N-central provides everything required to deliver a range of IT services remotely to small and mid-sized businesses or across corporate networks and report on those services with unprecedented detail.
N-central provides a feature-rich, end-to-end platform that gives IT service providers the power to:
- Manage multiple networks and sites from a single interface
- Monitor every desktop, server and network device
- Remote control access to any device anytime, anywhere
- Monitor and manage hard ware and software in virtual environments
- Automated Warranty Expiry Monitoring
- Protect all Windows devices with enterprise-class endpoint security
- Automation of routine tasks with self-healing functionality
- Mobile access to N-central console from IOS4 or Android devices
- Integrate into existing escalation workflow process.
Plus, safeguard business critical data with optional remote backup and recovery.
Reduce your costs and risk with the industry-proven services, sales and marketing support that come free with N-central.
Cross Customer Management
N-central delivers "Service Organization" level management of customer sites. This means that you are able to define dashboards to see critical information across all of your customers or departments at a glance, view all of your customers' devices with a single click, create filters to show you only what you want or need to know, and to execute tasks across your base of managed devices.
Desktop & Server Monitoring
Monitoring is critical to the delivery of effective IT management services that keep your customers' IT infrastructure up and running. An effective infrastructure and systems monitoring program allows you to detect and respond to critical availability and security issues before they become critical. It also empowers you to become more proactive and make better infrastructure planning decisions based on historical trending and detailed usage analysis. Reliable monitoring is the only cost-effective method to gain critical insight into network and systems operations as a way to provide value-focused managed services.
VMware Monitoring
N-central is the only RMM automation platform to have achieved "VMware Ready" certification – a rigorous series of tests done by VMware that ensures the highest level of compatibility between N-central and VMware’s products. N-central can now monitor the key hardware components of ESX and ESXi servers, such as power supplies, fans and RAID-related hardware, as well as in-depth profiling of the performance of an ESX/ESXi server’s disk sub-system. These features give N-central administrators the opportunity to quickly identify and address both hardware and performance issues before they affect those users hosted on a company's virtual infrastructure.
Network Monitoring
N-central supports monitoring of a broad range of services on virtually any network device. N-central ships with pre-defined monitoring settings for more than 160 services based on industry best practices.
IT Security
N-central can play an important role in helping to keep IT infrastructures secure and running smoothly while improving compliance and transparency.
Alerts
One of the keys to ensuring scalability in a services business is to manage customer issues by exception. At a high level, this means keeping staff working proactively to raise service levels, repair issues before they lead to downtime and do proactive project work to minimize the number of customer issues that arise.
Device Management
N-central is the most powerful, cost-effective and flexible remote network, security, desktop, server and environment management solution available. No other solution combines best-of-class monitoring capabilities with industry-leading management capabilities.
A comprehensive set of remote management tools are included in N-central and provides the core functionality that all IT service providers require to manage customers effectively and deliver over 90% of services remotely.
Asset and License Management
One of the biggest challenges IT service providers face is tracking and managing their customers' IT assets. N-central gives you control over your customers' IT infrastructure using automatic asset discovery, comprehensive reporting, application control and license management.
Effective asset management provides improved corporate transparency and governance, reduces the cost of support, increases network security and improves budget and upgrade planning. Using N-central's asset management features, you can dramatically improve your ability to manage the assets for which you are responsible.
Automated Warranty Expiry Monitoring
N-central can automatically gather the warranty expiry date of your customer's HP, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, Apple and Gateway devices. N-central will automatically alert you in advance of any pending warranty expiries. Generating a warranty expiry report makes it easy to track the devices whose warranties have expired, and the devices whose warranties will be expiring in the near future.
Attended/Unattended Remote Control
N-central delivers integrated remote control tools that allow busy IT technicians to securely connect to a wide range of remote devices in seconds, from anywhere in the world. Our innovative technology allows connections to devices on other networks, located anywhere on the Internet, without compromising security, and requiring only an Internet connection, not a public IP. Technicians can use it to take control of virtually any device and start troubleshooting and fixing issues almost instantaneously – all done securely through a single Web-based management console.
Unlimited Attended Remote Assistance
N-central gives you an integrated tool for remote control of devices that are not under management. Using this functionality, you can remotely access any Windows-based device simply by having a user connect to the N-central login page and complete a brief online form to request help. There is no preinstalled software required; all connections are made on the fly. This powerful feature includes point-to-point file transfer, remote chat and the ability to share the screen with the user, making it ideal for training as well as support.
For situations where you require advanced attended remote control features including support of MAC, Linux and mobile devices, as well as advanced administration and branding features, N-able offers a service desk remote control and support tool.
Patch Monitoring, Management & Reporting
N-central includes a patch management service that simplifies the complex and costly process of managing and distributing patches on Windows devices. With this solution, you get the best of both worlds – a centralized, Web-based patch monitoring, distribution and reporting system with the ability to manage patches across multiple customers.
