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Enterprise Network Management Systems?

Posted by Cliff on from the prime-time-applications dept.

Luke A. Kanies asks: "Does anyone have any experience with any enterprise-level NMSs? I need to implement one at a relatively large DSL provider in the next couple of months, and I can only find marketing materials so far. Has anyone used netcool, COMMAND/POST, or OpenMaster? Netcool looks like the best, but I would like some real-world stories before I try to roll one of these out. "

4 comments

  1. Command post by malice95 · · Score: 1

    I have delt with command post in the past.. IMHO
    it works good for monitoring unix systems if you
    write enough custom scripts but beyond that it sucks.

    Malice95

  2. Netcool by Geotrash · · Score: 1

    My company (not really mine, I work there) does Netcool consulting and integrations with other products. Netcool is indeed very robust with a well established clientele. Also check out Peregrine Systems' latest offerings at www.peregrine.com. Their Infratools discovery and InfraCenter asset management solutions offer incredible value and functionality out of the box. I have seen their discovery tools in operation, and they are perhaps the best on the market. A very big plus is that Peregrine has just announced support for Linux across their entire product lineup.

  3. BMC PATROL for Linux... by Root+Moose · · Score: 1


    ...is emminent...at least that's what we've been told.

    Not sure if it will be the next "point" release or 4.0

    http://www.bmc.com

    --
    r@m
  4. Build your own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    From what I've seen over the past 5 years working for an ISP, building your own is about the only solution. You take existing small components and build a large, useful solution out of them. I just did a grep of my ISP's management system, and there are more than 400 system() calls used to execute external programs. A couple of external programs are used to make pretty graphs. Matlab is used for some statistical junk. We auto-generate config files for MRTG to use to graph bandwidth use. We link to SWAT to control Samba servers. We create IC Verify files for our credit card processor to use based upon bandwidth use. We use command line programs (like lynx or wget) to check availability and performance of web sites. We use libgd (with PHP, but you can do it in C) to draw colored lines over a world map to denote packet loss and utilization. We use analog to process Apache log files. We use calamari to process squid log files. There are so many good OpenSource tools out there, that I think you will be doing yourself a disfavor if you chose to not use them. How can a single management system compete with a collection of the best software used on the Internet? So goes the quote, "stand on the shoulders of giants, not in their footprints."

    I've looked at a lot of solutions. I believe any that use a custom client rather than a web page are unacceptable. Often when traveling, I've saved a lot of time by being able to use *any* machine that has a web browser and an Internet connection to do work. In addition, I've had a terrible time trying to get COMMAND/POST's Windows client to work, because it uses ActiveX