What is SNMPv3?

Simple Network Management Protocol Version 3 (SNMPv3) is an advanced version of SNMP. Primarily used for network management, SNMPv3 ensures secure access to devices by providing enhanced security features. Unlike its predecessors, SNMPv3 supports strong authentication and encryption, making it a go-to choice for managing complex network environments securely.

SNMPv3 is crucial in contemporary network management for its ability to provide secure and reliable data about network devices. Its enhanced security features make it well-suited for modern, sensitive environments where data integrity and privacy are paramount.

Why is SNMPv3 important?

In an era where cyberthreats are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the security of network management protocols is non-negotiable. SNMPv3 addresses this concern by offering robust security measures, ensuring that the management of network devices and the transfer of critical information happen in a secure, encrypted manner. For IT professionals, this translates to peace of mind, knowing that their network’s integrity and performance are not compromised.

How does SNMPv3 work?

SNMPv3 operates on an advanced framework that significantly enhances the security and efficiency of network management. Here’s a technical breakdown of how SNMPv3 functions:

1. Architecture: SNMPv3 retains the basic structure of SNMP, which includes an SNMP manager and SNMP agents. The manager sends requests to agents residing on network devices, and these agents send back responses. However, SNMPv3 introduces a modular architecture comprising three primary components:

• Security subsystem: Responsible for authenticating and encrypting data packets.
• Access control subsystem: Determines whether an SNMP request from a user should be processed or denied.
• Message processing subsystem: Encodes and decodes packets and maps security models to SNMP versions.

2. User-based security model (USM): At the core of SNMPv3’s security enhancements is the USM. USM provides:

• Authentication: It ensures that a message is from a legitimate source. SNMPv3 supports stronger authentication protocols like HMAC-MD5-96 and HMAC-SHA-96. These protocols use a secret key and a hashing algorithm to generate a message digest, which is sent along with the message.
• Encryption: To maintain confidentiality, SNMPv3 uses encryption algorithms, such as DES, 3DES or AES, to encrypt the payload of the SNMP message. This prevents unauthorized entities from reading the content of the messages.

3. View-based access control model (VACM): VACM in SNMPv3 allows for finer control over access to managed objects. It defines who (the user) has access to what (the object) and how (the level of access like read-only or read-write).
4. SNMP messages: SNMPv3 operates using different types of messages (or protocol data units (PDUs)) for various operations:

• Get: Request to retrieve a value from an SNMP agent.
• Set: Request to change a value on an SNMP agent.
• GetNext: Request to retrieve the next value in a table or list.
• GetBulk: Request multiple values in a single request (useful for large amounts of data).
• Inform: Used between managers to communicate information.
• Response: Reply from an agent to a manager’s request.
• Trap: Asynchronous notification from an agent to the manager.

5. Communication flow: The SNMP manager initiates the communication by sending a request to an agent. The USM module in the agent authenticates and decrypts the message. Then, VACM checks if the requester has the necessary access rights. If all checks are passed, the agent processes the request and sends back a response, which is encrypted and authenticated for security.
6. Secure data handling: Throughout this process, SNMPv3 ensures that data is handled securely. Authentication prevents tampering and spoofing, and encryption safeguards data privacy during transmission.

In summary, SNMPv3 works by employing advanced security mechanisms for authentication, encryption and access control. These features make it an ideal protocol for securely managing and monitoring network devices in a wide range of environments.

How does SNMP improve security?

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) plays a crucial role in enhancing network security, particularly in its third iteration, SNMPv3. Unlike its predecessors, SNMPv3 introduces robust security mechanisms addressing authentication, privacy and access control. At the heart of its security improvements is the user-based security model (USM), which allows for strong authentication protocols, such as HMAC-MD5-96 or HMAC-SHA-96.

These protocols verify the identity of users sending requests, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access network data. Additionally, SNMPv3 supports encryption algorithms like DES, 3DES or AES, which encrypt the data payload, thereby protecting sensitive information from interception and unauthorized viewing during transit. This is especially vital when managing devices over unsecured or public networks.

Furthermore, SNMPv3’s view-based access control model (VACM) allows for granular control over who can view or manipulate specific network information, further tightening network security by restricting access based on defined roles and responsibilities. These technical advancements make SNMPv3 a more secure and reliable choice for network management, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of critical network operations.