Automatic Script Execution / Software Distribution
A key way to drive organizational scalability and productivity is by creating efficiency. One way to do this is through automation of routine IT service activities, leading to a dramatic reduction in manual tasks and time-consuming visits to customer sites. N-central provides a number of powerful features to empower IT service providers to automate many service-related activities in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Self Healing
N-central takes services automation to a new level with a self-healing capability that can automatically resolve issues on remote devices, so that technicians don't have to. This means that your service business can be more proactive and efficient.
Tactical and Operational Reporting
N-central's built-in tactical reporting tool allows you to ease troubleshooting by gaining insight into customers' IT infrastructure. Tactical operations are supported through utilization, detailed status, capacity and event reporting. N-central's reporting tool simplifies the process of troubleshooting by providing "on-demand" reports.
Third-Party Interoperability
N-central is designed to be highly interoperable with leading third-party tools and technology, allowing you to leverage their functionality and N-central's inherent multi-customer management capabilities to drive efficiency, optimize workflows and provide centralized reporting.
Architecture
The N-central Architecture is designed to provide simple and scalable remote management of many different networks, each owned by different customers, and each located in a different place. N-central's architecture has been refined over several generations to offer secure, scalable and effective management of your client infrastructures at the lowest possible costs (overhead) to you.
High Availability Deployment
N-central features an optional High Availability mode that protects against hardware failure by supporting the use of two systems in a Hot/Warm standby mode. This configuration requires a second, identical server at the same location that would be configured as the standby server. All data transmitted to and from the primary server are replicated to the standby server in real-time. In the event of a hardware failure, the standby server would take over automatically and become the primary server with minimal downtime.
N-central is the first and only remote monitoring and management platform with a hybrid licensing model that addresses the key challenges of providing 100% IT coverage across all devices by delivering a subset of device information.
Audit Manager provides an efficient scanning and reporting solution that will help you provide and assessment and guidance over vulnerability, configuration and compliance management.
Fully integrated in to N-central, Endpoint Security Manager provides maximum protection for Windows machines against today's and tomorrow's threats to IT assets. Based on a combination of the most advanced proactive technologies for endpoints and periodical in-depth audits, it offers comprehensive enterprise-class security for all Windows devices.
Netflow Manager provides you with the ability to deliver critical business services by managing enterprise-wide application and network performance.
Based on CA Technologies (CA ARCserve® D2D), Backup Manager is a disk-based backup solution that makes protecting and recovering critical business data on both physical and virtual servers, quick and cost effective.
N-compass is the premier solution used by managed service providers and other IT service companies to report on the performance of IT infrastructure under their management and communicate network and systems information to a wide range of report consumers. Use it to manage networks more cost-effectively and help customers make better, more informed IT investment decisions.
The N-central remote monitoring and management platform gives IT service providers a comprehensive toolset to deliver the best remotely services.With its flexible, a la carte service offering, N-central creates an unprecedented opportunity for IT Service Providers to increase the number of IP devices under management. Key advantages include:
Industry-first hybrid licensing model
N-central offers the industry's ONLY hybrid licensing model, with Essential and Professional licenses to give IT service providers maximum flexibility in delivering IT services and start demonstrating the value of a comprehensive RMM solution by acquiring critical assest information from all devices.
Own the data and own the customer
Essential licenses enable N-able MSP Partners to roll out managed services to new customers and begin gathering critical network and systems information. They can also start to demonstrate the value of RMM services by pro-actively identifying and remediating problems.
Self-healing automation
N-central can automatically run scripts to resolves issues on remote devices. It can retry multiple times before escalating an issue so that technicians can focus on real problems.
Managed endpoint security
Monitor more devices, more services and more operating systems, from more vendors, with greater scalability than any other available solution.
Breadth and scalability
Produce reports that demonstrate the unique value of your services.
Monitoring with agents and probes
N-central's flexibility allows you to provide monitoring using local agents, or network based probes providing unparalleled flexibility for mobile devices like laptops and network devices like servers, desktops, laptops, virtual machines, switches, routers, recalls, gateways, VoIP platforms and phones, printers, copiers etc.
VMware Monitoring
N-central can monitor the key hardware components of ESX and ESXi servers, such as power supplies, fans and RAID-related hardware, as well as in-depth profiling of the performance of an ESX/ESXi server’s disk sub-system. Giving N-central administrators the opportunity to quickly identify and address both hardware and performance issues before they affect those users hosted on a company’s virtual infrastructure.
Automated Warranty Expiry Monitoring
N-central automatically gathers the warranty expiry date from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, Apple and Gateway devices and will automatically alert you in advance of any pending warranty expiries.
Automated Deployment
N-central's industry-leading automated configuration process eliminates manual steps and allows you to deploy monitoring to customers in minutes. Learn more about automated deployment.
Ease of use
Clean, intuitive interface makes it quick to grasp and use, minimizing training.
End-to-end device lifecycle management
The N-central product family delivers a complete, integrated solution that aligns to the IT process lifecycle in order to:
- Assess networks for potential vulnerabilities and compliance issues.
- Onboard new devices through automated discovery and classification.
- Monitor every desktop, server and network device.
- Manage any device any time anywhere.
- Protect against spam, viruses or malware.
- Optimize the network to achieve maximum operational efficiency.
- Backup systems and data to ensure business continuity.
- Report on all network, system and device usage.
