Protocol and Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)-based network discovery and complete topology
– Discovers entire data and Cisco Unified Communications voice network
– Discovers SNMP-capable and IP-addressable multivendor devices
– Rich graphical topology views span multiple customer locations, displaying the total network with unified topologies and interconnections
– Displays network and device-level fault information, device connectivity, and manageability information
• Support for Cisco devices, SNMP-capable multivendor devices, and ICMP ping-based monitoring
– Premium support for supported Cisco devices
– Generic SNMP-based management for SNMP-capable multivendor devices
– Basic monitoring of non-SNMP-capable devices
Please refer to the Cisco Monitor Manager 1.1.2 data sheet for further details on the newly supported features.
Q. What kind of reports can I see using Cisco Monitor Director?
A. Cisco Monitor Director provides useful reports on alerts and syslogs generated in an SMB customer network. The reports are based on alert filters configured on the Cisco Monitor Director server. Periodic snapshot reports on inventory, topology, and performance are also provided. The following reports are available in Cisco Monitor Director:
• Inventory reports
• Network summary report
• Performance reports
• Fault reports
• End-of-sale and end-of-life reports
• Device Health report
• Audit Trail report
• Cisco Monitor Manager license reports
Q. What kind of reports can I obtain from Cisco Monitor Manager?
A. Cisco Monitor Manager provides the following reports for 24-hour proactive network monitoring:
• Alert Report
• IP Phones, CME & CUE inventory Reports
• PSTN Trunk Utilization Reports
• Device Performance Report
• Syslog Report
• Device Inventory Report
• Configuration Archive Report
• Discovered Devices Report
• Device Availability Report
Q. How does Cisco Monitor Manager discover and manage devices in my network?
A. Cisco Monitor Manager uses Simple Network Management Protocol to discover and retrieve configuration and performance information from managed Cisco routers, Cisco switches, Cisco access points, Cisco security devices, and SNMP-capable multivendor devices in the network. It supports seed device, SNMP sweep, ICMP ping, and Cisco Network Assistant (CNA) import based discovery that uses Cisco Discovery Protocol and ARP neighbor data to discover the entire underlying data and voice network and then presents it in an intuitive graphical display. Cisco Monitor Manager also periodically rediscovers the topology and generates new alerts if it finds any new devices in the network. Cisco Monitor Manager also uses SNMP to monitor Cisco Unified Communications devices such as Cisco Communications Manager Express and Cisco Unity Express. Cisco Monitor Manager also uses HTTP or HTTPS to manage certain aspects of the network like SmartPorts.
Q. Is communication between Cisco Monitor Director and Cisco Monitor Manager secure?
A. Cisco Monitor Director supports an HTTP over Secure Sockets Layer (HTTPS) server that always runs as a service and keeps listening for requests on port 443. The port is configurable by the managed service provider to provide a secure communication channel. All communications are initiated from Cisco Monitor Manager, which resides at the SMB customer's site, and are sent to the managed service provider's site using a shared key and 128-bit encryption. Keepalive polling, topologies, and rich alerts are sent across these communication channels through the same HTTPS connection.
Q. How many instances of Cisco Monitor Manager are supported by Cisco Monitor Director?
A. One copy of Cisco Monitor Director can support up to 100 instances of Cisco Monitor Manager located at remote SMB sites.
Q. What kind of licensing model does Cisco Monitor Manager use?
A. Cisco Monitor Manager is a licensed application. Its licensing is based on the number of devices managed with the application.
Q. How is Cisco Monitor Manager licensed based on number of users or devices?
A. Cisco Monitor Manager is licensed based on the number of users or devices. Cisco Monitor Manager supports a Limited and a Standard license for scaling users.
• Limited license (up to 48 users): The Cisco Monitor Manager Limited license is meant for networks with up to 48 users. This license allows administrator to manage 25 devices and up to 48 Cisco IP phones.
• Standard license (up to 250 users): The Cisco Monitor Manager Standard license is meant for networks with up to 250 users. This license allows administrators to manage 70 devices and up to 250 Cisco IP phones.
Cisco Monitor Manager also supports upgrade licenses that allows customers to scale their monitored network from 48 users to 250 users.
Q. Can one installation of Cisco Monitor Director manage limited as well as standard deployments of Cisco Monitor Manager?
A. Yes. It is possible to have a mix of limited and standard deployments of Cisco Monitor Manager managed by one installation of Cisco Monitor Director. The total number of managed customers however should not exceed 100.
Q. What are the system requirements for Cisco Monitor Director?
A. Cisco Monitor Director can be installed on an Intel-based desktop or laptop computer with a minimum requirement of a Pentium IV 3 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, and 1 GB of hard disk space. It is recommended to have 60 GB of hard disk space for storing historical fault data.
Q. What operating systems does Cisco Monitor Director support?
A. Cisco Monitor Director can be installed on any of the following operating systems:
• Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
• Windows 2003 Server with Service Pack 1
Q. What are the system requirements for Cisco Monitor Manager?
A. Cisco Monitor Manager can be installed on an Intel-based desktop or laptop computer with a minimum requirement of a Pentium IV 1.2 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, and 1 GB hard disk.
Q. What operating systems does Cisco Monitor Manager support?
A. Cisco Monitor Manager can be installed on any of the following operating systems:
• Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
For More Information
For more information about Cisco Monitor Director, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/sbnm, contact your local Cisco account representative, or send an e-mail to the product marketing group at ask-sbnm-pm@cisco.com.
