View network devices and data in Operations Manager
After System Center Operations Manager discovers your network devices, you can view information about the devices using the following procedures.
Important
You must open the Operations console as an Operations Manager administrator to view the dashboard views.
This article describes the following views:
Network Summary Dashboard View
Network Node Dashboard View
Network Interface Dashboard View
Network Vicinity Dashboard
Network Summary Dashboard view
The Network Summary Dashboard view provides a view of important data for the nodes and interfaces of the network. A node can be any device connected to a network. Nodes can be switches, routers, firewalls, load balancers, or any other networked device. An interface is a physical entity with which network connections are made, such as a port.
Use the Network Summary Dashboard view to view the following information:
Nodes with Slowest Response (ICMP ping)
Nodes with Highest CPU Usage
Interfaces with Highest Utilization
Interfaces with Most Send Errors
Interfaces with Most Receive Errors
Nodes with the Most Alerts
Interfaces with the Most Alerts
You can select a particular node or interface name in the Network Summary Dashboard view and then select the related tasks in the Tasks pane, such as starting the Network Node Dashboard view and the Network Interface Dashboard view.
Open the Network Summary Dashboard view
Open the Operations console, and then select the Monitoring workspace.
Expand Network Monitoring.
Select Network Summary Dashboard.
Network Node Dashboard view
A node can be any device connected to a network. Nodes can be switches, routers, firewalls, load balancers, or any other networked device. Use the Network Node Dashboard view to view the following information:
Vicinity view of the node
Availability statistics of the node over the last 24 hours, last 48 hours, past seven days, or past 30 days
Note
Periods of time that were not monitored are counted as available in the availability statistics.
Node properties
Average response time of the node
Processor usage of the node over the last 24 hours
Current health of interfaces on the node
Alerts generated by this node
Alert details
Open the Network Node Dashboard view
Open the Operations console, and then select the Monitoring workspace.
Expand Network Monitoring.
Select the view for the desired node, such as Switches.
Select a node.
In the Tasks pane, select Network Node Dashboard.
Network Interface Dashboard view
An interface is a physical entity with which network connections are made, such as a port. By default, Operations Manager will only monitor ports that are connected to another device that's being monitored. Ports that aren't connected won't be monitored. Use the Network Interface Dashboard view to view the following information:
Bytes sent and received over the past 24 hours
Packets sent and received over the past 24 hours
Interface properties
Send and receive errors and discards over the past 24 hours
Network interface usage percentage
Alerts generated by this interface
Alert details
Open the Network Interface Dashboard view
Open the Operations console, and then select the Monitoring workspace.
Expand Network Monitoring.
Select the view for the desired node, such as Switches.
Select a node.
In the Tasks pane, select Network Node Dashboard.
In the Health of Interfaces on this Node section, select an interface, and then in the Tasks pane, select Network Interface Dashboard.
Network Vicinity Dashboard
Use the Network Vicinity Dashboard to view a diagram of a node and all nodes and agent computers that are connected to that node. The Network Vicinity Dashboard view displays one "hop", or level of connection. However, you can configure the view to display up to five levels of connections. The diagram displays the health of the nodes and the health of the connections between nodes.
The vicinity view shows the relation between network devices and the Windows computers and other network devices that are connected to them. This logic is performed by relating the network adapter on the agent computer with the network device that it's connected to. Because of this, the network adapter must be discovered before this association can occur. You can view the discovered network adapters by either creating a new view or using the Discovered Inventory view to list instances of the Computer Network Adapter class.
Note
Because devices that use OSI layer 1, such as hubs, don't have MAC addresses, layer 1 devices won't be connected to computers in the Network Vicinity Dashboard. The vicinity view will only show connections between layer 1 devices and layer 2 or 3 devices.
Note
Network adapters using NIC teaming won't be identified as "teamed" in the Network Vicinity Dashboard.
Note
Virtual machines are associated with the same network device as their host. This version of Operations Manager doesn't show a relationship between the two computers.
Note
Operations Manager doesn't display UNIX- and Linux-based devices in the Network Vicinity Dashboard.
Open Network Vicinity view
Open Operations console, and then select the Monitoring workspace.
Expand Network Monitoring.
Select a node state view, such as Network Devices.
In the Tasks pane, select Vicinity Dashboard.
Things to try in the vicinity view:
Select a node or connection to view details for that node or connection in the Details view.
Change the levels of connection to be displayed in the diagram by selecting a new value for Hops in the toolbar.
To include agent computers in the view in addition to network devices, select the Show Computers checkbox.
Select a node in the vicinity view. In the Tasks pane, select the option to launch the Network Node dashboard.
To change the central device of the view, select a device, and select Vicinity View.
Next steps
To understand how to configure what to monitor and alert with your network devices, see How to configure monitoring of network devices.
Operations Manager includes several reports that help analyze performance of monitored network devices. To learn more, see Reports for network monitoring in Operations Manager.
To understand how to stop monitoring a network device, see How to Delete or Restore a Network Device in Operations Manager.