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Independent Evaluations of Networking Products and Tools |
Framework Express ToolsA few select H-P OpenView modules prove that you can get high-end management and monitoring without having to buy dozens of framework components. A framework-based network management system (NMS) doesn’t necessarily have to consist of scores of modules supporting a super-complex, hyper-eclectic computing and networking environment. For lots of networks, or if you’re just getting your feet wet with framework systems, the framework itself plus a few modules may be all you need. We call this framework express, or framework lite.
Getting an essential core of network management functions by selecting only those framework modules that support your key devices, servers and applications can be an effective, affordable, productive and smart approach to using a framework-based NMS.
The perfect framework express package consists of a central management and monitoring component to which you add a few modules to recognize and manage your specific devices, servers and applications. Each module blends seamlessly into the overall NMS, has a small footprint and is easy to use. The modules work together to manage devices, servers and applications, help automate many administrator tasks, process SNMP alerts (traps), discover the network and diagnose outages and performance problems. The perfect package offers useful reports, scales well, is pervasively platform-neutral and enforces good security.
To see which framework-based NMS in an express configuration best meets these criteria, we invited vendors to submit products to our Alabama lab for testing. From Hewlett-Packard, we looked at OpenView Network Node Manager 7.5, OpenView Operations 7.5 and OpenView Internet Services 6.0. From BMC Software, we evaluated Performance Manager Console 7.5.20, Distribution Server 7.1.21 and Performance Manager Portal 1.2.00. PerformanceIT sent us ProIT IT Operations Management Software 4.0.
Computer Associates, which had just acquired Aprisma at the outset of our review, said it needed to think about the positioning of Unicenter vs. Aprisma’s products and declined to participate. IBM Tivoli, after initially agreeing to participate, backtracked and said a suitable product wouldn’t be ready until June of next year.
OpenView earns our Clear Choice award for its excellent network discovery, its root cause problem analysis, its task automation, its responsive and intuitive user interface and its scalability.
Frame gallery H-P OpenView – Network Node Manager, OpenView’s core component, excels at network discovery, device status tracking, network map graphing, statistics gathering, and SNMP alert processing. Network Node Manager uses Management Information Bases (MIB) from various sources, including routers, switches, bridges and repeaters. It captures some Layer 2 data, but for the most part Network Node Manager maps Layer 3 details. H-P supplies myriads of predefined MIB expressions, which Network Node Manager applies. The impressive list includes utilization and error percentages, total packets by category (in, out and errors), retransmits, Cisco memory utilization, and full-duplex utilization percentage. Other correlators (as H-P terms them) include:
Event Classifier — uniquely classifies and consolidates all Cisco events PairWise Events — matches parent and child events Chassis Failure — monitors Cisco traps for temperature, fan failure and power supply fault Router/Switch Intermittent Status — monitors interface-down alarms in given period Router/Switch Health — correlates interface status alarms with related router or switch node status alarm Multiple Reboot — monitors coldStart and warmStart traps De-duplication — nests duplicate events under the most recent alarm Connector Down — zeroes in on the device at fault when connectivity is lost
Network Node Manager collects network health data, stores it in a relational database (provided by H-P), analyzes the stored device status and event data and reports the result in useful charts and graphs. NNM's root cause problem analysis, called Advanced Intelligent Diagnosis for Networks, is especially useful in helping zero in on a specific device that’s causing an outage or performance problem, while its path analysis capability is similarly helpful in pinpointing problems and performance degradations involving network pathways and linkages.
Network Node Manager’s quick and accurate discovery feature worked well in all our tests, no matter what mix of devices we asked it to manage. It identified and inventoried not only physical devices but also virtual network services. Network Node Manager, which accepts what H-P terms Smart Plug-ins in order to support new technologies and services, is itself a sort of framework environment.
Network Node Manager’s auto-baselining feature, like its discovery feature, makes setup and initial use a breeze. Auto-baselining automatically sets alarm thresholds by reviewing and analyzing collected device status and event data to identify deviations, exceptions and other unusual activity. Once we performed auto-baselining and added a few thresholds of our own, based on our knowledge of the applications using the network, Network Node Manager thereafter generated prompt and highly informational alarms when these thresholds were exceeded, via pager or e-mail, to alert us to the problem.
