[ale] NetCool vs competitors

[Chris Ricker]

On Tue, 9 May 2006, Robert L. Harris wrote:

> 
> 
>   Does anyone have experience with NetCool or something similar that is
> setup for monitoring distributed networks, devices and servers?

Yep

There's a *lot* of open source available in that general space as well, 
some of it directly comparable, some of it more frameworks that you can 
use to build what you need

My recommendation -- figure out exactly what's important to you. Go 
through all the questions like:

* do you want just network stuff, or also servers?

* since you're including servers, do you mind a host agent-based approach, 
or will you go entirely remote / snmp monitoring?

* if you want a host agent-based solution, what OSes do you need to 
support?

* if you want an entirely remote solution, does everything you want 
support snmp, etc.?

* do you want just monitoring, or do you also want management (just get a 
page when a daemon's not running, or actually restart the daemon)?

* are pretty graphs / trending important to you?

* if they are, what kinds of data do you want tracked?

* is extensibility for new services important, and if so, how is the 
product extended?

* how much are you planning on monitoring, both in terms of numbers of 
devices and how detailed of monitoring of each device?

* how scalable is the monitoring application? how does it scale?

* how much work are you willing to invest in getting it going?

If you look through the specs of some of the products, you'll get a better 
feel for what's out there and narrow in on a solution that fits what you 
need.... Once you do that, you may find NetCool's appropriate, or you may 
find that one of the free solutions better fits your needs

Some of the stuff you might want to look at to get ideas:

NetCool - commercial
OpenView - commercial
Big Brother - formerly open source, now closed for commercial use
nagios - open source
Hobbit - open source
Munin - open source
Cacti - open source
Zabbix - GPL, but politely asks that commercial users pay
opennms - open source

later,
chris