Re: System and Network Monitoring

[Dean Anderson <dean () av8 com>]

I use OpenView 4 now have for several years (since Openview 3). It was the
best thing going for a while anyway.

The best/worst thing about OpenView is using vendor equipment management
modules that only work with openview. Or HP LanProbes and such. These tend
to be huge worksavers, if you can somehow accomodate the security
limitations (or use oob sets, etc)

At least, they used to be.  Now, I'm not so sure.  Instead of using snmp to
actually change configuration, I am now mostly using it to monitor what's
going on, and react to snmp traps when they are sent.  Frankly, I don't
think snmp monitoring is all that hard.  

OpenView is still incredibly expensive, and very difficult to buy.  I think
the freeware alternatives are just as good, and possibly better in some
cases.  But it depends though on what you are going to do.

I'd check into mrtg and scotty first, and then look at OpenView.  They also
work on freebsd...

                --Dean

At 02:52 PM 12/16/1998 -0600, Tim Salo wrote:
> > Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 16:48:06 -0800 (PST)
> > From: Derek Balling <dredd () megacity org>
> > To: nanog () merit edu
> > Subject: System and Network Monitoring
> >
> > OK, I'm looking for "real world" data and not sales/marketing hype.
> >
> > I'm looking for a package to do network and system monitoring. It's a
> > heterogenous environment consisting of all manner of routers, at least 700
> > servers (Mostly FreeBSD, but also Solaris and Network Appliance boxen).
> >      [...]
>
> I would be interested to hear about your comparison of a commercial
> package such as HP OpenView with free alternatives.
>
> My inclination is towards a commercial package.  I even suspect that it
> would be less expensive in the long run, plus it seems likely to free
> up your technical talent for revenue-producing activities.
>
> -tjs
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           Plain Aviation, Inc                  dean () av8 com
           LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP          http://www.av8.com
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