Common challenges of SNMPv3 and how to overcome them

While SNMPv3 enhances security, its implementation can be complex. Setting up SNMPv3 involves configuring users, authentication methods and encryption settings. This complexity can lead to misconfigurations, posing potential security risks. Overcoming these challenges involves thorough planning, proper training of IT staff and leveraging tools like IT Glue’s Network Glue add-on, which simplifies the process of automatically discovering and documenting devices that have enabled SNMPv3.

How can SNMPv3 help your business?

SNMPv3 can significantly benefit businesses by providing a secure and efficient way to manage network devices. Its robust security features protect against unauthorized access and data tampering, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of network data. This is especially crucial for businesses handling sensitive information. Additionally, SNMPv3’s ability to provide detailed and accurate network information aids in troubleshooting, optimizing network performance and making informed decisions about network management.

How does IT Glue use SNMPv3 for network management?

IT Glue’s Network Glue add-on is an ideal solution for documenting SNMPv3 devices for a dynamic and optimal network management strategy.

Network Glue automates the documentation of both managed and unmanaged devices, Azure AD and Active Directory users, as well as network diagrams, ensuring everything in your network is accurately mapped and information is up to date. By having the capability to automatically document SNMPv3 devices, Network Glue offers a secure, comprehensive view of your network, making it easier to manage and optimize.

Network Glue not only automates the discovery and documentation of SNMPv3 devices, enhancing the overall security and efficiency of your IT operations, but it also makes this mission-critical information easily accessible next to the rest of your IT documentation in IT Glue.

On top of this, Network Glue provides 1-Click Active Directory Password Rotation to help you put password rotation on autopilot based on your desired schedule or instantly, as needed. This helps you ensure your passwords never go stale, keeping your data secure.

IT Glue’s solutions are purpose-built for IT professionals, offering seamless integration, ease of use and robust security. To learn more about how IT Glue can revolutionize your network management with SNMPv3, request a demo today.

The post What Is SNMPv3? Use Cases and How It Works appeared first on IT Glue.

The growing complexity of network topology and lack of visibility into it are significant obstacles that IT pros face while identifying, troubleshooting and fixing issues in an organizational network. What devices are connecting to the network? What do those devices have access to? How do these devices interact with each other? Such precise information about the assets in a network is crucial for IT pros to effectively manage the network.

Network visibility is also crucial in terms of operational efficiency. It can help in troubleshooting bottlenecks that affect a business’s day-to-day operations and accelerate the seamless adoption of transformative technologies. Network visibility is critical to cybersecurity as well. The absence of a clear understanding of network assets, connections and vulnerabilities can expose an organization to the rapidly expanding threat landscape.

So, how can organizations get a better understanding of their growing networks and gain better control of the countless devices in them? That’s where effective network discovery can be a game changer. Let’s see what network discovery is and how it can help improve the visibility of today’s complex IT environments.

What is network discovery?

Network discovery, also known as IT asset discovery or simply IT discovery, is the process that enables all the devices in a network to identify and connect with each other. It helps IT teams locate all the devices in a network, build network maps, manage device inventories, implement proper device access policies and achieve better control of the IT infrastructure overall.

Network discovery is like creating a map of your organization’s digital world, identifying every device, application and connection within the network. With it, IT teams can gain critical insights into the network’s structure, which is crucial for optimizing performance, maintaining security and making informed IT decisions.

What is the purpose of network discovery?

The main purpose of network discovery is to shed light on what’s happening in a large and dynamic network. Network discovery provides enhanced visibility into an enterprise’s network infrastructure that includes a wide variety of elements like network bridges, gateways, wireless access points, routers, modems, switches and hubs. It helps network administrators locate all these devices in the network, understand how they’re connected and discover any potential issues.

Why is network discovery important?

Today, organizations rely on a combination of wired, wireless, virtual and cloud networks. It is extremely difficult for IT pros to identify the root cause of an issue in these hybrid environments. As digital operations scale, the networks will equally evolve, further complicating the scenario.

