The initial setup was lengthy because we had 130,000 network devices and one of the first things is that you need to reconfigure each of the devices. We had to set the security such that NetBrain was able to poll each one and gather the information that it needed.

Corporate security was another department but in order to get a complete view of the network, we had to allow NetBrain to poll the firewall. The security team had a major issue with allowing us to configure the devices so that they could communicate with NetBrain.

Essentially, you can't get complete end to end monitoring unless you've got agreement from all of the organizations that manage network components.

We had the company implement for us, it's part of their professional services. I don't remember if we paid for it or if it was just a part of the package. The polling engine and then the rendering engine, they use a couple of different servers in the back end and it's all Linux-based, and I'm not as strong on Linux or Windows. I'm a network guy. 

A lot of firewall manipulation, but nothing different than any other tool requiring SSH access.

It's easy to set up. It's plug-and-play. The process is not complex or difficult. 

As far as the initial setup, there really isn't any for the Consulting Edition. It is just an EXE that you have a license for and you run it on a network to do the mapping. The server edition is a little more complex and we actually used NetBrain system engineers to help us with the installation. I can't really speak to doing the installation on my own.

The initial setup was a little but complex.