Re:RE: Monitoring/Trending Software -- Which Package(s) do y

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Just curious,
Would HP's Openview Network Node Manager be suitable for this application? I
evaluated NNM some time ago but found it rather bloated and I figured that it
would really only be truly useful in an HP-UX environment where NNM could
integrate with all the other Openview components. One thing I found appealing is
that NNM sits on an Oracle backend (according to the marketroids, anyhow),
meaning that you could run reports till the cows came home. I've always been
told that trend analysis is where OpenView Network Node Manager shines. Plus,
it's Fully Buzzword Compliant.

Every IT manager's eyes light up when they hear "OpenView", but is it really
useful in a real-world scenario?

For network monitoring, I've actually grown to really like IpSwitch Software's
WhatsUp Gold. I wrote it off for a long time but grudgingly tried it out during
a time crunch and was pretty impressed. It's bare-bones, and NT-only, but it's
so durn easy to get up and running with it in a pinch. It handles ICMP, SNMP,
and RMON with threshold alerts. I'm thinking it supports a wide variety of MIBs.
I found its reporting a bit lacking, though. It probably would be more or less
useless for trend analysis.

I'm sure I'd get more out of MRTG is I was more comfortable with Perl. One of my
projects has been to investigate monitoring/trending solutions under Linux/*BSD.
Apparently somebody just created a Debian distribution for net telemetry
collection. I haven't found much under Linux for RMON yet, and there certainly
doesn't appear to be anything like a free full-featured monitoring/trending
suite out there. Any suggestions?

-carl hirsch
network analyst
sargent & lundy llc
chicago 60603

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FedEx uses it to monitor several thousand servers, routers, and other gear.

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[Disclaimer: I'm talking about $100K+ network monitoring systems here. For
free usage monitoring, IMO you can't beat Cricket,
http://cricket.sourceforge.net]

Most larger ISPs that I've talked to seem to have gone beyond Openview for
network monitoring (or at least it's only one of the systems in use).

Micromuse Netcool gets mentioned a lot of places for service/router
monitoring, but it doesn't (out of the box) do usage monitoring or trending.

Riversoft's Openriver is very, very shiny, and I believe their new release
was slated to do usage data collection, with some interesting abilities to
profile 'normal' traffic on a link and alert when it stops being normal
(more options than just 'if it goes over 90%, send a trap').

Quallaby's Proviso is apparently also pretty good for usage monitoring, but
I haven't played with it.

I seem to remember there was a discussion about this on inet-access around
a year ago where someone posted some good evaluations -
http://www.moongroup.com/inet.php might be your friend for tracking it down.
news:c omp.dcom.net-management might also be a good place to look (if
only deja still worked :-).

Cheers,

Phil Sykes, Network Engineer
Cable & Wireless Global Network