Network discovery empowers IT pros to locate all the devices in a network easily and understand the relationship between them. It helps them readily identify, troubleshoot and fix different issues. For instance, if a network is experiencing downtime, network discovery provides IT pros with relevant data, allowing them to identify and address the issue swiftly. With network discovery, IT pros can effortlessly troubleshoot and resolve bottlenecks that might otherwise negatively impact the operational efficiency and security of an organization.

What types of network assets are discovered?

A network asset is any device, data or mission-critical component of your IT infrastructure. IT assets generally fall under two broad categories: hardware and software.

• Hardware assets include network bridges, gateways, modems, routers, switches, hubs, firewalls, printers, etc.
• Software assets include operating systems, applications, support systems, patches and updates, etc.

How does network discovery work?

Network discovery involves systematically exploring and charting the digital landscape, locating every device, application and connection within the network infrastructure.

The first step in network discovery is to scan the entire network to locate all assets and gather information from each device, including device type, unique IDs and other relevant details. The next step is to determine how these devices are interconnected. For instance, a computer may be connected to a printer as well as to the internet via a router. It is essential to collect all this information to have a clear understanding of the network’s structure.

All this information should then be categorized so that it’s easy for your IT team to access the information they need when they need it. It becomes a valuable resource for them, offering insights into what assets are present, how they interact and where critical information is located.

What are network discovery protocols?

One of the most effective ways to discover the assets in a network is by leveraging a network discovery tool. Be it any tool, they use three basic network discovery protocols while sharing information about devices and their connections. These protocols enable the process of network discovery to unfold seamlessly. They are:

Simple network management protocol (SNMP)

Simple network management protocol (SNMP) is an internet standard protocol that is widely used for monitoring and managing network assets. SNMP allows IT pros to gather and organize detailed information about network assets. Devices equipped with SNMP respond to requests from a central management system, which then gathers details like device uptime, network traffic and system performance.

Link layer discovery protocol (LLDP)

LLDP is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEE) standard protocol that allows devices to transmit information about them to their directly connected neighbors at regular intervals. When a device connects to the network, it sends LLDP messages containing information, such as its identity, port and type. The recipient devices store this information in management information databases (MIBs) that IT pros can easily access.

Internet control message protocol (ICMP)

Internet control message protocol (ICMP) queries are used to check if devices are reachable in a network. It’s equivalent to sending echoes through a network. One of the most familiar uses of ICMP is the “ping” command. When a device sends a message (ping) to another device, the receiving device responds, allowing network administrators to verify the existence and responsiveness of devices on the network.

What is a network discovery tool?

Network discovery tools are software or applications designed to automate and seamlessly facilitate network discovery. Leveraging the protocols mentioned above, they help IT pros discover and gather information about:

• All the hardware on the network, like printers, switches, firewalls, servers, etc.
• All the software on the network, like different applications and operating systems.
• Wired, wireless, virtual and cloud networks.
• The physical and logical relationships between all the network assets.

Network discovery tools automate this whole discovery process so that IT pros can quickly get real-time information about the entire enterprise network.

Active vs. passive discovery tools

There are two types of discovery tools: active and passive.

Active discovery tools follow the classic ping-and-response approach. They proactively initiate communication with network devices by sending out signals or requests. These tools typically use techniques like SNMP queries, ICMP requests and network scanning to seek responses from devices, collecting information about their presence, configuration and status.

While active discovery provides immediate and up-to-date information about devices on the network, it can also slow down a network due to all the contact attempts it broadcasts to the devices. Active discovery is thus not a good option for time-sensitive networks like an industrial control system (ICS).

Passive discovery tools, on the other hand, have a more laid-back approach. These tools extract information from devices without directly engaging with them. Instead of actively reaching out to devices, they monitor network communication passively, analyzing the data packets traversing the network.

Since it does not impact the network bandwidth or performance, passive discovery is ideal for networks that necessitate minimum network disruption. However, it does require all the network devices to send syslogs, which are regularly updated in a log management solution.

The choice between active and passive discovery often depends on the specific characteristics and requirements of the network environment. In some cases, organizations even employ a combination of both active and passive discoveries to benefit from the strengths of both approaches.

What are the benefits of network discovery?

