Adventures of a Technical MasterMind

We have holes in our tools regarding our new MPLS network. We have a private backbone almost completed. When finished, sometime Q4'06 or Q1'07, it would have 8 P nodes, ~40 PEs, and ~120 CE. One OSPF domain and one CONFED BGP with sub-AS in each region. All P and most PEs are Cisco 7600/SUP7203BXL running 12.2(18)SXD1 and will be upgrading soon to SXF train. We also have PEs those are 7200VXR IOS 12.4(5)a. The tools needed are to do provisioning, engineering, and monitoring the VPN links we are building on the MPLS network. We are looking into existing tools we own to see what they cover. I will post updates as we get our list of requirements answered and do more research. The companies we are looking at are : Lucent (vital), Cisco, HP, Opnet, and other smaller vendors.

I was prepping a POC with Proactivenet, and they were pushing on me using the "Proactivenet" agent on my systems. Deploying another agent was not possible, existing tools and agents would have to be leveraged in order to do the correlation, statistical baselining, correlation, and predictive failure. The ability to absorb metrics and data from HP Openview Operations (Windows and Unix) would not be ready until November. The POC is dead until then. Netuitive is my second vendor the POC with them is now being scoped and accelerated. They will support the agents that we have already purchased and deployed everywhere (approx 3,000 agents). The tool is also much better because they are looking at the low level metrics, versus the collected data that Proactivenet is using. We shall see as these products are fully deployed and tested. More soon....

I am testing some BI tools: Microsoft Proclarity Microstrategy Panorama Novaview The POC built on Microstrategy, but need to build a few more reports and such. Next week Panorama will be in working on the POC. Microstrategy is good, but the client and configuration are rather arcane. The web based tools are great, which is most of what my consumers will be using. If they have to use the Desktop product they will be confused, which I don't think is going to be a good fit for us. Microsoft Analysis Services, which are what the other 2 products are the front end to. The cubes and metrics need to be built, which is what I will be doing over the next week.

I have been out of touch with my blog readers recently due to being very busy with work and personal things. I had a few trips and visitors for both work and fun. Back to the technology... I am working hard on evaluating some BI vendors: Microsoft Proclarity, Panorama, and Microstrategy. So far I am much happier dealing with the Microsoft analysis services that Panorama and Proclarity are based on. Not to mention that the pricing I am getting is much cheaper from those 2 vendors. I will continue to build my POCs and show them internally. I am also working on some management tool consolidation from Symantec I3, CA Spectrum, and other tools. A lot of the work is in architecture still, but we are also doing some implementation. We are evaluating proactivenet in the next week or two as well. More soon.

My bladelogic POC got shot down due to people being too busy. When are people going to realize by leveraging tools it will save them time. By not biting the bullet you are just going to be scrambling to stay on top of things. I am also looking at the following: RBA : Opalis and Iconclude (very cool software packages) Config Mgmt : Bladelogic Log parsing and management : loglogic and splunk (leaning towards splunk) I am integrating the following: I3 and Netcool for SNMP traps.

The class of tools which are known as predictive and analytical monitoring tools is a very interesting concept. I am looking at 2 such vendors now, to try to find something which can sit inline with our Netcool (manager of managers) and produce more intelligent alarms and such. If its works well, it may even replace or be the go to middle man to get to Netcool. Good idea to have not only the ability to predict, but to correlate systems based on what alarms together, and how they behave leading up to a failure. We are looking at : Intergrien Alive - http://www.integrien.com/alive.cfm Proactivenet - http://www.proactivenet.com/ Proactivenet is already in a QA lab here at another part of my company, but its not in production yet. We shall see how and if the POCs progress. Expect me to keep you guys posted.

As a result of attending the forum it just strengthened the fact that we need to have a core company who provides us with all of the technology that makes up the core CMDB and ITSM strategy. This include change management, ticketing, monitoring (as a whole). The integration needed between these items is not only important, but vital to having a closed loop process of implementing changes in a non-disruptive way. Other tools which strengthen monitoring, infrastructure management, application dependencies, and other areas can easily be integrated and further solidify the core of the service delivery of the IT group. The only area I am on the fence about is asset management, where something like Radia or even Bladelogic ensures compliance and proper change execution moves it outside of a traditional asset management system into part of the change verification arena. My firm has been buying tools from HP, but has not adopted them across the ticketing, change management, and CMDB areas. ...