Skip to main content

Network configuration management – Wrap Up

I am working on wrapping up a couple of projects so I haven't been blogging as much. I am currently finishing up our network configuration management project. It's been going very well and we are finding so many uses for the technology:

Here is a snippet from our business case on the product:

This product enables large amounts of functionality that we don't currently have from the CiscoWorks LME implementation. The major advantages are multi-vendor support (Cisco Wireless, Cisco, Nortel, Checkpoint, PIX, and F5). The product tracks all changes, captures configurations, and allows for software and configuration upgrades centrally. It allows for dynamic complex grouping, enabling us to track the environment when devices are added and removed. The tool allows for policy management, inventory, and vulnerability management. Ability to proxy into the legacy environment to manage devices we've never been able to access. Opsware NAS allows for the sharing of information, by advanced reporting and dashboarding. These reports allow for reporting to auditors and customers (Business).


 

Other major benefits of the tool:

  1. Switch port utilization and capacity
  2. Checking and fixing DST compliance across network devices. (corrected several hundred devices). This is what the Server product would have helped us with as well.
  3. Generate inventory reports to allow for verification of maintenance renewals. Reports included serial numbers, modules, models, and IOS versions.
  4. Update access controls, and enable passwords across large numbers of devices easily.
  5. Port capacity planning, and switch port utilization for future switch purchases.
  6. Dynamic grouping allows for inventory to be grouped and reported on by business ownership.
  7. The GSOC was given a large list of IP addresses of virus-infected machines.  The only way to find these machines previously was to hop from switch to switch tracing out the MAC addresses/IP addresses via MAC tables, cam tables, etc until a switch port can be identified.  Opsware does this in second with its search for addresses "seen from port" feature
  8. Ability to track what and by whom devices were changed. This has been in use on various occasions to avoid outages and finger pointing.


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dynatrace Growth Misinformation

For my valued readers: I wanted to point out some issues I’ve recently seen in the public domain. As a Gartner analyst, I heard many claims about 200% growth, and all kind of data points which have little basis in fact. When those vendors are asked what actual numbers they are basing those growth claims on, often the questions are dodged. Dynatrace, recently used the Gartner name and brand in a press release. In Its First Year as an Independent Company, Gartner Ranks Dynatrace #1 in APM Market http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12773790.htm I want to clarify the issues in their statements based on the actual Gartner facts published by Gartner in its Market Share data: Dynatrace says in their press release: “expand globally with more than three times the revenue of other new generation APM vendors” First, let’s look at how new the various technologies are: Dynatrace Data Center RUM (DCRUM) is based on the Adlex technology acquired in 2005, but was cr
10 comments
Read more

Vsphere server issues and upgrade progress

So I found out that using the host update tool versus Vcenter update manager is much easier and more reliable when moving from ESXi 3.5 to 4.0. Before I was using the update manager and it wasn't working all that reliably. So far I haven't had any issues using the host update tool. I've done many upgrades now, and I only have 4 left, 3 of which I am doing this weekend. Whenever I speak to vmware they always think I'm using ESX, when I prefer and expect that people should move to the more appliance model of ESXi. With 4.0 they are pretty much on par, and I'm going to stick with ESXi. On one of my vsphere 4.0 servers (virtualcenter) its doing this annoying thing when I try to use the performance overview:   Perf Charts service experienced and internal error.   Message: Report application initialization is not completed successfully. Retry in 60 seconds.   In my stats.log I see this.   [28 Aug 09, 22:28:07] [ERROR] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.startup.Stat
7 comments
Read more

Misunderstanding "Open Tracing" for the Enterprise

When first hearing of the OpenTracing project in 2016 there was excitement, finally an open standard for tracing. First, what is a trace? A trace is following a transaction from different services to build an end to end picture. The latency of each transaction segment is captured to determine which is slow, or causing performance issues. The trace may also include metadata such as metrics and logs, more on that later. Great, so if this is open this will solve all interoperability issues we have, and allow me to use multiple APM and tracing tools at once? It will help avoid vendor or project lock-in, unlock cloud services which are opaque or invisible? Nope! Why not? Today there are so many different implementations of tracing providing end to end transaction monitoring, and the reason why is that each project or vendor has different capabilities and use cases for the traces. Most tool users don't need to know the implementation details, but when manually instrumenting wi
2 comments
Read more