Network discovery offers several key benefits for organizations, playing a pivotal role in enhancing efficiency, security and strategic decision-making within their digital landscapes. Here are a few of those benefits:

• Comprehensive visibility: Network discovery provides organizations with a detailed map of their digital infrastructure, offering critical insights into the devices, connections and applications present. It also ensures that organizations have up-to-date information about every change happening in their network, enabling proactive management.
• Optimized operational efficiency: By knowing the devices and applications in use, organizations can allocate resources more effectively, optimizing network performance and responsiveness. Network discovery also helps identify bottlenecks, allowing for targeted improvements to enhance overall performance.
• Enhanced security: Network discovery also identifies potential security risks by recognizing all connected devices and highlighting any unauthorized or suspicious activities. Organizations can implement better user access control policies by understanding who and what is connected to the network, reducing the risk of unwarranted access.
• Effective troubleshooting: Network discovery helps IT pros swiftly identify the root causes when a network problem arises, streamlining the troubleshooting process. If there are problematic devices or connections, IT pros can isolate those issues and address them promptly, drastically minimizing downtime.
• Cost savings: Efficient use of network resources, informed by network discovery, can result in considerable cost savings. You can avoid unnecessary hardware purchases and optimize the existing infrastructure with informed decisions. Quick issue resolution and proactive monitoring reduce downtime, minimizing the potential financial impact of network disruptions.
• Vital cog in the digital transformation journey: Network discovery can also play a crucial role in your digital transformation journey by facilitating adaptability to changes brought about by digital transformation initiatives like the adoption of cloud services. Understanding the existing network architecture allows organizations to seamlessly integrate new technologies into their digital ecosystems.

Discover network assets with Network Glue

If you are looking for a solution that can help you give complete visibility into your or your client’s complex and ever-growing IT network, look no further.

Network Glue is the automation engine of IT Glue and is an all-in-one automated discovery, documentation, password rotation and diagramming solution that automates and enhances your network discovery. Network Glue’s agent — Network Glue Collector — leverages different network discovery protocols, including SNMP, pings, broadcasts, windows management instrumentation (WMI), and Active Directory, to discover network device information automatically. With Network Glue, you can automate the documentation of both managed and unmanaged devices, Azure AD and Active Directory users, as well as network diagrams.

Network Glue gives you complete and real-time visibility into the whole IT environment, leaving behind no blind spots. You can get all the information you need about a device, including its name, type and description, IP address(es), MAC address(es), port, port groups, virtual connection type, status, virtualization type and so on. Moreover, it offers automated visualizations, delivering up-to-date network diagrams that provide enhanced visibility into the IT environments. It also has robust capabilities like automated Active Directory password rotation that ensures that your network is completely safe.

Do you want to learn more about Network Glue? Get a demo now.

The post What Is Network Discovery? appeared first on IT Glue.

In this blog, we will explore the different aspects of network documentation and how you can document your network information correctly.

What is network documentation?

Network documentation refers to the process of documenting all the hardware, software and connections associated with a network. By capturing all the important information related to a network, you can ensure the smooth functioning of your network. Network documentation provides key insights into the performance of a network and helps administrators troubleshoot issues by identifying their root causes.

If you run an organization with a complex network, your network documentation should include device types, configurations, software versions, updates, licensing agreements, etc. The methods used by organizations to document their network may vary significantly based on network complexity and organizational requirements.

What is the importance of network documentation?

Networks are getting more complex than ever in today’s digital world. A visual representation of a network is extremely critical to ensure its smooth performance. Proper documentation helps you identify the issues in your network and rectify them before they can wreak havoc on your entire IT infrastructure.

Also, network documentation is important when you are scaling up. When expanding, you are likely to add new users to your organization, which translates to more endpoints, servers, routers, etc. With proper network documentation, you can ensure consistency, reduce the time required for expansion, prevent information loss and eliminate security issues.

Another key importance of network documentation is its ability to promote knowledge transfer. Just one or two members of an IT team typically have full network knowledge. If they leave the company, your new hires will be stuck wasting a lot of time trying to understand the network. If you have proper network documentation, you can onboard your new hires instantly and save a lot of money caused by inefficiency.

What should be included in network documentation?

The primary goal of network documentation is to provide knowledge about the entire network to IT administrators and technicians. Due to that, your documentation should be comprehensive and include all the key elements of the network. Your administrators should be able to make sound decisions based on the information they gain from the network documentation.

