HP OV Alternative

[rmmagow]

Probably not the best place to ask this, but... My management is balking at the costs of the HPOV system. We primarily use it to provide operations with a tool to keep an eye on what's going on with the network. Yes, it works fine but my licensing costs are going over 30K this year and that's not flying very well. I would like to find a product in the 10~20K range that can easily discover my network, allow me to build groupings for each of my remote sites (about 50) and provide alarming functions when a router goes down hard. I'm currently evaluating SNMPc and it's sort of working. What's Up Gold may also work for strictly determining if a site is still pingable. I'm thinking some of you may have had prior experience with other tools that can provide a lot of the HPOV function and a considerably lower capital investment.
Please feel free to direct me to any forums where this question might be better addressed.
Thanks Very Much

 

[TomTomUK]

Hmmm

How many nodes do you have and what are your management requirements?

Do you need reporting as well?

Any other must haves/desireables


OpenView consultant here so I may be able to point you at a competing solution or a better licence

 

[rmmagow]

About 4000 nodes, most of which I don't care about. I discover PC's but place them on the map unmanaged, IP phones similar. My main requirement is to have a map showing each of my remote offices (about 50) and the state of their router and core switches. My network operations staff isn't really netops, they see a site go red I have a scripted (on paper) procedure they follow and if the site's really down, they call network support. I like HP's discovery engine A LOT but don't use all the features. I had 7.5 AE installed but it will cost WAY too much. I had a full 6.2 license and have heard that I might be able to upgrade to 7.5 starter edition for not a lot of money but even the maintenance costs look like they'll be too high. I am actively evaluating SNMPc, What'sUp Gold Premium and SolarWinds Orion. Discover isn't as good as Openview, but the products look like one of them will be OK.

 

[droodle]

Have you looked at CA spectrum ?

 

[pgn]

Another one to consider, and it's opensource, is NAGIOS.

 

[rmmagow]

CA Spectrum. That the old Cabletron Software? Ran that years ago. Very pretty interface, fun to work with. Don't like doing business with CA though. I've chosen Solarwinds ORION network performance monitor system. Pricing was very good, discovery engine is nearly as good as Openview. Mapping is tedious but for the simple maps I need for network monitoring it is working OK. Lots of reporting capabilities. Basically worked out of the box. I can't use most opensource products due to the higher level of support that is required. It's basically me and I have a lot of other crap to put up with. I eval'd what's up gold, solarwinds and maybe three others. The discovery engine is what sold me on Solarwinds. Please do note, I am running on a monster platform, 2 cpu W3K and 14GB Memory a a T-byte of storage. About 10,000 elements being watched, maybe 200 being watched as critical.