Review: SolarWinds LANSurveyor 10

Every administrator knows that having a reliable network map is essential for everything from troubleshooting to design and planning.

But what if you’ve inherited a network with no documentation?

What if you simply ran out of time to create your own network diagrams?

SolarWinds LANSurveyor 10 offers a decent solution, with the ability to automatically map your network. Not only that, but it adds in some useful reporting and management features too – including the ability to inventory and manage the workstations on your LAN.

What Does it Do?

LANSurveyor boasts an impressive array of features including:

• Scans your network and auto-generates network maps
• Can exports maps to MS Visio
• Continually scans the network for changes
• Responder clients enable advanced workstation management and reporting
• Detailed inventory reports

How Well Does it Work?

I installed LANSurveyor in the lab and scanned my test network.  The scanner has options such as which subnets to scan, and whether to use SNMP.  For best results you can enter the SNMP strings for your network devices, enabling LANSurveyor to gather information about other connected networks and next hop routers.

Mapping

In less than five minutes LANSurveyor scanned my test network, and drew a map showing all the switches and routers in the Lab.  Some minor manipulation is required to tidy up the map and move devices around, but in general the map is readable and this step may not be required.  The left toolbar shows a list of discovered networks and devices. Color coding is used to identify link speeds – so low speed serial links show as red, while 100Mb links are green.

LANSurveyor includes the ability to zoom to different levels of your network maps on the fly. Maps can include extreme detail for every workstation, or only Layer 3 devices like routers and their connected networks.  The screenshot below shows the same network as above, minus the Layer 2 switch connections.  This is great for documenting the logical layout of larger networks. Maps export to MS Visio with just a couple of clicks.

Responder Clients

The Responder Client is a cool option that gives you the ability to manage Windows, Mac, and Linux workstations on your LAN.  It enables workstation management such as remote reboots, and application launching.  It also provides detailed software and hardware inventory reporting.  Inventories can be stored in SQL databases or in the built in SQL Express engine.

Reporting

Have you ever had to deal with a virus or worm on the network? If so you might have tried to find a problem machine by looking up the MAC address and identifying which switch port it’s plugged into.  The switch report is a big help here, instantly generating a list of ports with MAC and IP addresses – and allowing port shutdown right from LANSurveyor’s map window.

Continual Scan

Continual scan can be enabled to act almost like a NAC (Network Access Control) device. It will continually scan the network for changes like new workstations. Yet, it’s intelligent enough to know when a machine has simply moved from one switch to another.  Alerts can be configured to notify the administrator when new “threats” appear on the network, or it can be programmed to take appropriate action such as shutting down ports.

Drawbacks

LANSurveyor performs admirably, but I have a couple of gripes.  Most maps will require some minor tweaks to position objects where you want them. Unfortunately, re-scanning the network also re-draws the map and removes your customizations. It would be nice if the software was smart enough to keep your changes when adding devices.

I also discovered that some interfaces were not correctly identified by LANSurveyor.  For some reason one of the ports on my Cisco 3560 was continually identified as port 26 – odd since this is only a 24 port switch.  This may have something to do with the way Cisco handles the SNMP MIB that LANSurveyor queries, but it can be annoying.  I also found the router/switch hardware reports a little lacking – the reports didn’t include things like IOS versions or hardware platform.

Continual scan can be very slow on large networks. A device could connect to your network, and disconnect before you even know it’s there.

Finally, LANSurveyor does not yet officially support Windows 7 – however that’s sure to be right around the corner.

Conclusions and Pricing

LANSurveyor includes features that compare with much more expensive packages such as
Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (formerly SMS), but for a fraction of the price. SolarWinds offers several different flavors of the software:

• The “Express” version of LANSurveyor is well priced at $499(USD) and supports basic mapping and exports to Visio.
• The full version can be purchased for  $1995(USD). It adds additional features like reporting, continual scanning, and support for Active Directory and Responder Clients.
• Responder Client licenses are only required if you plan to do workstation management: software reporting, hardware inventory, remote application launch, reboots, etc. Licenses are $625(USD) for 25 clients.
• Large enterprises may want to consider the Enterprise Bundle which includes three LANSurveyor licenses and 1000 responder clients for $16995(USD).

To sum it up, SolarWinds LANSurveyor is a tool that can do multiple jobs. It is part mapper, part inventory system, part NAC, with a bit of systems management thrown in for good measure.  It’s well worth the free trial download if for no other reason than to see what really is plugged in to your network.