Here is a list of all the key elements you must include in your documentation:

Network devices

This part of network documentation captures all the devices connected to the network. It includes details about endpoints, workstations, servers, switches, routers, firewalls, etc. The following information should be documented about the devices in your network.

• What is the operating system, manufacturer, serial number, model, etc.?
• Is the device physical, virtual or hybrid?
• How are the devices connected to the network?
• Do we have a backup of all the device information?
• Is there a password required to access the device?
• Who are the users that can access the device?

Network servers and addresses

Your network servers give you an idea of your data center and how they are organized. A server rack diagram will accurately represent your server connections and help you easily identify the source of any issues. Besides the server names and configurations, you should also include the IP and MAC addresses of all the devices in your network.

Network connections

Your network documentation should include all the connections made to various parts of your network. It will come in handy when you are diagnosing problems in your network. Most importantly, a visual representation of this information will provide you with the right physical location of various devices in your network.

Network diagrams

You can visualize various aspects of a network as diagrams. You can find different types of diagrams in a network. Below is a list of the most common ones.

• Network topology: This visually represents how various devices are connected. These diagrams help you establish the relationship between various devices. Network topology aims to identify issues quickly and troubleshoot them with minimal downtime.
• Cloud architecture: This diagram helps you understand various components of your cloud architecture. Besides understanding your current cloud infrastructure, you can use this diagram to plan your future expansion.
• Server rack: You can use this diagram to check how your devices are connected to the server. This diagram shows the organization of all the components in your server rack, including network switches, firewalls, power strips, routers, etc.
• Wi-Fi chart: You can use this diagram to identify the structure of your wireless network. It includes all the routers, switches and servers in your wireless network.

Active directory domain

Your active directory contains key information regarding your domains, users and objects. Documenting your active directory is not just about documenting this information. Rather, it involves details such as the names of your domains, site structure, naming conventions, server hierarchy and external thrusts.

Network recovery plan

Organizations cannot afford network failure in today’s world of complex networks and cutthroat competition. You need a recovery plan when something inevitably goes wrong. A properly documented recovery plan will guide your staff on what to do when a failure occurs. Your network recovery plan should include the following:

• Who you should contact in case of a failure?
• What you should do if the technician is not available that day
• How to protect your data from a hardware failure
• Where the backup data is located
• What you should do with the backup data
• What the business impact will be in case of network failure

What are the benefits of network documentation?

While documentation may seem overwhelming and may involve quite a few tasks, the host of benefits it offers often outweighs the costs associated with it. Here is a list of benefits you can experience with network documentation:

Maximized visibility

Proper documentation will give you better visibility into your network infrastructure. Just like a well-crafted map gives you directions to a place, network documentation will provide you with all the key information about your network. This visibility and understanding will be useful when you have to troubleshoot issues in your network.

Risk mitigation

When you have better visibility and access to all key information about your network, you can mitigate various network risks significantly. For instance, if there is an unexpected network outage, your employees can access the standard operating procedures on what actions they should take. As a result, you can minimize your downtime and keep your business up and running.

Streamlined operations

With proper documentation, your users can instantly access all vital information and communicate any changes in real time. This removes all the bottlenecks in internal communications and ensures streamlined operations.

Knowledge building and retention

Many organizations suffer when they face employee turnover. Besides losing valuable employees, they also risk losing valuable organizational knowledge. You can avoid that with robust documentation. Network documentation is all about capturing knowledge about your network and retaining it for future use.

Improved onboarding

Another key benefit of knowledge retention is improved onboarding. Having all network information properly documented lets you easily share it with your new hires rather than wasting valuable resources on lengthy onboarding. Moreover, this helps your new hires gain knowledge quickly and become productive without wasting too much time.

Speedy problem resolution

With robust network documentation, your administrators can easily identify problem areas in your network and decide which one to solve first. When you know where the problem is, you can troubleshoot the issues faster and prevent critical system failure. In complex networks, even little things matter; these details are always easy to miss when shooting in the dark. With access to the right information, you can easily resolve complicated issues and ensure maximum uptime.

Cost efficiency

When you can resolve issues faster and streamline your operations, you can automatically reduce the expenses caused by poor efficiency. For instance, if you have unutilized assets in your network, you can easily identify them and put them to proper use (or deprecate them). Also, network documentation will help you with network expansion planning and optimize the budget for new devices. In the long run, all these benefits can contribute greatly to cost efficiency.