Its protocol support for packet formats consisting, for example, of HSRP, Ipv6 and VLAN material, is comprehensive, and we also found that Network Node Manager’s distributed architecture scales well to handle larger and more complex network environments. Network Node Manager even monitors itself to ensure it’s running normally. It pages an administrator and sends e-mail notices if the self-monitor finds that Network Node Manager or its server has died.
Another OpenView component that we tested, OpenView Operations, works with Network Node Manager to provide event management, performance monitoring and automated alert processing. OpenView Operations is especially useful in data centers that need to achieve 24x7x365 uptime and availability. We noted that multiple concurrently-running instances of OpenView Operations coordinated and synchronized with each other, exchanging device and network status information. Running in a clustered environment, OpenView Operations will robustly fail over to another, healthy server. H-P supplies a rather elaborate programming interface for OpenView Operations, and OpenView Operations sports a high-level VBScript-like language for customers wanting to tailor its processing.
OpenView's Internet Services is an excellent tool for tracking Web transaction-oriented Service Level Agreement (SLA) violations. For services we defined, from general Web access to particular e-commerce transactions, it noted availability and response-time details, and alerted us when SLA parameters were exceeded. These alerts took the form of pager calls, e-mail notices and SNMP traps, and we could instruct Internet Services to execute a command in response to an alert.
As is true for virtually all the OpenView modules, Network Node Manager, OpenView Operations and OpenView Internet Services run on Hewlett-Packard HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Microsoft Windows (2000, 2003, XP) and Red Hat Linux.
BMC Patrol – The BMC Performance Manager Portal is an agentless tool for monitoring Web-based transactions as well as IP-based devices and computers. Its three-tier architecture consists of application server, database server and Web server components. Performance Manager Console consists of these nine components: Central Operator Windows, Central Operator Web, Console Server, RTServer, Infrastructure Monitor, Configuration Manager, Console for Unix, Console for Windows and Migration Tools. Distribution Server is BMC’s tool for remotely installing or uninstalling Patrol components across multiple systems from a single, central console. All are part of BMC’s Business Service Management (BSM) strategy, which targets applications and their associated network infrastructures.
Together, Performance Manager Portal and Performance Manager Console identify, diagnose and report both simple and complex network problems related to specific application environments, such as Apache Web Server, Compaq Insight Manager, Dell OpenManage, BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss and SAP. In addition to monitoring specific applications, Performance Manager Portal and Performance Manager Console track operating system behavior, including performance, resource consumption and server capacity, keep an eye on Active Directory components and events, comb through Windows event logs for items that should trigger alerts based on event type, source, event ID, user or category and babysit individual processes and services to ensure they’re running and note their consumption of resources. They also process SNMP alerts (traps) to track network events and errors.
Performance Manager Portal works without agents, but it comes with agents that you can optionally use. In our tests, agents were able to provide more information, such as the identification of runaway processes inside servers, about each monitored system than the agentless environment provided.
Performance Manager Portal, Performance Manager Console and Distribution Server run on Red Hat Linux, Sun Solaris, Windows 2000 and Windows 2003.
PerformanceIT ProIT IT Operations Management Software – ProIT is more like monitoring products such as Argent Guardian and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) than OpenView, Patrol or Unicenter. The base product is the framework, to which you add Management Packs. Each Management Pack monitors a specific application or platform.
ProIT’s discovery feature is its AutoMap Dependency engine. Like Network Node Manager’s discovery feature, ProIT’s AutoMap quickly and accurately found and identified our network components, and it noted network paths and device dependencies as it searched.
ProIT consists of three primary components, Infrastructure Services Management (ISM), Application Services Management (ASM) and Business Service Management (BSM). ISM contains ProIT’s core management and monitoring processes, including AutoMap discovery, a notification engine, a monitoring engine, a knowledge base for help desk support, operational workflow support and basic reports that show performance and utilization statistics. ASM focuses on specific applications and is the main interface point for ProIT Management Packs. ASM also maps dependencies, tracks assets and prepares business availability reports. BSM, which contains dashboard displays that show business and management information integration, supplies application detail reports, service level management reports, business vs. network integration reports and consolidated system views.
