How to persuade a customer: Netsight ADV vs Cacti

[Ilya_Semenov]

Hello, everybody!

I have a customer (University), who has bought about 30+ summit X430-440 switches and their core is X670. They also have about 50+ 2960, Netgears, Dlinks.

At the moment I have a big IdentiFi wifi project with them (about 400 APs).

On next Tueday I'am going to persuade the customer to add Netsight ADV to Wi-Fi project.

The problem is they use Cacti NMS. To be honest, Cacti is a very good tool, it's very similar to Netsight. It could show actual real-time links usage between switches, while Netsight couldn't. The customer is very good with Cacti, they use this NMS for 10 year. And it is totally free...

So, taking into the consideration things being said above, could you please share your ideas how to persuade the Customer to buy Netsight ADV?

Actually, you know what Netsight is: nothing works (sorry!). The data from devices is coming very slow. Most of the counters are very unobvious. And ADV-version is wildly expensive.

What I am thinking about? There are several Netsight features that I can outline:

1) In ADV I can deploy APs on a floorplans to see Coverage. The only thing I saw was "Data rate" after I ticked "Use default values if a Radios is off" in "Access Points". Sad...
2) Compass feature... I''ve tried to use it in different environments, but always get as reply a long list of unsorted devices or "Could not locate matching device data for the supplied search string." It seems to to me that to make Compass work all the switches should be Summits. This exists in NMS-BASE.
3) Summit mass firmware update and scheduled configuration backup - it works, but this also exists in NMS-BASE.
4) Confs compare feature - good, but it could be used very rare, in fact. And this is also exists in NMS-BASE.
5) Mass CLI commands in Console - good, but...

Well, could you point some useful features of NMS-ADV that I've forgotten?

Actually, I am going to offer them just NMS-ADV-25 in the beginning - it would be enough to cover almost all APs in Main building.

Many thanks in advance,

Ilya

[Ilya_Semenov]

Hello, Joshua!

I know that Netsight is the platform for NAC and Purview. But my client is STATE University, not a commercial organization. They don't care how much mbytes were spent on Skype and how much on Facebook - what actually Purview counts. They have Fortigate 600D with all subscriptions which gives this information.

After EN bought Wing wifi NAC seems a bit useless, because Wing has already all these portals and authentication features.

I try to demostrate NMS-ADV features related to Wi-Fi, maps first of all, but it looks ugly and very strange. The only thing I can see in Wireless coverage is Data rate coverage. Not much for software which costs $18K for 10 devices...(

You've written about Ekahau. Could you please explain me at a simple level what an integration could be between Identifi and Ekahau?

Thanks!

[Jeremy_Gibbs]

I agree, Netsight doesn't have the "dive in" granularity you "can" get with Cacti. I would say, Cacti is not a NMS, it's more of a trending system.

Netsight is great because you can setup SNMP traps that send emails when something happens, such as a failed PSU in a switch. You can also alert on any limits that are hit.

I would say Netsight is a great NMS, and pairs well with tools like Observium etc...

Also, netsight can be a log repository (and alerting on logs), update server, config management server.. you can also tie in some basic netflow!

[Ilya_Semenov]

Hello, Jeremy!

What did you mean talking "Netsight is a great NMS, and pairs well with tools like Observium"?

What are benefits pairing with it?

Could you explain, please?

Thanks