How do you document a network?

Creating your network documentation for the first time can be quite challenging due to the vast amount of information that has to be documented. However, you can develop a solid strategy to ensure safe network documentation and provide easy access to critical information. Here’s a list of best practices to help you correctly document your network.

• Decide what to document: The first step is knowing what to document. You don’t want to record unwanted stuff and clutter your valid information. Administrators should brainstorm with their IT team to narrow the list of things to document in a network.
• Create a network documentation policy: You need a firm documentation policy to provide guidelines on how to go about the documentation process. For instance, you can outline the roles and responsibilities of key personnel involved in documentation. A robust policy improves clarity on the process, increases transparency and ensures accountability.
• Categorize content based on related items: The next big step involves providing a structure to documentation. You must organize your information based on categories and group related items together. It ensures effective knowledge management and easy retrieval of all documented information.
• Create backups: Creating backups is extremely important for all kinds of documentation. You must create a backup schedule to consistently monitor your backups. In addition to backing up your information, you can create a description of the backups to help your team identify them whenever required.
• Make documentation an ongoing practice: Network documentation is not a one-and-done practice. You must do it regularly without fail. If you manage a complex network, it is not an easy job to do it manually. You need a proper documentation tool to automate the process and ensure effective knowledge management.

What is network documentation software?

The complex networks of today’s IT environments cannot be documented manually. You need a robust documentation tool that automates the process and integrates with other IT management tools. Your documentation tool should come with powerful network documentation capabilities and should take inventory of your network infrastructure.

Your network documentation solution should have powerful visualization capabilities by offering network topology maps and diagrams. Most importantly, it should provide a single source of truth by unifying information from multiple platforms and providing a centralized view of all the information. A network documentation solution with these capabilities can make network documentation a breeze.

Document your network with IT Glue

IT Glue is the gold standard for IT documentation, and it comes with powerful features to ensure seamless network discovery, diagramming and documentation. IT Glue’s Network Glue solution has robust features that can document your entire network. IT Glue also has out-of-the-box documentation templates that can automate your network documentation process.

IT Glue’s SOC 2-compliant documentation platform features an immutable audit trail, multifactor authentication and next-generation password management engine, all fully integrated and linked with all your network documentation.

To know more about how IT Glue can help with network diagramming,

Request A Demo

The post Network Documentation: How to Get Complete Visibility Into Your Networks appeared first on IT Glue.

To address these concerns, the IT Glue Partner Success team has published a series of ‘How To’ articles, including one on documenting firewalls.

By following this advice, there should be no more confusion on where to start and what to document. Moreover, the documentation will remain standardized across different firewalls and clients, leading to consistency and saving your team a ton of time.

The best part is that your technicians will be able to locate critical firewall information in minutes and troubleshoot faster. Your clients will certainly appreciate that since no one wants their firewalls down at any time.

Sounds impressive? Well, standardized documentation is only the half of it. IT Glue even comes with automated documentation, making firewall documentation even less overwhelming. All you have to do is build a script with our open API to bring firewall information into IT Glue and keep it up to date. To top it all off, IT Glue allows you to relate different assets together, making it easier to capture devices, such as switches, modems or routers, that are connected to a firewall.

To learn more about how to document firewalls with IT Glue, check out this blog post.

If you’d like to learn more about how IT Glue can help you on your documentation journey, sign up for a demo now.

Yes, I’d like a demo!

The post Firewall Documentation in IT Glue appeared first on IT Glue.

We’ve already established that Network Glue automatically documents and diagrams client networks, but things change, and we know that. That’s why by default Network Glue automatically synchronizes network information into IT Glue each day. Further to this, if you need up-to-the-minute updates, manual synchronization is also possible. You can be sure that the network documentation you’re seeing on the screen is accurate to what’s at a client’s site.

This is one of the most valuable features of Network Glue because it allows your on and off-site technicians to work with the same perfect synchronicity that Network Glue allows your documentation to have with on-site hardware. If someone onsite makes a change to a client’s network, your service desk employees can automatically see this change in the documentation and graphically in the diagram.

You save time since you don’t have to spend hours manually creating and updating documentation and diagrams, and also since network documentation updates have been eliminated from your to-do list for good.

