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

Thu Feb 22 01:52:53 UTC 2001

 [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

----- Original Message -----
From: "CARL P HIRSCH" <CARL.P.HIRSCH at slchicago.infonet.com>
Cc: <nanog at merit.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:30 PM
Subject: Re:RE: Monitoring/Trending Software -- Which Package(s) do y

>
> 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
>
> ____________________Reply Separator____________________
> Subject:    RE: Monitoring/Trending Software -- Which Package(s) do you
> Author: owner-nanog-outgoing at merit.edu
> Date:       2/21/01 9:45 AM
>
> Actually you probably need to look at VitalNet.. This is a competing
> product
> to Concorde NetHealth...
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Starta [mailto:john at starta.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 9:23 PM
> To: Lee Watterworth
>
> Lucent's VitalSuite (either SP or Enterprise) software is definitely
> worth
> a look. You can find detailed information about it on their web site:
> http://www.lucentnps.com/software/
>
> jas
>
> At 05:44 PM 2/20/01 -0500, Lee Watterworth wrote:
>
> >I have been handed the task of finding a monitoring/trending package
> for
> >our network and systems.
> >
> >I will be looking at the package's collection mechanism for flexibility
> >(snmp gets, traps, rmon), and the variety/configurability of the
> reports
> >it can produce.  The package should be able to provide (configurable)
> >alerts when threshholds are met/surpassed.
> >
> >I have been evaluating Concord's eHealth Suite, and would like to
> evaluate
> >other options before I commit to a particular package.
> >
> >Any feedback would be great.
> >
> >-Lee.
>