Like OpenView, ProIT has a self-monitor that ensures ProIT is up and running, 24x7x365. If you subscribe to PerformanceIT’s optional external monitoring service, the vendor will remotely monitor each of your ProIT instances from the vendor’s Network Operations Center.
Each ProIT Management Pack monitors an application, operating system or device, and it’s pre-configured with thoughtfully-set out-of-the-box thresholds. We especially liked the ability to apply a Management Pack and its thresholds simultaneously and consistently to an entire group of devices or servers, without having to configure each one. ProIT has Management Packs for various operating systems, including Windows, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, Digital Unix, Red Hat Linux, SuSe Linux, Debian Linux, Novell Netware and OS/400, as well as various devices, including those from Cisco, Foundry, H-P, 3COM, Extreme, Nortel, Enterasys, Alcatel, Lucent and Juniper. ProIT Management Packs also support specific applications such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle database.
ProIT runs on Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2003 Server.
Ease of use Network Node Manager’s user interface, which H-P calls Home Base, gives administrators, engineers, troubleshooters and planners an intuitive, easy-to-navigate summary of the network’s status, quick access to detailed alarms and easy-to-understand graphical maps of your network infrastructure and services. Hewlett-Packard bundles both a native Windows version and a Web-based version of Home Base in Network Node Manager.
Drilling down through Home Base’s maps to get to device and connection details is a snap, and the network health information displayed by the maps helps you quickly and productively locate problems. When a problem develops, Home Base filters and correlates its store of network events and produces a summary alarm that describes the problem clearly and plainly. As you troubleshoot a problem, Home Base intelligently creates and displays dynamic menus that help you direct your thoughts and efforts toward solving the problem. Customizing Home Base’s analysis of events via Network Node Manager’s Correlation Composer is simple and straightforward.
The pre-designed reports that Hewlett-Packard includes with Network Node Manager, OpenView Operations and OpenView Internet Services highlight, for example, performance, alarm, availability and inventory trends. Many reports contrast current and historical data to help you spot emerging problems, while other reports show network utilization, top talkers and listeners, and interface inbound and outbound errors. A Ping Response Time and Ping Retry report shows ping response times and the number of retries to measure latency across the network. The RMON Segment Utilization reveals network bandwidth usage, and a Frame Relay report tracks forward and backward congestion rates to show where bottlenecks are occurring. Reports also show summary and detailed device availability, device inventory data, alarm histories and multiple device reboot events.
OpenView Internet Services sports a productive dashboard interface that offers quick tree-based navigation, SLA health indicators and a helpful troubleshooting and analysis tool.
Performance Manager Portal is a Web-based management console that displays views of the network infrastructure elements as well as views of the business applications corresponding to those elements. BMC designed the dual network/business views to help customers more quickly identify and fix problems. While switching back and forth between views is simple enough, we found the dual views didn’t appreciably aid in problem determination. When a router fails, its relationship to the business environment isn’t as important as deciding exactly what’s causing the failure and knowing how to solve it. On the other hand, Performance Manager Portal gives you a level of Business Intelligence as it clearly shows the status and health of the infrastructure elements and how those elements contribute to the overall business environment. Performance Manager’s user interface isn’t as responsive as Network Node Manager’s Home Base’s.
Performance Manager Portal also includes console interfaces for administering, operating, configuring and distributing Performance Manager modules. Via Performance Manager Portal, administrators see the network, the servers and the applications as objects displayed in an expandable/collapsible Object Tree. Clicking on objects drills down to details regarding the health of applications, services, servers and devices. Performance Manager Portal and Performance Manager Console provide the same breadth of reports as Network Node Manager’s Home Base.