Sign up for a free trial of Network Glue now!

Network Glue gives you automated discovery, documentation and diagramming of all network devices, regardless of vendor. Document all clients for one low, flat fee.

The post Network Glue Use Cases #4: Ongoing Updates appeared first on IT Glue.

Hot on the heels of the exciting release of Network Glue (our new automatic network documentation tool), we announced that RapidFire Tools had built an integration between their popular Network Detective Reporter appliance and IT Glue. With this integration, Network Glue and Network Detective bridge the gap between documentation and diagnostics. Both of these releases complement each other to grant you an unbeatable level of network visibility. So how do they differ and why do they work so well together? We’re going to break it down for you.

Network Glue
Network Glue automatically detects and maps out all devices on a client’s networks, including (but not limited to) printers, routers, and switches. Network Glue then creates a comprehensive network diagram allowing you to easily visualize the network and troubleshoot issues with accurate, up-to-date information. With Network Glue, you can be sure that your network administrators have a complete birds-eye view of each network, without blindspots.

Network Detective
Many of you are already using Network Detective by RapidFire Tools to perform IT assessments for onboarding new clients, or as a sales tool. It provides an independent review of your clients’ network health, and may uncover issues that they are unaware of, highlighting not just security risks but the severity of those security risks. In doing so, the assessment creates potential sales opportunities for you to ensure you’re helping your clients bring their network up to par.

Network Detective Reporter Integration
We partnered with Rapid Fire Tools to create an integration that uses our API – to automate the manual documentation of applications and services – also known as Flexible assets – in IT Glue. The Network Detective Reporter integration pulls in the network assessment information into IT Glue as structured Flexible Assets. This includes things like applications, SQL servers, service configurations, and active directory. Not only that, everything is automatically related, making it easier for you to find anything. For example, a Virtual Machine Configuration is automatically related to the following Flexible Assets: AD Computer, Hyper-V Guest, License Key, Missing Windows Patch, Network Share, and Web Server.

Bringing all of it together
Network Glue specializes in the documentation of network devices, and in the production of an up-to-date network diagram.

Network Detective’s network and security assessment component specializes in providing you with a detailed overview of your clients’ network as well as security vulnerabilities.

The Network Detective & Reporter integration automates the applications and services documentation in IT Glue as Flexible Assets.

Putting all of the above together will give you have truly comprehensive visibility into your clients’ networks – all automatically updated as well.

The best way to supercharge your network documentation is to get both of these tools working for you at once. Drop us a line and we’ll let you know the best way to do that.

To sign up for Network Glue, just fill out the form on the Network Glue site and one of our reps will contact you in order to go over your options.

IT Glue is an award-winning documentation platform that allows for efficient storage and retrieval of all the documentation you need to help your MSP run better. By integrating PSA and RMM data, we can help increase your efficiency, and reduce onboarding times by even more. By eliminating wasted time from your business, IT Glue gives you more time to focus on what matters – growing your business.

The post Supercharge Your Network Documentation: Using Network Glue and Network Detective Together appeared first on IT Glue.

How it works

With the API link between Reporter and IT Glue set up, the scan data available from Reporter will now sync into IT Glue. The information gathered supplements information synced from your PSA and RMM tools.

This data will be synced into IT Glue as structured documentation, with flexible assets created automatically. Where there are pre-existing configurations in IT Glue, this integration will enrich those assets with a greater level of information detail. What’s more, relationships will be mapped automatically.

For example, an Active Directory Computer will be associated with an IT Glue Configuration and to a Domain. A Hyper-V Server will be associated with an IT Glue Configuration (Server), and have Hyper-V Guest as a related item.

Why is this awesome?

Based on the information discovered, Flexible Asset types are automatically created in IT Glue and the information is populated within structured fields. This not only automates much of what is usually a manual task, but it also saves you time to build out the structure so you can leverage the information right away across all your clients. This standardization means no matter which technician is servicing your clients, they will be able to find the information the same way every single time.

When IT Glue is combined with Network Detective Reporter, it automatically builds out relationships where you would expect them to be, something that enhances the workflows of your technicians. Relationship mapping is really the glue in IT Glue, providing your documentation with the context and structure that it needs to be at its most valuable. Cutting back on manual documentation and relationship mapping is potentially quite powerful, especially during large onboarding projects.

