Duke Manages Campus Network Via NetMRI
To simplify management of a campus network consisting of more than 33,000 ports, Duke University (Durham, NC) has deployed Annapolis, MD-based Netcordia's NetMRI Enterprise, a network management and monitoring solution.
The system will streamline activities such as configuration consistency, inventory management, collection of dynamic network data, and first-tier diagnostics. It offers remote monitoring, fault detection and reports network issues that could become problematic.
"NetMRI has a very pragmatic approach to collecting and displaying network management data," said Kevin Miller, Duke's senior manager of network services. "The system scales to support our network, and it provides both a high-level dashboard view of network health while enabling our operations team to analyze the root cause."
Duke's NetMRI implementation automates standard network management functions that previously required Duke to devote valuable engineering time to complete, such as rapid deployment of configuration changes across hundreds of devices. A critical advantage for a campus comprising more than 13,000 students, nearly 1600 faculty and more than 29,000 staff spread over more than 8,600 acres of facility.
Also, since Duke operates a decentralized IT support model, NetMRI lets administrators perform tasks such as remotely locating machines and disabling or enabling switch ports, which can be essential in tackling security or other host problems that could negatively impact the network.
To learn more about how Duke--as well as Colgate, Texas A&M and other schools--address their real-world, higher education network management issues, Netcordia is inviting University IT professionals to join a webinar today. (See link below for registration.)
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About the Author
David Kopf is a freelance technology writer and marketing consultant, and can be reached at [email protected].