ProIT’s Web-based user interface offers four types of network maps: X-type, in which device icons are logically organized into an X shape with gateway devices at the center, Concentric, in which devices are drawn in concentric circles radiating from the gateway at the center, Ring, in which devices are drawn in a single circle and Table, in which devices are drawn in rows and columns. ProIT shows the direction of dependencies along network paths, and it differentiates between direct dependencies and secondary dependencies by drawing direct dependencies in bold and secondary dependencies in gray. Next to the map, it displays devices without clear dependencies to highlight the need to investigate why the device appears to have no dependencies.
Like Network Node Manager and Performance Manager Portal, ProIT shows network health and device status information on its maps. Clicking on a map element drills down to detailed statistics and status information for that element. ProIT’s user interface is more responsive than Performance Manager’s but not as responsive as Network Node Manager Home Base’s.
ProIT contains a wide variety of pre-configured management reports as well as service level management, availability management, capacity planning and trend analysis reports. ProIT’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) reports are particularly well-designed and show the current and previous period’s (usually a month’s) statistics for historical trend assessment. Other reports show application, server and network uptime statistics, profile information for asset tracking, event log analysis, alarm histories and utilization data.
BMC and PerformanceIT supplied printed and online documentation with their products, but H-P’s OpenView documentation is only online. All these products, despite their complexity, are easy to install and begin using.
Conclusion H-P’s Network Node Manager, OpenView Operations and OpenView Internet Services are collectively an excellent way to explore framework-based network management and monitoring, whether for a growing medium-sized company that needs scalable tools with greater capacity and more functions or for a large company that wants to manage and monitor its network more closely.
How we did it Our test environment consisted of six routed Fast Ethernet subnet domains and a T1 Internet connection. We ran each product’s server components on 4-way Compaq Proliant ML570 900 Mhz computers with Pentium III CPUs, 2 GB RAM and six 18G bytes SCSI RAID drives. The operating system was Windows 2000 Advanced Server with SP 4. Each subnet’s 25 client computers were a mix of Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP, Red Hat Linux 7.0 and Macintosh platforms. The relational databases on the network were Oracle 8i, Sybase Adaptive Server 11.5 and Microsoft SQL Server 2000. Windows 2000 and NetWare 5.1 shared files, while Internet Information Server (IIS), Netscape and Apache software served up Web pages. An Agilent Advisor protocol analyzer decoded and displayed network traffic.
We evaluated each product's ability to manage, administer, update, monitor, report on, diagnose, troubleshoot, reset, reconfigure, audit (inventory) and secure network devices, server computers and client computers. Virtually all our testing took place across WAN links.
In our tests, we administered users, groups, servers, clients, routers, switches, remote storage and CSU/DSUs. We tested the sending of SNMP alerts as well as the processing of incoming alerts. We produced reports to show device and computer status information, inventory results, network usage trends, security breaches, availability and uptime information, network baseline information and graphical maps of the network. We tested any special features the product offered, and we also looked for scalability, security, ease of use and task automation.
Net Results OpenView Network Node Manager 7.5 OpenView Operations 7.5 OpenView Internet Services 6.0 Score: 4.5 Company: Hewlett-Packard (877) 686-9637 www.openview.com Cost: Network Node Manager is $5,994, OpenView Operations is $59,994 and OpenView Internet Services is $17,994 Pros: Handles large, diverse networks with ease; intuitive interface; useful reports Cons: H-P should supply printed documentation with OpenView
Performance Manager Console 7.5.20 Distribution Server 7.1.21 Performance Manager Portal 1.2.00 Score: 3.6 Company: BMC Software (800) 241-2031 www.bmc.com Cost: Performance Manager Portal is $4,000 and Performance Manager Console is $525 per CPU. Distribution Server is included. Pros: Excellent discovery feature; good reports Cons: Sluggish user interface
ProIT IT Operations Management Software 4.0 Score: 3.6 Company: PerformanceIT (888) 242-9365 www.performanceit.com Cost: Starts at $9,995.00 for Standard Edition (50 devices) Pros: Good monitoring of applications and services Cons: Runs only on Windows
Scorecard
Copyright by Network World Inc. Reprinted from Network World.
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