No end-user interruption
Using N-central's unattended remote control tool, all interactions with a remote machine can occur in the background without the user being interrupted from their work.
Powerful reporting
Support daily operations, troubleshooting and capacity planning with a single reporting solution.
Business process transformation support
N-central is supported by industry leading business transformation services that give IT service providers the fastest and easiest on boarding process and the ability to quickly generate new billable services.
N-central® 8.1 On-Premise Software and N-compass™ 3.1 Advanced Reporting Software
The following describes the server requirements for N-central 8.1 and its optional advanced reporting tool, N-compass™ 3.1. N-able Technologies® provides two tiers of hardware support for N-central – certified systems and compatible systems. The certified systems have been tested by N-able Technologies to ensure software compatibility as well as software performance. The compatible systems are supported for software installation and operation but have not been tested for performance and scalability..
N-central On-Premise Software
| Server Specifications | Up to 1,000 Devices | Up to 3,500 Devices | Up to 7,000 Devices | Up to 10,500 Devices |
| HP ML-150G6 E5502* | one Xeon 5502 processor 4 GB RAM 160 GB HDD | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| HP DL-360 G7 (605881-005) | one Xeon processor 4 GB RAM 60 GB HDD** | one Xeon processor 8 GB RAM 146 GB HDD** | one Xeon processor 16 GB RAM 300+ GB HDD** | one Xeon processor 24 GB RAM 1 TB HDD** |
Dell R710
PERC H700 Integrated RAID Controller, 512MB NV Cache
CD-ROM or DVD Drive | one Xeon processor 4 GB RAM 60 GB HDD** | one Xeon processor 8 GB RAM 146 GB HDD** | one Xeon processor 16 GB RAM 300+ GB HDD** | one Xeon processor 24 GB RAM 1 TB HDD** |
Note: US Robotics Performance Pro modem (USR5610C) is required in any system where you plan to use SMS or Pager Notifications.
N-central Compatible Hardware
Base Configuration
Processor: Intel Xeon 55xx series or better
Network Card: 100Mb/s or better
Modem: US Robotics USR5610C or a serial modem is required to use paging or SMS notification features
OS: System must be certified to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (x64) by RedHat or the hardware vendor (for more information, refer to https://hardware.redhat.com/)
| Up to 3,500 Devices | Up to 7,000 Devices | Up to 10,500 Devices |
| one Xeon processor | one Xeon processor | one Xeon processor |
| 8 GB RAM | 16 GB RAM | 24 GB RAM |
| 146 GB HDD** | 300+ GB HDD** | 500+ GB HDD** |
Footnotes
The HP ML150G6 (Part #: 466131-011) ships with a single SATA drive by default. Under this configuration, the Smart Array B110i SATA RAID controller is supported under "compatible mode" ONLY. If you require RAID support, you will need to purchase the Smart Array P410 RAID controller and applicable drives.
N-able Technologies recommends that two or more hard drives be placed in a RAID to improve redundancy. RAID 1+0 is preferred, but RAID 5 is supported.
N-able Technologies Support for Virtualization Environments
N-central and N-compass support the following virtualization environments:
- VMware ESX Server 3.5
- VMware ESX Server 4.0
- VMware ESX Server 4.1
Note: Due to the limited Disk I/O performance of Linux-based Guests in Hyper-V, N-able Technologies does not recommend or support running N-central as a Hyper-V Guest. While N-central can be successfully installed as a Hyper-V Guest, this should only be carried out for nonproduction N-central servers and only if no other virtualization environments or physical resources are available.
N-able Technologies is committed to providing support to customers running in these virtualization environments in the same manner that we support other N-central certified hardware.
Important Notes
Because virtualization, by its nature, provides an abstraction layer between the hardware and the operating system that permits the operation of multiple logical systems on one physical server unit, there are two important considerations that you must be aware of when using this deployment method.
System Performance
It is impossible to guarantee the scalability or performance of an N-central server deployed in a virtual machine, due to these factors:
- Variability in field environments resulting from virtualization server configurations
- The number of guests being run on the virtualization server
- The performance of the underlying VMware system
Supportability
N-able Technologies supports the N-central software deployed in VMware in the same way that we support N-central deployed in other environments. This support is limited to the components (software and operating system) shipped with N-central and does not include troubleshooting of virtualization systems or performance issues related to environmental factors; these areas will be supported on a best-effort basis. In certain circumstances, particularly in the event of serious issues with performance, we might ask that you move the system to a known physical hardware deployment to aid in troubleshooting and resolution.
Recommended Configuration
Virtualization Server
- We recommend that N-central be assigned higher resource access priority than competing systems to ensure performance
- Memory on the host system should not be over provisioned. This causes disk based swapping which significantly reduces N-central system performance.
- The system must have sufficient RAM and hard drive space to provide permanently allocated resources as outlined below.
N-central Guest Configuration (minimum)
- Guest Type: Typical
- Guest Operating System: Linux
- Version: RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 (64 bit)
- Number of Virtual Processors: 2 minimum
- Memory: 6,144MB (6 GB) minimum
- Network: 1 network interface card required
- Virtual Disk Capacity: 140 GB minimum