Network Operations Archives

Integrate your network alarms with Microsoft Teams

2020 was a year of incredible change—changes that I believe will have a lasting impact, but also changes that require immense flexibility with traditional structure and workflows. This is observable in every industry, and ours is no different. Not only has the model of network traffic changed with a work-from-home model, but so has our ability to collaborate as a team. We moved from primarily being in the same physical room as our colleagues to now spending our time in virtual channels. One of the most widely adopted of these digital workspaces is Microsoft Teams.

With Teams being the primary space for collaboration, having a network monitoring solution like Plixer Scrutinizer post alarms to a dedicated Teams channel is an incredibly effective way of monitoring, tracking and assigning network events to team members for investigation. Let’s take a look at how easy it is to configure this integration within Scrutinizer.

Network Operations

Custom script-based sensor for PRTG

03.12.21 - Khalil Ismayilov

Today I would like to explain how to create a custom script that sends specific information to PRTG as a sensor. Customers often ask me how to use PRTG to tack the uptime and downtime of Scrutinizer. So, what specific parameter needs to be set up so that the PRTG sensor would react immediately on it?

Network Operations

How to improve response time for life-critical network events with Plixer Scrutinizer

02.26.21 - Stephen Tutterow

The healthcare industry has been on red alert for more than a year now. Workloads have doubled and the amount of time required to maintain the network is in direct relation with this trend. Now, more than ever, beyond-perfect response times are a requirement, otherwise lives are on the line. Plixer’s healthcare customers use Scrutinizer to ensure they have a constant, real-time source of truth for the most common and most frustrating issues. This blog will focus on how to mitigate network slowdowns, improve overall visibility, and improve DNS visibility, one of the top challenges the healthcare industry faces today.

Network Operations

Monitoring Microsoft Teams traffic with Plixer Scrutinizer

01.28.21 - Timothy Morris

The modern workplace is filled with companies working largely over inter-office messaging systems. These tools often leverage several different functions aside from chatting, such as video conferencing and file sharing. What was once just a small tool could now potentially be sucking down your office’s bandwidth. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at Microsoft Teams. Since this tool is now coming included in Microsoft Office’s standard line-up, its presence is becoming more and more common on corporate networks.

Network Operations

Defining top talkers with Flexible NetFlow and AVC

12.16.20 - Khalil Ismayilov

I was recently on a call with a customer who wanted to know which applications use the most bandwidth during working hours—i.e. their top talkers. This gave me a great opportunity to review a specific feature of Flexible NetFlow and AVC integration. I’ve decided to build a small lab with a simple network configuration where I could set up a couple of VLANs, a trunk communication between L2 and L3 devices, and couple of devices. The end goal is to define what host under what VLAN is using what application the most.

Network Operations

Monitoring applications with Plixer Scrutinizer

12.09.20 - Dylan Mclaughlin

Monitoring applications is a useful tool in the network administrators tool belt and I’d like to go over how Scrutinizer can help monitor your network in both the realm of bandwidth utilization and security alerting. This blog will cover why it is important to monitor applications and the different ways we can gather and report on that information using Scrutinizer.

Network Operations

Integrating Plixer and Aruba: sFlow, IPFIX, and ClearPass

12.03.20 - Stephen Tutterow

This blog will focus on Plixer’s current capability to extract flow from the different solutions Aruba has to offer today. I will go over the integration steps with Aruba ClearPass and the role we play in an automated role-based access monitoring setup using ClearPass.

Network Operations

How to get the best ROI for your SIEM: Tips on picking the right NDR

11.25.20 - James Dougherty

Has management made enhancing your network monitoring toolset with an NDR component a priority for the new year? Have the demands of the pilgrimage to a fully remote office shed some light on dark places on your network? Are you concerned that the one thing your significant other wanted for Xmas won’t be available on Amazon? Don’t worry about it—seems like everyone is facing these issues nowadays.

Network Operations

The importance of monitoring Windows 10 updates

11.04.20 - Timothy Morris

Microsoft has redone their release cycle format, and although it makes things easier for the end user, it can prove difficult to ensure your environment is running the most up-to-date or minimally supported operating systems. Microsoft is now only releasing major feature updates to Windows 10, as opposed to releasing a “Windows 11” or a “Windows 10.1.” Thus it is no longer obvious if an end user is running an outdated operating system. This is a challenge for systems administrators who need to make sure endpoint machines are on the latest Windows 10 update.

Network Operations

First look: Plixer’s machine learning engine explained

09.09.20 - Stephen Tutterow

The purpose of this blog is to de-mystify the hype around machine learning (ML) by exploring three topics:

What kind of ML is Plixer using and why?
What insights or predictions can be drawn out of NetFlow, IPFIX, and metadata?
Once applied, how do the results reduce the strain on network and security operations teams?