Sam Feature Comparisons

Transcription

1 Sam Feature Comparisons Background: SAM was born out of the frustration felt by many IT system managers. E.J Moloney, the technical director behind SAM, worked for over 12 years as an IT systems management consultant working with a number of large business IT systems. He met numerous other IT system managers who also experienced these problems. Namely there was no one-system management application that could look right across the whole IT system and as a result: IT departments were having to purchase several expensive tools to monitor different parts of an IT system To understand the complete picture the user would have to correlate results from different tools and try and work through a time consuming process to identify the source of the issues Quite often this labour intensive process meant issues were never resolved Without the full picture it was difficult to prioritise issues and allocate resources effectively At its core SAM is designed to solve these issues by giving IT system managers a truly end-to-end management tool that looks at all aspects of the IT system and how they are inter-related. The result is: It s quick and easy to configure The user can see the current & detailed status of all components and services Graphical displays instantly pin point exact route causes of an IT failure and knockon effects Allows the user to test the system and correct the issue quickly A tool that continuously monitors the system and identifies reoccurring issues Helps identify how best to allocate IT resources To see how SAM compares against more specific feature requirements please read below.

2 Comparisons: The following feature comparison has broken current market offerings into 5 categories Category Network Management Server/Application manager Service Testing Network Specialist tools Description Applications focused on network discovery and monitoring. e.g. HP Network Node Manager, CA Spectrum Monitors Servers and applications for Faults. Normally an agent that runs checks on the server hardware, operating system and applications Tests are configured to perform client operations e.g. Fetch mail, check websites etc. Various metrics are recorded and reported on. The results of these tests are used to report on SLA Compliance. Some vendors such as nimsoft and solar winds have created tests or probes which may be installed on the servers running applications to report on the performance and health of the applications which provide these IT services. These are tools which are normally used by 2nd or 3rd line support. Traffic analysis reports on what type of network traffic is consuming the network bandwidth. Path analysis tools look at routing protocols to identify the actual paths being used to get from one part of the network to another. Feature Network Discovery, discovers network devices and their configuration Routing Protocol monitoring, monitors OSPF, BGP and MPLS Tunnels Identify if the actual path used to get from one point of the network to another to facilitate accurate network fault analysis can be performed. Server Monitoring, monitors core server components. Monitor Windows using WMI OS Core monitoring CPU,Memory,File Systems

3 Application Monitoring, monitors applications running on servers. Log file parsing Process checker Custom Scripts Monitor Windows Event Logs Distributed Testing, tests if applications are available across the network. ICMP echo HTTP, with flexible checking upon any field in the returned page and return code SQL / Database test TCP three way handshake test Socket testing Custom test (any Perl, C, script etc can be used) LDAP SMB fileshare NFS RADIUS FTP SMTP mail HTTP transactional test (complete online form and ensure correct response) Cisco IP SLA router based test Netflow Collector, gather usage information of which network access points are being used to access services. IPSLA/Remote ping management, configures tests and retrieves test results from devices that support IPSLA (SAA) or the RemotePing mib. Service Impact Analysis, performs impact analysis of tests on Services. Reporting Engine, define custom reports and make them available through web portal or launch them from the SAM GUI. Report from external databases e.g. Service desk databases. Customer Portal, give your customers access to reports and status information for the services you manage or supply to them.

4 Message forwarding (SNMP Traps / / HTTP post (for SMS,MMS messaging) / Custom script (for TT integration). Automatic event correlation. Role based access (Administrator, Configurator, Operator and User) High performance SNMP polling engine, performs a full network status poll in less than 60 seconds. Tested on a network with 2200 devices and 96,000 interfaces. Launch actions automatically. In response to error conditions. Operator ability to launch predefined actions from the UI in a controlled manner. Easily Define operational procedures for each component error condition. Server probe (logfile analysis, server process monitoring) provides local and remote operation, is aware of the server performance and network parameters. Root cause identification (includes network devices, servers, application and database). SNMP Trap receiver (able to receive SNMP traps and map to an impact code upon a component). Easily define the impact one component has on another one. eg. The impact a database error condition has on a web application. Report the effect failure of network paths, applications or servers have on SLA metrics. Monitor and report on SLA Compliance. Record the true state of a component or service e.g. Up,DegradedPerformance, DegradedResisilance as opposed to an unclear Severity State Norma,Warning, Minor,Major,Critical Record Solutions for failed tests in terms of failed tests from dependent components. e.g. Relate a failed test of a web site to a failed test of a backend database.

5 An XML Interface to identify components on the network which are not snmp enabled but are being used to connect different parts of the network e.g. Firewalls, Third party links etc. Integrated Standard Operating Procedure interface. Defines the procedure support staff should follow based on failed test results.