The following article, “Scrutinizer Brings Flow Analytics to SMBs“, written by David Diaz, was recently featured on TechCrunchIT.

David points out that with the low initial cost for Scrutinizer NetFlow & sFlow Analyzer, it is a very affordable Flow Analytics solution for small and medium-sized businesses.

This flow analysis tool can also be deployed centrally and accessed globally via the web interface.  What this means is that one install of Scrutinizer can provide network management information for your entire network and accessible by everyone on the network management team, regardless of geographical location.

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Thinking outside of the box can produce some innovative ideas.

While the network maps in Scrutinizer can make the traffic flow on your network easier to visualize and congested links quicker to spot, adding more visual definition to your maps will make them more user friendly and understandable by more members of your organization.

So how do you spice up your NetFlow data and breathe some life into your network utilization maps? Try combining a tool created for home design with a network monitoring tool to create incredible network maps.

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If you put a price tag on network monitoring for your organization, what would it be? $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000?

And what needs to be included in that price? Staff to support the network? Network Monitoring hardware and software? Office space to house the staff and equipment?
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A common occurrence and cause for data loss in Scrutinizer prior to version 7 has been crashed database tables.  It has also been the subject of many calls to our technical support group. Due to the large amount of NetFlow data received by NetFlow collectors, corrupted database tables can cause a large amount of data loss in a short period of time.

To minimize data loss and support time required to repair the corrupted database tables, in version 7 of our NetFlow and sFlow analyzer, we have introduced the ’self-healing’ database.

A MySQL database check and repair is run on a regularly scheduled basis, once an hour.  If the database check finds any corrupted database tables, it will attempt the repair.  If it is unable to repair, an alarm will be generated to Scrutinizer to alert you of the corrupted table.
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Since Scrutinizer v7 and the data migration from v6 has been released, we have been just out straight with support, including sending upgrading instructions, assisting with upgrades, helping customers get acclimated to the totally new interface, and troubleshooting the inevitable issues that arise with a new release of code.

So it was with great relief and gratitude to Michael Patterson, President and CEO, and Marc Bilodeau, CIO, that we enjoyed our Christmas company celebration this past Saturday.
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With the release of the Scrutinizer v7.3.1 updates, we have made available the ability to link back to devices in Scrutinizer from 3rd party applications such as Zenoss, WhatsUp Gold, and InterMapper, among others.
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How do you know if the NetFlow collector is saving or even getting all of the NetFlow datagrams that are being sent to it or that it is receiving? It is important to know if any flows are missing.

Why do we care?

This is a great question. We care because a loss of flow exports is usually caused by one of three things:

1. The network dropped some packets
2. The router can’t keep up
3. The NetFlow receiver / collector can’t keep up

NetFlow sequence numbers are becoming increasingly important. When building a NetFlow collector it is important that the engine scales while staying accountable. If you look at the NetFlow v9 packet format you will notice something called the package_sequence.

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Looks like Vyatta has joined the mix of vendors supporting NetFlow and sFlow. According to the Vyatta press release, it requires an upgrade to VC6 of their operating system which is still in alpha development. This will make them the first company I’m familiar with that supports both technologies on the same hardware. Typically vendors implement sFlow in hardware, but Vyatta did it in software as they did NetFlow v5 and v9 support.
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Last week I blogged on Upgrading to Scrutinizer v7.2 NetFlow & sFlow Analyzer.

We have had such an overwhelming response from both existing and potential customers for this version of our network monitoring application that we are now sending the upgrade instructions to customers to allow them to upgrade at their leisure.

It has been very well received, as it now allows customers to schedule their upgrade to non-business hours if necessary. Also, for customers with secure servers without Internet access and unable to allow us to use remote access software (we use GoToMeeting), they can now perform the upgrade on their own and enjoy the new features of Scrutinizer.
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Late last week, we announced the version 7.2 release of Scrutinizer NetFlow & sFlow Analyzer, which includes data migration from Scrutinizer v6.

If you’re currently running version 7 of Plixer’s NetFlow analysis tool, then moving to v7.2 is a simple incremental upgrade.

However, for those customers who have been waiting anxiously to upgrade from version 6.x to v7, this is a major release and we want to make sure that using this network monitoring tool remains as pleasant an experience as ever.

For that reason, among others, we are assisting with the upgrades from Scrutinizer v6.x to v7.2 in these first few weeks of this release. And so far, it has been a relatively seamless process with delighted customers as a result.

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