RapidFire’s VP of Software Development Win Pham explains the value Network Detective users will gain from the integration. “The Network Detective Reporter integration with IT Glue fills a frequently-requested need to keep IT Glue asset data up to date without the need to deploy RMM agents. This empowers both MSPs and SMBs to maintain accurate inventories in situations where deploying agents may not always be desirable, such as helpdesk-only customers or where a managed services contract is not in place. The combination of Network Detective’s best-in-class discovery and asset configuration data collection, and IT Glue’s robust flexible asset documentation system is a natural fit, enabling true workflow integration for technicians.”

The engineering team at IT Glue worked with the team at RapidFire to help them build the best possible integration. “RapidFire Tools’ use of the IT Glue API is a perfect example of deep automation and visibility that complements the data collected by Network Glue. With Reporter’s ability to automatically create Flexible Assets for a wide range of applications and services information, it’s never been more powerful or convenient to leverage our tools together,” notes IT Glue’s VP, Product Luis Giraldo.

Technical Details

The integration requires the IT Glue API, so will only be available to those with the Enterprise plan, and API access enabled. As an API integration, Reporter does not count as a data source. You will also need Network Detective and the Reporter Appliance, which is an add-on to Network Detective.

The integration is easy to set up. Once you have the organization created in IT Glue, the integration does the rest, including creating new flexible assets in order to make sure as much valuable documentation is created as possible.

If you have Network Detective, the Reporter Appliance, and IT Glue, you can get started right away. Just follow the steps here.

If you are already an IT Glue partner and want to learn more about Network Detective, here’s a good place to start.

If you have Network Detective and want to learn more about IT Glue, why not take a look at our demo, where we walk you through our documentation solution.

Yes, sign me up for a demo!

Founded in 2013, IT Glue is the world leader in MSP documentation. Our integrations with leading PSA and RMM platforms, along with other communications tools, allows information to flow seamlessly throughout your organization, reducing the friction that creates wasted time for your techs. By eliminating this waste, IT Glue helps you improve your bottom line.

The post RapidFire Integrates Network Detective Reporter Appliance with IT Glue appeared first on IT Glue.

IT Glue “How To”

In our ever-increasingly connected world, and the continual shift to the cloud, you see the impact that internet outages have on your clients’ businesses. One of the key uses of this asset is to be able to test connectivity instantly and contact the Internet service provider quickly when that dreaded moment occurs.

As a technical account manager for a client, I was always impressed to hear something like this:

“Site went down in the last 10 minutes, we’re able to ping the ISP gateway, we’ve talked someone through restarting the modem and firewall on site, and a call is in with the provider”.

If the CEO from that client then calls me directly, I have a perfect response.

In order to get to that status so quickly, all it takes is an asset with relevant, current WAN information. While it doesn’t take long to build, it will be invaluable for your entire team and prevent them from asking rather embarrassing questions should disaster strike.

You will need one record per physical location (site). Here are some good examples of the information to record:

The included template in IT Glue makes good use of drop-down menus, tag fields, and headers to present the information clearly and simply. You can easily link through to assets such as vendor contact info, location address, and the firewall device details. This design also keeps information standard from one client to the next.

Tip: obtain a scan of the latest invoice from the Internet provider and attach it directly to this WAN asset to assist with clear communication to the provider’s tech team.

When it comes to related items for this asset, there may not be many, as the inline tags link well to the information you need. One item we do recommend including is a link to the LAN asset(s) that the related firewall connects to. In the LAN asset, you can find important photos of the server room. This enables you to walk someone on-site to the modem and firewall location, and ensure devices are checked for status lights, cabling, and restarted in the right order. The LAN asset also gives you a summary of all the affected devices and linked applications that are affected by any Internet outage or performance degradation.

To see how this is done, we have put together an IT Glue Express instructional video, which can be accessed here.

The post How To: Document Internet and WAN appeared first on IT Glue.

Start managing LAN Flexible Assets in IT Glue and create relationships for your IT infrastructure with Lucidchart to help your team 

Watch #GlueCrew member UI/UX Lead designer Guramrit Singh introduce you to this great IT Glue feature in the newest episode of our IT Glue Express:

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