Best Network Management Software 1

[mwesol]

What is the best management software? Open View? What are others using? Our network keeps growing and need a good management program.

Thanks
Mike

 

[NickFerrar]

A lot depends on your budget. A full deployment of a premium network management tool can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on how many servers you have.

If money is no object then BMC, HP Openview, Tivoli, CA Unicenter TNG etc are all great products although have a steep learning curve to get running effectively.

I'd work out how much money per server you have available if budget might be a problem.

Micosoft MOM is pretty decent, especially if used in conjunction with something like Dell OpenManage/Compaq Insight Manager.

Personally my own company had a very limited budget so initially I'm deploying Quest's Spotlight on Windows (very cheap site licence offer on at the moment) whihc has some OK alerting facilities in. Eventually we'll roll out MS MOM and link that to Spotlight and Dell OpenManage (which I'm also rolling out).

 

[MikeKap]

Nick is right; many of the "framework" products like OpenView, UniCenter, Tivoli, BMC, will cost you tons and the the learning curves are very steep --- unless you hire someone to do it for you at a steep cost!

Another inexpensive and very easy product to consider it SysTrack 3.1 from Lakeside Software. It can be installed in hours/days as opposed to weeks/months. Most of it works right out of the box. Good luck,

Mike
(Kapski@yahoo.com)