SolarWinds Debuts Flow Tool Bundle

SolarWinds on Wednesday unveiled its Flow Tool Bundle, designed to help network engineers and architects distribute, test and configure the company’s NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

The new, free offer integrates two new tools with an existing free flow tool and includes NetFlow Replicator, NetFlow Generator and NetFlow Configurator. The Flow Tool Bundle, available now, can be installed on Windows 7, 8 and 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016 and 2019.

“The development and general availability of the Flow Tool Bundle demonstrates our continued commitment to providing free tools to the technology professionals community,” said Brandon Shopp, vice president, product management and strategy at SolarWinds. “By engaging with our users in forums like the THWACK community, we are able to build products designed to address the needs of today’s tech pros, providing them with the tools to succeed in dynamic and distributed environments.”

• NetFlow Replicator helps to distribute flow data to multiple destinations for traffic or security analysis and configure random sampling of flow data packets to help reduce the load on the monitored system and collector.
• NetFlow Generator simulates network flow in order to test and validate configurations. This functionality is especially helpful when testing the behavior of more complex network entities, such as load balancers, firewall rules and alert trigger conditions.
• NetFlow Configurator remotely configures and activates NetFlow v5 on supported Cisco devices. With this tool, users can easily set up the router to send NetFlow records to their collector, the company said.

Key features of the Flow Tool Bundle include: the ability to replicate IPv4 and IPv6 flow data to multiple destinations; generate simulated flow traffic to aid in flow tool troubleshooting; test and validate configurations; remotely and quickly configure NetFlow v5; and activate NetFlow and find bandwidth hogs.

In December, SolarWinds refreshed its Network Performance Monitor product with software-defined network (SDN) monitor enhancements that focus on support for Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI).