What is the purpose of Cisco network device monitoring? What are the benefits?

The primary purpose of Cisco network device monitoring is to ensure the optimal performance of your network, enable troubleshooting, and facilitate informed capacity planning. Cisco network device monitoring can help you achieve the following: Monitor your VPN tunnels to certify connectivity between sites Ensure services dependent on your Cisco ASA firewalls are available Gain insight into the health of your individual SwitchStack members Monitor the connections between SwitchStack members Locate switches with issues quickly Monitor the performance and health of Nexus devices View your configured virtual Port Channels (vPCs) Poll the statistics of ACI hardware components, such as spine switches and Nexus leaf Cisco network device monitoring can provide you with a comprehensive view of your network’s health and performance. With the right Cisco network devices management tools, you can significantly improve and streamline your network performance monitoring processes.

How does NPM monitor Cisco ACI devices?

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor provides coverage of your Cisco OIDs, enabling you to poll numerous statistics for ACI hardware components. This includes spine switches and Nexus leaf. With NPM’s Cisco ACI device monitoring capabilities, you can set up API polling for your API devices. You’ll be able to monitor key components in the SDN environment, such as application profiles, tenants, leaf and spine switches, and endpoint groups. NPM also enables you to view the health scores for your ACI members, the SDN infrastructure via Orion Maps, the health status and score of your ACI entity, as well as historical data through the SolarWinds PerfStack analysis dashboard. Setting up Cisco ACI device monitoring with NPM is simple. Add an APIC node for monitoring or enable the ACI monitoring feature on an APIC node currently being monitored in NPM.

How does NPM monitor Cisco Nexus devices?

With NPM’s Network Insight for Cisco Nexus features, you can monitor the performance and health of all your Nexus devices. NPM also enables you to view configured vPCs, peer vPCs, and Switch Virtual Interfaces (SVIs). To simplify Nexus device monitoring, a Node Details view is available in NPM. This view includes a subview for Interfaces and Nexus-relevant vPCs. NPM polls data for Cisco Nexus switch monitoring through a combination of CLI polling and SNMP polling. To access accurate information specific to Nexus devices, add the Nexus device as a node to NPM and provide the necessary CLI credentials. NPM uses CLI polling alongside SNMP polling to provide additional details on vPCs, peer vPCs, keep-alive links, and related interfaces.

How does NPM monitor Cisco SwitchStack devices?

SolarWinds NPM’s Cisco SwitchStack device monitoring capabilities allow you to view the overall health of any individual SwitchStack member. You can also use the tool to monitor data and power connections between SwitchStack members and rapidly locate any switches with issues. NPM includes out-of-the-box alerts and events to notify you immediately if members or connections between members go down. When you are notified of a problem, you can access a SwitchStack subview via the node details page. This subview consolidates important SwitchStack information, giving you access to individual member monitoring functionality, as well as topology maps displaying how power ports and data ports connect. NPM makes it easy to identify which switches are experiencing issues by allowing you to locate them by their serial number. You can then replace the switch or opt for an alternative method of resolution.

How does NPM monitor Cisco ASA firewalls?

NPM’s Cisco ASA firewall monitoring features automate the management and monitoring of your ASA infrastructure, providing enhanced visibility and helping safeguard your service availability. NPM monitors your Cisco ASA firewalls by monitoring your VPN tunnels to ensure connections between sites are maintained. This includes the monitoring of bandwidth usage and tunnel status. You can also use NPM to monitor your firewall health by detecting failovers and tracking high availability status. NPM offers out-of-the-box alerts for flagging failover on any ASA nodes, High Availability going down, and connections exceeding the ASA node threshold. Out-of-the-box reports are also available with NPM, allowing you to report on VPN site-to-site tunnel history and remote access tunnel history.

Simplify Cisco Network Monitoring and Troubleshooting

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Monitor Cisco Devices From Discovery to Alerts

Discover Cisco Devices

Map Cisco Devices

Visualize Network Performance

Monitor Multiple Cisco Device Types

Receive Performance Alerts

Automatically Discover Cisco Network Devices

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) simplifies Cisco network monitoring with automated network discovery using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Use the Network Sonar Wizard to scan IP addresses, IP ranges, or subnets and identify supported Cisco devices for monitoring. Review discovered devices and select the nodes and interfaces you want to monitor. NPM also supports devices from multiple vendors, helping you monitor supported network equipment alongside your Cisco infrastructure from a centralized console.

