Consolidating Management Tools

[peterc73]

We have a network with a central office and several remote sites. It's a mostly Windows environment, with some Solaris and Linux. Cisco network gear. About 150 boxes of one sort or another...

Over the years a bunch of different tools have been installed, each managing one piece of the IT infrastructure, and none of which talk to each other. We have a tool to check our web sites are up, another for monitoring network usage, another just for keeping Exchange running, etc. etc.

Generating reports out of all this is a nightmare so we are looking at trying to replace it with a single integrated management system that does the whole job, and hopefully integrating with our ticketing system as well.

I had a REALLY bad experience with one of the big framework products a few years ago, so I am cautious about going down that path (even if I had the budget).

Does anyone have suggestions of products I should look at that might fit this need?

 

[peterc73]

I've looked at about a dozen products over the last few weeks, most of which do just some of what I want. One of the more intriguing ones I am looking at is ScienceLogic EM7 - it seems to have a good set of features and a very slick GUI. Anybody come across this product?
They have an A list of gov. customers but I can't find any reviews.

Thanks!

 

[PalmTest]

Did you have a look at MRTG for reporting?
With MRTG you can monitor a lot of stuff.

http://www.mrtg.org

Have a closer look at the Compatibility charts, Companion sites and the User Pages.

Then consider using:

http://www.open-innovations.com/mrtgbundle.html

or another frontend:

http://www.cacti.net

Another tool to look at is:

http://www.opennms.org

HTH

 

[lgarner]

The big framework products tend to be, well, big. Complicated, expensive, time-consuming to set up, and integrated. I've used OpenView with the CiscoWorks and Optivity plugins, and actually reverted to simpler tools like MRTG and Nagios. Of course, they don't do all that the big ones do, but they do what I want and can be customized. I have the services in Nagios linked to graphs from Cacti, for example.

 

[peterc73]

Thanks - I couldn't agree more regarding OpenView - NNM is pretty poor at event management... and ITO is too much money for what it does.
I have been looking at OpenNMS and Nagios - I like them, they get me to about 70% of what I am looking for, and the price is right
I'm still looking, but a couple of the newer commercial LAMP based products are appealing due to integrated features like asset tracking and ticketing (I would love to dump our woeful home grown ticketing system at the same time).

 

[cushanna]

Hi peterc73,
there is nothing on the market that will cover the whole lot.
What you need to do is look at a system that will give you most of it. As advertising is not allowed I cant openly suggest that you look at one specific manufacturer, however more information can be obtained from

http://www.cushanna.com

regarding the Crannog Software Suite. It uses snmp to query servers, firewalls, switches and routers, Ciscos 'Netflow Data Exports' to export and record traffic passing through a Netflow configured router/switch and SAA probes (software probes on the cisco devices) to monitor responses of devices, applications and protocols (and voice if required).
If you need any further details contact info is available from the above url.