NFD26: PathSolutions TotalView Provides Helpful Network Management

I and others have written about PathSolutions TotalView before. For links to the prior blogs plus other key PathSolutions information, see the Links section at the end of this blog. The presenter, Tim Titus does a great job of presenting his product, worth watching for that aspect alone.?

PathSolutions is a focused network management solution that attempts to ease the job of an overworked network manager. I say focused because PathSolutions TotalView does a lot, and its development focus is to help you do your job with information, rather than just capturing raw data.?

To help understand the role TotalView might play in your network, I feel I should compare TotalView to other products. I end up thinking that it appears to compete to a fair degree with SolarWinds Orion (Configuration and Performance Management) with some other functionality included.?

TL;DR:?PathSolutions prides itself on?EASY.?

If I and a couple of staff were managing a moderately sized network and never have enough time, I’d want a network management product that does the essentials and is low hassle, low maintenance, does a lot out of the box.?My impression is that TotalView might be that product.?

What Does TotalView Do??

Here’s PathSolutions’ short version:

I’ve built two lists after watching different PathSolutions presentations that answer this question …

TotalView (“TV”) has a different focus than other network management tools:?

• Simple to buy: all components included in one?license, cost based on number of switch / router ports. Said to run well with single high-performance instance, but no per-collector or other add-on licensing if you wish a more distributed deployment.??
• Runs on Windows Server or Windows 10, even on a VM, depending on the scale of what is managed.?
• Simple all-included 80 MB install bundle (claim: 12 minutes to install)
• Ease of use (auto-discovery, automated management of devices out of the box)
• Focus on information not just data: built-in alerting off of performance measurements and syslog messages
• Focus on not only providing alerts but concise practical advice about how to fix the problem
• Includes UC and Security components providing actionable troubleshooting and alerting tools (while avoiding the morass of all the different UC vendor CDR databases).?

More aspects of TotalView:

• Our discussion got into SNMP and other credentials. TV lets you put in a bunch of credentials and learns which one(s) work per-device. Claim: The SNMP queries are cleverly coded to greatly improve polling performance compared to other tools.?
• TotalView has a mapping of device vendors and types to MIBs, and during discovery figures out which MIBS a given device reliably provides information from?
• It does the various forms of SNMP, including SNMPV3, including Cisco crypto SNMPv3.?
• For discovery, you supply a list of prefixes to discover devices on. If you want, you can also limit discovery to say the first 20 IP’s in a block (since some sites reserve the first 16 or 20 addresses in say a /24 for network devices).?
• It monitors interface error stats, also QoS drops. And CPU, RAM, PoE, STP (for changes), CDP, LLDP, attached devices (MAC table, etc.?), and other information. And alerts off them.?
• It also a degree of CLI automation.
• It collects configs and archives them, and emails the diff (what changed).?
• It contains a tool to help diagnose remote worker performance problems.?
• Given IP endpoints (ok, for UC you have to dig them out of the Call Manager) it determines the path, displays it, and shows you any known issues along the path.?

And that’s just the highlights.?

Apologies if the lists are a bit … long-winded and perhaps boring, trying to be concise here.?

Lately, as with some other vendors, PathSolutions has emphasized troubleshooting WFH problems.?

About the NFD26 Presentation

There was a lot in the presentation.?

To whet your interest, I’d like to share some screencaptures of one particular portion, troubleshooting a WFH user’s problem. I can’t possibly reproduce Tim T’s words, but hey, that’s what the video is for! So you’ll get my concise version of the story behind the screencaptures.?

Troubleshooting a WFH User’s Problem

VoIP is the application that will find any kind of network problem. And video is closing in on it in that regard.

TotalView has a tool where you enter the IP endpoint addresses, and it figures out the likely call path (by doing a logical traceroute with the info TotalView has learned). (Note: ECMP might fool it – the standard SNMP MIB-II routing table info overlooked ECMP.)?

That helps get you started troubleshooting many problems.?

The TotalView presentation walked through solving a Zoom meeting problem. The following conceptually illustrates what the path might look like, and what sort of problems might exist. That’s a lot to check out!

The presentation then walked through what TotalView does for you. With a WFH agent in place, it checks out the laptop, its wireless, and the path to the main network. And TotalView reports on any known issues along the path.?

RemoteView is the PathSolutions WFH agent, giving the administrator visibility into the conditions surrounding the user’s laptop.?

The person troubleshooting can then check out the list of interfaces for problems. Note the red dot in the following screen capture. (I’ve skipped the graphic showing scrolling to the right in the view.)?

Drilling down we see:

Note the reported packet loss (bottom graph).?

As I write this, this afternoon in fact I’m supposed to help troubleshoot a video problem spanning a hospital organization. Having comprehensive visibility into utilization and packet loss, etc. across ALL interfaces is a key component of rapidly troubleshooting the problem.?

Part of TotalView’s value is that it incorporates plain English explanations of the various problems it reports, along with interpretation of what that means for troubleshooting.?

There is also logging of events with query by time of occurrence, so you can see what was going on at the time of the problem.?

See the video for the full story of how these tools help solve the problem.?

Caveat

Most products look great when demonstrated. I’ve tried to share some of what looks great here.?

I’ll note that Tim Titus (PathSolutions key person) is a super presenter – you should watch the video just for that if no other reason. But great sales pitches always make me want to proceed with caution to verify the reality aligns with the expectation .?

So I recommend that if you’re interested, you demo TotalView in your network.?

Conclusions

PathSolutions’ TotalView looks like it might be fairly useful for those supporting a small to medium sized network. There is apparently a low barrier to trying it out, with easy setup and network discovery. And I’m a fan of try before you buy, giving any potential purchase a good workout.?

Links

• PathSolutions Corporate website
• Network Field Day page of PathSolutions-related content
• NFD26 playlist?on YouTube!
• NFD23 Blog about PathSolutions that I wrote
• Tech Field Day Showcase blog about PathSolutions that I wrote
• Tech Field Day Showcase blog about PathSolutions that Terry Slattery wrote

Comments

Comments are welcome, both in agreement or constructive disagreement about the above. I enjoy hearing from readers and carrying on deeper discussion via comments. Thanks in advance!?

Hashtags:?#NetCraftsmen #CiscoChampion #CCIE25years #NFD26

Disclosure statement

Twitter:?@pjwelcher

LinkedIn:?Peter Welcher