On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Eric Whitehill wrote:
NANOG:
I am curious if anyone has been working with HP Openview as an NMS. I've been looking at it (Specifically the service call portion) and so far, have not been impressed - I'm just not seeing the feature set I would expect. Am I just being stubborn and not seeing the advantages of this? From my understanding the full HP Openview is in beta, but I'm not sure.
I'm not familiar with service call, but we're using Openview NNM as more of a network status/monitoring system. So keep that in mind when you read my comments..
I've done some researching on HP's website, and I can't seem to really find any relevant data. One of the large sticking points is I am trying to find a *nix based client, specifically one I can get working on Solaris, and so far, I'm having a difficut time tracking one down.
Am I wasteing my time with HP Openview?
Yes.
If you are using it, are you pleased?
No. It's not worth the investment. Basically, it provides a graphical -yippie- display of your network status. It also provides other things, but nothing that couldn't be done via gpl'd software like netsaint and mrtg. The only real benefit I see from openview is it's device discovery part.. That way I don't have to rely on staff to remember to add a device to be monitored, instead, I simply dump the openview database and rebuild my netsaint config. Also, I was one of the few people to dive into NNM 2.6 (which we're still running, if it ain't broke, don't upgrade) on solaris, and had so many problems initially because of our large network (120,000 objects.. imagine netmon taking 3 hours before it actually started checking devices.. and imagine a patch for netmon not coming out for 2 months and an HP tech support person trying to come up with workarounds to keep me happy). Bottom line, you'd probably be better off taking the time to implement some GPL software (netsaint, mrtg, opennms, etc) rather than spending your time fighting with Openview. Unless you'd rather be known as the "Openview Administrator" and be relegated to spending a majority of your time babysitting a beast of a program and shelling out thousands of dollars per year for support and software upgrades.
Should I accept fate and life and eat chicken for supper tonight?
Any advise and suggestions are welcomed.
Just my $0.02. -B -- Brian Wilson <wilson@ncsu.edu> Network Analyst Communication Technologies, ATD W: 919.513.3472 North Carolina State University www.ncstate.net