Operations notification manager software
My apologies in advance for asking a rather "low-brow" question. What software is available/recommended for NOC contact management? I assume that big networks use CRM type stuff (probably heavily customized), integrated into the OSS and other operational systems. What about for the rest of the world? Is there any decent (free, proprietary, or home-grown) software that can do contact management justice (either as a complete package or integration of multiple packages), supporting features like: - contact information refresh (regularly verify contact information via electronic or triggered human interaction, dealing with failed notification attempts)? - complex notification (ie per-event customized notification by affected device/region/service, notification to customer-selected method based on type and urgency of notice) - customer-friendly subscription management (including multiple notification methods) and notification archiving - notification SLA's (ie re-sending multiple timed notices when required, tracking notifications for auditing, etc) - efficiently managing multiple conduits for notification (email, alpha pager, text-to-voice/scripted call center, RSS feed, Web archives/posting) - enforcing consistency in notifications (ie form-/ rule-based notification creation and validation, notification review/authorization prior to distribution) - handling feedback from notifications (handling customer responses, tracking viewing and/or reading of notifications, measuring effectiveness of notifications) - other important features? I know that some of these features are built into products like HPOV. Do they fill the needs of large network operators? What software do you use to manage customer notifications? Thanks. Pete.
On Sun, 21 Sep 2003, Pete Kruckenberg wrote:
What software is available/recommended for NOC contact management?
I've used Nagios (formerly NetSaint) in the past and have been very impressed with it. http://www.nagios.org/ It of course has a bit of a learing curve but it's not bad at all. Watch your typos in config files though. I noticed that the parser didn't detect them well and oddball problems cropped up when made simple mistakes (like putting a period in the wrong place or fat-fingering a declaration). Other than that I think it could do all of what you're wanting. I rolled it out to the admins around the campus on my last job and I received excellent feedback from them. Justin
On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 12:23:35AM -0500, Justin Shore <listuser@numbnuts.net> wrote a message of 20 lines which said:
What software is available/recommended for NOC contact management?
I've used Nagios (formerly NetSaint) in the past and have been very impressed with it.
I used Nagios and I fail to see what's the connection with the original question? It seems the original poster is looking for something like RequestTracker <URL:http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/> instead.
Thus spake Stephane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@gitoyen.net) [22/09/03 08:26]:
What software is available/recommended for NOC contact management?
I've used Nagios (formerly NetSaint) in the past and have been very impressed with it.
I used Nagios and I fail to see what's the connection with the original question? It seems the original poster is looking for something like RequestTracker <URL:http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/> instead.
Ummm... I'm not sure that RT is what you want, either. Out-of-the-box, RT is a Ticketing system, not a Contact Management system. Though I realise that it could probably be hacked to provide such a functionality... I think between the two of them (Nagios and RT), you would have a chunk of the requested functionality taken care of. But you still don't have the Contact Management part, without a little bit of work.
On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 12:23:35AM -0500, Justin Shore <listuser@numbnuts.net> wrote a message of 20 lines which said:
What software is available/recommended for NOC contact management?
I've used Nagios (formerly NetSaint) in the past and have been very impressed with it.
I used Nagios and I fail to see what's the connection with the original question? It seems the original poster is looking for something like RequestTracker <URL:http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/> instead.
From the original message:
- contact information refresh (regularly verify contact information via electronic or triggered human interaction, dealing with failed notification attempts)?
I need more info here such as an example. Verify contact info against what?
- complex notification (ie per-event customized notification by affected device/region/service, notification to customer-selected method based on type and urgency of notice)
Nagios
- customer-friendly subscription management (including multiple notification methods) and notification archiving
Nagios
- notification SLA's (ie re-sending multiple timed notices when required, tracking notifications for auditing, etc)
Nagios
- efficiently managing multiple conduits for notification (email, alpha pager, text-to-voice/scripted call center, RSS feed, Web archives/posting)
Nagios
- enforcing consistency in notifications (ie form-/ rule-based notification creation and validation, notification review/authorization prior to distribution)
I don't know of a way to review/authorize notifications before going out but it wouldn't exactly be hard to script and use with Nagios.
- handling feedback from notifications (handling customer responses, tracking viewing and/or reading of notifications, measuring effectiveness of notifications)
Nagios doesn't do this. It can accept comments from admins responsible for a given system/service but that's it that I'm aware of. Tracking feedback sounds more like a ticketing system to me.
- other important features?
Nagios has numerous useful features. One of the most useful features is failure notification esculation. 'An email about an outage sent to the sysadm responsible for the mail system go unanswered (ie the problem still exists and hasn't been acknowledged)? Esculate it. Page the on-call pager and let whoever is on-call call the responsible admin on the telephone.' Very handy feature. IMHO I think Nagios fits most of the specifications the requesting person wants. Justin
participants (4)
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Damian Gerow -
Justin Shore -
Pete Kruckenberg -
Stephane Bortzmeyer