Tideway

Mar 5 2008   7:59PM GMT

Top Enterprise Management Tools vs. Data Center Automation Blueprint

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, Analytics, Application monitoring, CMDB, DCAB, HP Software, IBM Tivoli, InfoVista, IT Process Automation, Netuitive, RBA, RealOps, Run Book Automation, Systems monitoring, BMC, Network configuration, Network monitoring, Networkingchannel, Performance management, CA, NetQoS, Opnet, Tideway

I was doing some “light” reading this morning and came upon this recent article:  Top 10 Enterprise Management Tools

It’s focused on Complete Enterprise Management, not specifically focused on the Data Center so I thought I would summarize and then compare/contrast/discuss:

• Network Fault & Performance: CA eHealth & Spectrum
• Consolidated Event Management: IBM Tivoli Netcool
• Service Impact Monitoring : IBM Tivoli Business Service Manage & Service Level Advisor
• Application Discovery Mapping: Tideway Foundation
• Business Intelligence: Cognos
• ITSM Workflow, CMDB and Service Desk: BMC Remedy ITSM and Atrium
• Network & Systems Configuration Managment: HP Automation (formerly Opsware SAS & NAS)
• Process Automation: BMC RunBook Automation

Since it isn’t data center centric, it’s light on automated management for applications & databases.  It also chooses to stay away from the very congested and sometimes confusing security/protection market.

Next up, I thought  it would be fun to do a quick mapping to the Data Center Automation Blueprint.

• Network Fault & Performance, Consolidated Event Management, Service Impact Monitoring = Availability & Performance
• Application Discovery Mapping, CMDB = IT Resource Reconciliation
• Business Intelligence = Analytics (maybe…Analytics is still a work in progress…need to figure out this vs. BSM etc)
• ITSM Workflow, Service Desk = outside of DCAB listed as Manual Task Orchestration

I was surprised not to see an End-User Application Performance Monitoring category.  These products either do their duty from passive agents on the endpoint or from data center appliances using slick algorithms, TCPIP theory, etc.  Maybe that could have indirectly been rolled under Network Fault & Performance as CA acquired Wily which offers that.  The other one missing was more towards Capacity Planning and Trending Analytics, either based off historical data like what Opnet offers or from real-time data patterns from Netuitive.

Needless to say I found it a really nice write-up and summary of those products/offerings.  The only thing I struggle with is all of the big 4 (BMC, CA, HP, IBM) are represented in this mix.  Which means you will have 4 sales guys all continously battling it out to grab more land.  This may be good from a cost competition standpoint, but it’s a real fiasco for making sure all parts are playing nicely with each other or simply managing those vendor relationships.  Bottom line, you’re always going to have at least one of the big 4 in there as they continue to snap-up the innovative smaller companies/ technologies to enhance their portfolio and offer differentiation.  So I’d typically recommend a strategy where you pick 2 of the big 4 and keep them in check versus each other while continually looking for those innovative start-up’s to fill in the gaps.  Here is an example of how you could do this using the categories in the original article.

• Network Fault & Performance: HP Network Node Manager, Operations Manager, Performance Insight
• Consolidated Event Management: IBM Tivoli Netcool
• Service Impact Monitoring : IBM Tivoli Business Service Manage & Service Level Adviser
• Application Discovery Mapping: IBM Tivoli Application Dependency Discovery Manager
• Business Intelligence: Cognos (which IBM recently acquired)
• ITSM Workflow, CMDB and Service Desk: HP AssetCenter (former Peregrine)
• Network & Systems Configuration Managment: HP Data Center Automation (formerly Opsware SAS & NAS)
• Process Automation: HP Operations Orchestration (formerly iConclude that Opsware acquired)

Or, if you want to completely rebel and go the non-big 4 route, take a look at the above mappings to the DCAB and look for a name that’s not big-4.  Example:  Network Fault & Performance: InfoVista or NetQoS

Feb 21 2008   11:18PM GMT

IT Resource Reconciliation (CMDB) - Top 5 Capabilities

Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenter, CMDB, DCAB, Tideway

The crew over a Tideway offered up and impressive in-depth product demo last week. It made me realize I haven’t circled back to throw down my top five features for this functional area of the Data Center Automation Blueprint we’ve been working on.

With that said, I was impressed with their comprehensive agent-less discovery vs. the agent centric approach of Symantec (Relicore), HP (Opsware), IBM (Collation), CA (Cendura) or the passive-flow based from EMC (nLayers). I know some of these vendors can do some discovery through an agent-less approach but to get comprehensive feature functionality they will lead you toward deploying their agents.

So on to the top five features…

1) Comprehensive discovery engine that can automate the identification of and it’s communications relationships for any IT resource (e.g., applications, databases, services, systems, storage, network etc)

2) Impressive visibility capabilities including multi-layer topological / dependency mapping illustrations while offering comprehensive reporting options (e.g., graphical summaries down to detailed lists)

3) Reconciliation automation where this solution serves as the “source of truth” for the current state of the IT resources in the data center. At a minimum this should offer the ability to report differences between this and other Data Center Automation solutions. The real deal would have embedded automation/integrations that keep all products synchronized, saving major amounts of time for the system administrators and avoiding an event from occurring when it unfortunately wasn’t being monitored.

4) Accurate fingerprinting (e.g., discovery-to-data model mapping). Making sure the discovery process has the ability to keep up with newer software versions, new vendors etc for all the possible IT resources in the data center.

5) A fast search engine to quickly find an IT resource you are: troubleshooting, need to review prior to putting in a change order to understand potential impact or may be susceptible to a recently announced security threat, etc.

5b) A policy engine, built on the search engine, that enables users to define desired attributes for specific types of IT resources and be notified immediately when something doesn’t match that desired state so it can be remediated.

One other thing I noticed about the Tideway product that was appealing was it’s transparent approach. All communications between their product and each IT resource are visible down to the specific commands that are run. This enable the product to quickly build trust with the user since they can see the specific queries/commands used and their results.

I know their are other desired features so let’s hear them!

Speaking of that, at some point I need to put together the “table stakes” features that any DCAB product should have. You know what I mean - slick dashboard (e.g. iGoogle), RBAC, SDK/API, Grouping, etc, etc, etc.

I’ve also made a few more updates to the wiki summary version of the Data Center Automation Blueprint, come take a look and throw down some feedback.