SNMP v1, SNMP v2, SNMP v3 and API-based automated discovery
Add Cisco nodes, interfaces, and volumes in minutes
Multi-vendor support beyond Cisco devices

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Map Cisco Devices and Network Connections

Manually mapping network devices is time-consuming, especially when network topology changes frequently. NPM's Cisco network device monitoring features let you create dynamic custom topology maps that display device performance metrics, connectivity, and link utilization. Intelligent Maps auto-generate visual relationships between routers, switches, interfaces, and groups, updating automatically as your network changes. Visualize your entire network at a glance and rapidly identify root causes, even in complex environments.

Intelligent Maps auto-generate device relationships
Track link utilization and connectivity at a glance
Export and share topology maps across teams

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Visualize Cisco Network Performance at a Glance

NPM makes Cisco network device monitoring easy with fully customizable dashboards and charts that display the performance and availability of your Cisco devices at a glance. NPM polls MIBs on your devices to obtain critical performance metrics, then presents them in dashboards you can tailor to your preferences. Cisco interface monitoring in NPM surfaces interface availability, utilization, errors, and discards to help teams spot port-level issues. Use the PerfStack dashboard to compare disparate data types, correlate metrics on a common timeline, and share insights across teams for faster troubleshooting.

Customizable dashboards for Cisco device metrics
PerfStack drag-and-drop metric correlation
Share performance data across teams

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Monitor Multiple Cisco Device Types in One Console

NPM provides comprehensive Cisco network monitoring across multiple device types from a single tool. Monitor Cisco ACI devices, including spine switches and Nexus leaf, with API polling for tenants, application profiles, and endpoint groups. Track the health of SwitchStack members, locate problem switches by serial number, and monitor Nexus device performance and Cisco ASA firewalls. View VPN tunnels, failover status, and high availability, all from one console.

Cisco ACI spine and leaf switch monitoring via API polling
Cisco Nexus monitoring for vPC, peer vPC, and SVI
Cisco SwitchStack member health and serial number tracking
Cisco ASA monitoring for firewall VPN tunnels and failovers

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Troubleshoot Faster With Topology-Aware Alerts

Cisco network monitoring alert details screen showing triggered node alerts, status history, and down ports.

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) helps reduce alert noise with topology-aware and dependency-aware intelligent alerting for Cisco devices and other supported network equipment. Use customizable dashboards and topology maps to review device performance, network connectivity, and available configuration details. Configure alert conditions and notification schedules to help limit non-critical notifications during off-hours. Combine dependency-aware alerting with NetPath hop-by-hop analysis to investigate latency, packet loss, and connectivity issues across on-premises paths and cloud services, narrow down potential root causes, and accelerate troubleshooting.

Topology-aware, dependency-based intelligent alerting
NetPath hop-by-hop path analysis for on-prem and cloud
Custom alert schedules to suppress non-critical notifications

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Get More From Cisco Device Monitoring

Learn how NPM monitors Cisco devices, performance, health, and connectivity.

Cisco network monitoring benefits

Cisco network monitoring is the practice of tracking the availability, health, and performance of Cisco network devices—including routers, switches, firewalls, wireless controllers, and access points—so you can identify and resolve issues before they affect users. With SolarWinds NPM, you can monitor VPN tunnels to verify connectivity between sites, ensure services dependent on Cisco ASA firewalls remain available, and gain insight into the health of individual SwitchStack members.

NPM polls critical metrics such as response time, packet loss, network traffic, bandwidth utilization, CPU, memory, temperature, and fan speed. By trending these metrics over time, you can spot anomalies early, troubleshoot faster, and make informed capacity planning decisions. Cisco network monitoring provides a comprehensive view of your network's health and performance, helping you streamline performance monitoring processes across your entire Cisco infrastructure.

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Cisco network monitoring benefits
Cisco network monitoring is the practice of tracking the availability, health, and performance of Cisco network devices—including routers, switches, firewalls, wireless controllers, and access points—so you can identify and resolve issues before they affect users. With SolarWinds NPM, you can monitor VPN tunnels to verify connectivity between sites, ensure services dependent on Cisco ASA firewalls remain available, and gain insight into the health of individual SwitchStack members.
NPM polls critical metrics such as response time, packet loss, network traffic, bandwidth utilization, CPU, memory, temperature, and fan speed. By trending these metrics over time, you can spot anomalies early, troubleshoot faster, and make informed capacity planning decisions. Cisco network monitoring provides a comprehensive view of your network's health and performance, helping you streamline performance monitoring processes across your entire Cisco infrastructure.
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What Our Customers Say

With SolarWinds, out of the box, once again, I can see everything from my Cisco and Palo Alto Networks devices and Extreme Management Center (XMC) to my Edge course and KPIs... just about any switch I’ve come across has been able to report correctly on SolarWinds.

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