Network-management platforms used to be touted as centralized repositories, with shared polling and events engines that would let you manage the whole world. Such frameworks were bottomless money pits, and enterprises stayed away in droves. Well, guess what? Times have changed. New players, new products and new approaches are making a difference. The question is, is it too little too late, or can one of these products actually help run your network?
The answer is: sort of. You'll still get the pitch about managing the entire enterprise from a single console, but now network-management platforms are presented as suites of integrated products. Smart vendors are offering the easier-to-use, more functional examples we look at here. Since our last comprehensive review of network-management platforms in November 1997, these products have become incrementally better, but there have been no earth-shattering advances: All have evolved into more complete suites, but none has network management aced.
Instead, think of them as megatoolboxes, their drawers filled with more gotta-have gizmos than Sears. All the products we tested offer network inventory, exception management and reporting capabilities. Some add performance management with the extra sizzle of predicting the future.
What you won't find, however, is configuration, database or application management. Also, don't look for VoIP (voice over IP) applications; sure, these packages may find phones and even identify them correctly, but for jitter detection or call-setup tracking tools you're on your own. Same story applies to wireless support: Untethered devices are found but not managed beyond SNMP MIB-II characteristics.
We unwrapped six of these bad boys and tested them in our 10,000-node production network at our Real-World Labs® at Syracuse University. We threw dirt at Aprisma Management Technologies' Spectrum 6.0, Computer Associates International's NetworkIT 2.0, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s OpenView Network Node Manager 6.1, Peregrine Systems' InfraTools Network Discovery 4.0, RiverSoft Technologies' OpenRiver 2.0 and Tivoli Systems' NetView 6.0.1.
Factors to consider in choosing one of these products include the heavy lifting required to keep the suite going, the substantial capital investment and maintenance costs, and, of course, whether it addresses the problems you're trying to solve. Scripted SNMP gets can garner enough information to manage 1,000 interfaces, all for the cost of the development expertise. If your goal is simply to monitor the status and basic availability of 300 or 400 nodes, and network chops aren't in the budget, these packages are overkill; try Ipswitch's WhatsUp Gold. For larger networks, say with 3,000 to 7,000 mostly campus-based nodes, our winner, Peregrine's InfraTools Network Discovery, is in your sweet spot. Massive, far-flung networks with loads of WAN connections should consider a platform that, like OpenRiver, offers a distributed, redundant processing architecture.
Peregrine Feathers Its Nest
After installing, discovering, polling, deleting, corrupting, reinitializing, reinstalling and rebooting (yes, some ran on Microsoft Windows NT), we crowned InfraTools Network Discovery our Editor's Choice. Peregrine's design goal -- to offer useful network management without front-end implementation hassles -- clearly raised its offering above the rest. Aprisma's Spectrum, a close second, showed its newfound vitality by bundling multivendor device management while maintaining its famous fault-shadowing event suppression.
We handed out two Best Value awards. One went to HP's OpenView Network Node Manager for its low price, new Web reporting capabilities and basic exception management. The other went to CA's NetworkIT, which sports an unbelievably low price and powerful performance-management options. NetView is a past winner and still has one of the most functional designs plus a newly refurbished Web interface. However, the product lacks strong exception and performance management and gave us some trouble. OpenRiver focuses mainly on event management, enforcing a management policy with object orientation, but it lacks integrated performance management. However, the suite is still a strong contender because of its underlying architecture, and we expect the product to gain significant functionality in its next release. Our review of Peregrine's product follows; for our analysis of the others, click here.
Pricing is never an exact science when doing a product comparison. All the companies were asked to supply a retail price to manage both a 1,000-node and a 10,000-node network. We expect some creative fudging, and we counter that by reducing the weight cost plays in our judgment. In fact, NetworkIT was so inexpensive that we went back for clarification. CA officials said they know the product is underpriced and are considering raising the price. Meanwhile, NetView and OpenRiver had the opposite problem, giving us huge numbers. For pricing information, see our online chart (above).
You know that your mileage will vary, and plenty of extra add-ons are available for all the products. If the price you're quoted varies significantly from the prices we list, however, drop a line and let us know.
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