Infoblox continues its commitment to giving prospects and customers the ability to download trial versions of its products so they can try before they buy. As we’ve already done with Infoblox DNS Firewall, Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection, and Infoblox Cloud Network Automation, we’re now offering an evaluation of Infoblox NetMRI.
If you’re a network engineer or architect, or if you spend a lot of time doing network management and configuration changes, it’s worth checking out. We’ve done a lot to improve the entire NetMRI trial download customer experience, from setting up self-service licensing, improving access to content and documentation of the product, and more effectively capturing customer information to minimize duplicate contacts and cut down on your emails.
Downloading an evaluation version of NetMRI has other advantages beyond try-before-you-buy. In feedback, our customers have noted how quickly and automatically it provides rich and valuable and actionable information about your network. It’s not uncommon for customers to find things in their network during an evaluation of NetMRI that they didn’t know about and want to act on immediately.
Of course, you still need to configure NetMRI to see and talk with your network. We’ve seen accidental problems like incomplete ACL access provided to the system or incorrect network credentials (sometimes only a typo).
After you’ve set up NetMRI, go straight to the “Discovery” tab (under the Network Explorer section), shown in this product screenshot.
Here you’ll be able to see all the devices and IP addresses NetMRI has discovered. NetMRI will automatically correlate IP addresses to device management IPs. Click on the down arrow on the left side of each to see all the IPs (v4 or v6) associated with a device, or use the search box.
Review the green, red, gray, and yellow icons showing status for each phase of discovery and management. If you hover over one, you’ll see the most recent and relevant info. For example, in the first column, the mouse over will tell you where NetMRI first identified that IP address is known to the network. If it indicates a problem with a red or yellow icon, such as NetMRI being unable to authenticate to a device with SNMP despite being able to reach it, you can launch a device viewer that offers more troubleshooting information by simply clicking on the icon or the hyperlinked IP address.
It’s important to note that NetMRI is NOT a rapid IP address scanner. Discovery is designed to have minimal impact on the network and will take time. It’s intended to be methodical and deliberate. NetMRI retrieves routing tables, forwarding tables and other sources of information to discover not just the devices and topology, but also network constructs such as VLANS, VRRP pairs, VRFs, Routes, and many other network-focused insights. It’s designed for network engineers to do network discovery, not only device discovery.
If you’d like to see a recently recorded technical webinar and demo, click here, or to see a catalog of other available product downloads from Infoblox, please visit our Download Center.
For further help, log into the Infoblox Experts Community or reach out to your local Infoblox partner and account teams.