NetCrunch 13: Real-time network monitoring, traffic analysis, alerts, and performance reporting

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Brandon Lee

Brandon Lee has been in the IT industry 15+ years and focuses on networking and virtualization. He contributes to the community through various blog posts and technical documentation primarily at Virtualizationhowto.com.

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AdRem Software's NetCrunchsupports standard network monitoring protocols, including SNMP, WMI, and NetFlow. It offers advanced features, such as predictive analytics, monitoring packs, enhanced topology maps, cloud connect data sharing, and many security features.

In addition to its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, NetCrunch provides key performance indicators for insights and quick correlation of monitoring data so that IT and helpdesk operations can handle issues proactively. As a result, NetCrunch is a reliable and robust monitoring solution for organizations.

Easy installation

One thing that stands out about NetCrunch is its simple, easy installation and configuration. Most admins want a monitoring solution to be easy to use but not lacking in features. NetCrunch checks all the right boxes for many. It's a Windows application that allows easy installation and monitoring configuration.

The installation wizard allows quick installation of NetCrunch 13

After installing NetCrunch, you can start setting up your networks for monitoring. NetCrunch will automatically scan and detect devices on your network segments and add them to the Network Atlas.

NetCrunch automatically creates a Network Atlas after installation

After the installation and Network Atlas configuration, which finishes very quickly, you can start monitoring data.

Network overview after NetCrunch install and scan

New features in NetCrunch 13

The new NetCrunch 13 release contains a myriad of new features. These include the following new enhancements:

• Updated automatic Layer 2 and routing maps that reflect real state of your network structure & connections
• Global secure NetCrunch Connection Cloud; no configuration needed to connect from any place
• New Windows Registry Sensors that can track registry changes; detects some malware and ransomware entries
• Windows software inventory and hotfixes sensors to track the updates status
• New graphical views with modern visualizations to represent all devices, connection types, multiple data widgets, and processes
• Network interface speed override
• Concurrent editing of settings for policies and node monitoring which enables team members to modify configurations simultaneously

Graphical view

With NetCrunch 13, you have access to new graphical views and their capabilities to visualize any network, process, or scheme as part of NetCrunch. Any metric, status, or alert can be represented as a graphical widget, providing a live infographic with real-time status updates.

The graphical view allows you to create customized views based on any information you collect with NetCrunch. You can easily create new graphical views by clicking the plus sign next to the Network Atlas, and then clicking the Graphical view in the drop-down menu.

Creating a new view in NetCrunch 13

After you create the new view, you can add your customized elements to the canvas of the new Graphical View. This is an excellent way to build customized views and network layouts.

Customizing the Graphical View layout

The screenshots below show two examples.

A graphical view of a network with its devices

A graphical representation of monitoring results from ESXi servers

Updated automatic Layer 2 and routing maps

Among the many UI improvements and enhancements with NetCrunch 13 are new physical segments, routing map layouts, and editing capabilities. While NetCrunch will attempt to pick the best layout for your network infrastructure, it allows choosing from star, tree, and graph layouts to best fit your network structure.

A similar feature is available with routing maps. Again, NetCrunch 13 will attempt to choose the best layout, but allows admins to select a better layout if needed to arrange and rearrange nodes as needed. AdRem Software provides some of the best visual maps that can be found on the market out of the box with visual cues on the connectors between devices.

Manually selecting physical segment and routing layouts

Global secure NetCrunch Connection Cloud

AdRem Software has introduced a global private network for NetCrunch connections. These are secure connections with 4096-bit encryption and SSL certificates. In the current technical preview you can connect to the NetCrunch desktop or web console and acesss monitoring probes on the NetCrunch server. In the final release, you will also be able to send data to NetCrunch via webhooks and the API.

Users benefit from sharing data between NetCrunch installations without opening ports from the Internet. In addition, this feature can be used for installing NetCrunch in a distributed monitoring scenario, with monitoring probes installed in different networks and connected to the NetCrunch Server with the NetCrunch Connection Cloud.

NetCrunch automatically provisions a secure NetCrunch connection cloud

Windows Registry Sensor (WMI)

One of the great new sensors included with the NetCrunch 13 release is the Windows Registry Sensor (WMI). The new sensor complements the features found in the existing Windows Registry Counters sensor to add monitoring of the following:

• Registry key existence check
• Subkey change monitor
• Value change monitor
• Value existence check
• Content matching for registry values

Monitoring the registry can be a great way to track registry modifications and bolster security, since registry values are commonly updated by malicious programs, including malware and ransomware.

Adding the new Registry WMI sensor

Windows software and hotfixes sensors

There are a couple of new sensors for monitoring Windows updates and software in NetCrunch 13. First, it allows gathering information regarding hotfixes and other installed software. You can see a complete list of your software installation under the interface's Node Status > System Views > Software section. Also, you can see installed hotfixes at Node Status > System Views > Hotfixes.

Software hotfixes and pending updates provide detailed software and update information

Software inventory view

Aligning nicely with the new Windows software and hotfixes sensor, a new software inventory view has been added to see the status of any group of nodes in NetCrunch and the inventory of software installed along with hotfixes. This view applies to Windows machines and allows seeing a detailed view of software, including updates applied.

New options for drawing diagrams

NetCrunch 13 improves the ability to draw a variety of connection lines, including new connection line styles, and to dynamically change the connector line properties based on the object's state in a diagram. It also provides "live diagrams," which offer unique drawing capabilities and linking features using near real-time state information.

Network quality analysis monitoring

NetCrunch 13 offers network quality analysis monitoring to monitor the status of IP SLAs. It can monitor things like latency, jitter, delay, packets out of sequence, and other IP communication metrics.

Graphical Views editor improvements

Many improvements have been introduced with the Graphical Views editor. These include the following:

• Improved line selection
• Ability to connect lines to edge points
• Multi-selection for lines
• Improved text handling

NetCrunch provides beautiful monitoring dashboards for identifying issues quickly

Creation of monitoring packs for sensors

With NetCrunch 13, you can apply sensors to multiple nodes by creating a monitoring pack for a specific sensor. The monitoring pack can also be dynamic and can use an alert from the monitoring pack. This new feature will dramatically speed up and simplify the process of adding sensors to multiple nodes in conjunction with the multi-selection capability for organizations with thousands of nodes.

Network interface speed override

You can now tweak the interface speed defined for NetCrunch interfaces. Previously, NetCrunch would pull the speed from the interface. However, the available bandwidth from the ISP may be much lower. In NetCrunch 13, you can now override the speed value in the settings of NetCrunch to display an accurate usage value.

Concurrent editing of settings for policies and node monitoring

The ability of multiple technicians to edit policies and node settings simultaneously has been enhanced. NetCrunch 13 now allows concurrent editing without any ill effects. If changes overlap, NetCrunch will apply the latest change. In most cases, users will not be editing the exact same policy or node setting, so NetCrunch merges the changes from all users.

Conclusion

NetCrunch 13 is a significant update that brings many new features and enhancements to the platform. AdRem Software's latest release helps solve real-world monitoring problems quickly and provides the monitoring and management tools needed for many types of infrastructure. In addition, installing and configuring NetCrunch is straightforward and provides admins visibility into issues just minutes after installation.

You can download a trial without registration and test for 7 days. If you like what you see, you can register to test for 30 days or longer and get full tech support for the entire testing period for free.