With a relatively recent update – GNS3’s support of virtual PC’s (and servers) via Oracle’s open-source VirtualBox tool –a whole new class of IT pro has a reason to be really excited: Monitoring engineers who want to test out new software and/or versions can now set up an entire “fake” network and then test out monitoring against that network, which could include servers, routers, switches, and more.
The challenge was that monitoring engineers often were unfamiliar with setting up networks (in GNS3 or otherwise); and GNS3 users were unfamiliar with the conventions of monitoring solutions like SolarWinds NPM.
This document is going to provide step-by-step, command-by-command, show-me-with-pictures instructions for installing GNS3, setting up a network, installing NPM, and adding the GNS3 network devices into NPM for monitoring. We are assuming (almost) nothing about what the reader knows and providing detailed instructions for all of it.