Choosing and Operating Network Management Tools

When it comes to managing a network and its systems, managers have thousands of options to consider - ranging from free downloadable tools to million dollar suites. None of these are bad. They all have their value if selected: and used properly.

It is like choosing a method of transportation. Depending on the circumstances, the best choice might be a rocket or it might be rollerblades. Sports cars, SUVs and supertankers all have their place in the overall scheme.

In IT management, as in transportation, the right decision depends on function, price and user preference. In this article we survey others who have had to choose network management tools - either as an IT manager or a consultant - and see what advice they offer to help others in the same position.

The 90 Percent Solution

Doctors tell us that most people only use 10 percent of their brain's capacity. At least one doctor says the same thing about network management tools.

"I have talked to shops that have three or four different fault managers, any one of which would do the job," says Mike Jude, Ph.D., research director for Enterprise Management Associates in Boulder, Colo., "but they are only using 10 percent of the features."

As a result, he says that many companies go out and buy expensive but unnecessary software to solve problems that they already have the tools to deal with. He recommends that administrators really take a good look at what is sitting on the shelf or installed but underutilized before going shopping.

"You may find you already have the tools you need," he said. "If not we recommend you look at how your tools fit together and make sure that the new tools integrate with the ones you already have."

Console Overload

Sometimes the problem is not with getting the information you need, but coping with the flood of information available. Many different databases, devices and applications have their own management interfaces an admin can use to dig in and find out what is happening. The difficult part is having to learn and access all these different systems and then try to assemble the disparate data into a single overall picture of network health.

That was the scenario that Tim Hagn found when he took over as vice president of IT Operations and Engineering for. Zurich Life Insurance in Schaumburg, Ill.

"Within a month it was clear that the IT organization was in a reactionary mode; they were addressing problems after the customer base had been affected or had called in with a problem," he explains. "I talked to my boss and the CIO and they agreed that we needed to implement a network and systems management tool suite that would let us take a look at the entire enterprise."

He selected Hewlett-Packard's Open-View, a tool he had successfully used at a previous employer. Deployment took one and a half employees 88 days to complete. At that point Zurich had base-level monitoring on all switches and routers, 25 Unix servers, around 100 Wintel servers plus SQL Server and Oracle databases. Within three weeks he used it to solve a system problem that had reached the CEO level and could have cost Zurich a major financial partner if not fixed.

The feature Hagn says he likes best about Open View is that it is an open system that allows them to tie in their other management software. He has hooked in Cisco Systems' Cisco Works and Tidal Software's Enterprise Scheduler, as well as the company's intrusion detections systems, firewalls and antivirus software. All of these collect their own data and then report it to Open View, so the admins only need to look in one place.

"I don't want to look at 17 consoles; I want one central tool," he said. "The criteria now for every additional tool or utility is how well it can tie into Open View."

All Together Now

When selecting a management tool, you won't be able to anticipate every possible issue that may come up, especially since both technology and business needs constantly change.

Given the time, effort and cost involved in setting up a management system, it isn't something you want to redo every time a new requirement crops up. So, in addition to looking at the current state of the tools, you need to examine the vendor's longer term development strategy.

While it is not exactly a "till death do you part" decision, you will want to determine if the firm is one that you want to deal with in the long term, not just for this one immediate transaction.

"You need to have a good sense of the vendor/client relationship," said Stephen Elliot, a senior analyst in the network management area for IDC. "Do the cultures match, is the pricing fair, do they return calls, will the company be around for the long term?"

He advises checking references and past implementations and, if the company is a startup, looking at how much money they have in the bank. Also find out what their partnership strategy is.

"In network management," Elliot says, "partnerships can ease the cost of ownership and ease some of the integration."

There are times when it pays to think small. Network management software can get very expensive, not only in terms of purchase or licensing fees, but also the trained personnel needed to update and operate the software. And, as Mike Jude pointed out above, many companies aren't using all the features they are paying for. In such a case, a smaller management package is the way to go.

That's what Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates, a Gloucester, Mass.-based manufacturer of semiconductor processing equipment, discovered when it examined options for monitoring its WAN connections linking 40 locations on three continents. It evaluated a number of different management suites before going with WebNM, a low-cost package from Somix Technologies.

WebNM provides network monitoring, trending, alerting and management, hardware and software inventorying, help desk ticketing and other essential features, but at a tenth the cost of some of the other packages Varian considered. It lacked some of the features of the other products, but that was more of an asset than a liability in this case, since it cut deployment time to three days.

"That was probably one of WebNM's greatest features," said Troy Preble, Varian's manager of networks and technology. "The first day Somix's technician set it up, and then he sat behind us the next two days and watched us operate it."

He feels that while some firms do need more complex management software, many others would do just fine with a product like WebNM.

"Define what you want to do with the network and then take a very hard look at the different packages," he advises. "Tivoli or Open View are great systems, but the additional features would not benefit us for what we were trying to do, so the payback just wasn't there."

Think Outside the Bytes

Our last piece of advice comes from Brian Fogg, technical director for SRA International. SRA provides $350 million worth of consulting, integration, design and outsourcing services annually, primarily to federal government clients. The company uses the entire range of management products including IBM's Tivoli and Computer Associates' Unicenter, together with tools from Aprima Management Technologies, BMC Software, Enterasys Networks and Managed Objects. Fogg says that the current generation of management tools greatly eases network management.

"We are at a point now where we can achieve management of the event infrastructure across the heterogeneous infrastructure; a single console where I can have lots of existing IT infrastructure reporting up," he says.

But, although the new technology is wonderful, he cautions not to get too caught up in it.

"If you look at it like buying insurance, it doesn't make sense to spend $1 million to insure a $25,000 car," says Fogg. "But the core businesses must be elevated, managed and protected in the right way."

So, you don't need to go into overkill on network management. While it is great to have 99.9999 percent uptime, it only translates into one more minute of uptime per week than if you had 99.99 percent uptime. How much is that extra minute worth to the company? And which are the critical services that do need to be protected?

"People need to plan very carefully up front to make sure they capture the business rationale for what they are trying to manage so they can apply the right dollars to the right system at the right time," he said. "They need to make a sound business decision, not just buy the latest technology."

Drew Robb

Drew Robb is a Los Angeles-based writer specializing in technology and engineering.

Copyright Publications & Communications, Inc. Dec 2003
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