Conference noted::polycenter

826.0. "TNG review by PC Week. OpenView and Tivoli mentioned" by ZEKE::BURTON (Jim Burton, DTN 381-6470) Wed Mar 26 1997 06:57

From:	NAME: Kathy Jensen
	FUNC: DIGITAL
	TEL: DTN: 830-3940 <JENSEN@A1@IOSG@REO>
To:     See Below
CC:     See Below

   
   
   Unicenter Enters 'Next Generation' 
   
   Date: Wednesday, March 26, 1997 
   Source: PC Week 
   
   PC Week via Individual Inc. : Review 
   
   Computer Associates International Inc. calls its overhauled Unicenter 
   package "The Next Generation," and its three-dimensional interface 
   certainly looks like something out of "Star Trek." But beneath the 
   rotating globe and elegant cityscapes is a comprehensive--and 
   complex--network management platform. 
   
   Network management packages are notorious for being difficult to set up 
   and use, and Unicenter TNG is no exception. In fact, the incredibly 
   expansive nature of this product makes it more difficult to implement and 
   get up and running than Hewlett-Packard Co.'s widely used OpenView. 
   
   The payoff? Reduced administration costs and a comprehensive and 
   extremely well- integrated management package. After conducting the first 
   tests of Unicenter since its late-January release, PC Week Labs 
   recommends that large and midsize companies craving micromanagement of 
   every component of their networks--from routers and servers to database 
   backups and security--consider this package. 
   
   However, companies should be aware that buying into Unicenter is not a 
   decision to be taken lightly--in addition to a hefty layout in cost and 
   time, it requires a philosophical change in thinking, from the ground up, 
   at any company taking the plunge. The same could be said for Unicenter 
   TNG's chief enterprise-level competitor, TME (Tivoli Management 
   Environment) 10 from IBM's Tivoli Systems Inc. division. 
   
   Organizations unwilling to make this leap of faith may be better served 
   by more single-purpose management products, such as HP's OpenView, that 
   cost far less to implement, and are easier to install and operate. 
   
   PC Week Labs found few management stones unturned in Unicenter. TNG has 
   support for SNMP and Windows NT that was lacking in previous versions of 
   the product. CA also has opened up the product to third-party development 
   by publishing the APIs and giving away developer tool kits. 
   
   With dozens of servers and hundreds of client machines, the cost of 
   licensing Unicenter TNG can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of 
   dollars. Licensing the core Unicenter TNG product (which is very robust) 
   for four low-end Pentium servers and 100 client PCs costs about $42,000. 
   A simple stand-alone installation, merely to monitor SNMP devices, can 
   cost more than $8,000 (depending on the host's processor). 
   
   HP's OpenView platform has a much lower entry-level price (starting at 
   $4,995), making it easy for companies to start off with basic network 
   management and gradually expand capabilities with add-ons. 
   
   CA offers free copies of Unicenter TNG on a trial basis. However, anyone 
   determined enough to learn how to use Unicenter probably won't want to 
   waste the investment of time and effort by discarding the product after a 
   brief perusal.
   
   Indicative of the migration of network management tools to Windows NT, 
   this first release of Unicenter TNG required using Windows NT machines to 
   host the management software. Support for UNIX systems is due later this 
   year. 
   
   Flying the friendly skies 
   
   Administrators (and rank amateurs) can use Unicenter's 3-D Real World to 
   fly through a corporate network, in a sort of virtual reality, hovering 
   over continents, swooping into buildings, and even peeking inside 
   computers and equipment to monitor operational status. 
   
   We actually preferred Unicenter TNG's new two-dimensional interface, 
   which required few steps for managing network objects. But after 
   experiencing a corporate LAN in 3-D, we'll never see network management 
   in the same light again. 
   
   By conducting a ping sweep, Unicenter's new autodiscovery tool found all 
   the TCP/IP devices on PC Week Labs' test WAN and stored the information 
   in a Microsoft Corp. SQL Server 6.5 central database (which is not 
   included in Unicenter's purchase price). Support for other databases, 
   including those from Oracle Corp. and Sybase Inc., is planned for later 
   in the year. 
   
   The 2-D Real World topology map gave us an easily customizable picture of 
   the Cisco Systems Inc. routers, Bay Networks Inc. FastEthernet switches, 
   Sun Microsystems Inc. SPARCserver and client PCs in the WAN. Icons could 
   be dragged to appropriate positions on overlays, positioning the San 
   Francisco segment, for example, in the correct place in relation to 
   remote sites. 
   
   Customizing the 3-D Real World took considerably more effort, however, 
   because the 2-D edit mode had no real correlation to the 3-D maps. 
   
   By clicking on devices, we could pull up detailed SNMP information for 
   performance and create real-time dashboards, or graphs, to show changes 
   in particular statistics. We could get even more detailed information 
   from the servers and client machines by installing TNG agents. 
   
   Unicenter management agents are available for many computer systems, from 
   MVS mainframes and AS/400s to UNIX workstations and Windows 95 PCs. 
   Agents can even be acquired for specialized third-party products such as 
   Oracle databases and SAP AG's R/3. 
   
   These agents were difficult to uninstall, however, and initial setup on 
   non- Windows platforms was laborious, requiring a lot of customization of 
   system parameters. 
   
   With the agents installed, we could monitor CPU utilization of the NT and 
   Sun servers, and even cause events to be generated depending on the 
   existence of files, or background daemon services. Every time we deleted 
   a selected directory on the Sun server, a message was sent to the 
   Unicenter event manager, which could easily send E-mail to administrators 
   or even execute applications. We also could redirect the standard Windows 
   NT log viewer events to the central event handler. 
   
   A variety of TNG administration tools take advantage of this underlying 
   agent architecture to do everything from running help desks to handling 
   backups and software distribution. These tools worked well, but their 
   interfaces could be better integrated. Sometimes we had to revert to 
   complex command prompts for simple tasks. 
   
   <<PC Week -- 03-20-97>>

From:	NAME: Kathy Jensen
	FUNC: DIGITAL
	TEL: DTN: 830-3940 <JENSEN@A1@IOSG@REO>
To:     See Below
CC:     See Below

    
   A Taste of the Real World 
   
   Date: Wednesday, March 26, 1997 
   Source: PC Week 
   
   PC Week via Individual Inc. : Case Study 
   
   When Don Resh flipped the switch on Computer Associates International 
   Inc.'s Unicenter TNG in January, he expected to have at his fingertips 
   the most advanced network management system around. What he didn't expect 
   was the upgrade's natural ability to help sell management on new 
   computing expenditures. 
   
   The new scheduling, security and backup features in Unicenter TNG (The 
   Next Generation) help Resh administer his 2,000-node network of Digital 
   Equipment Corp. AlphaServers and Windows NT workstations. But the 
   software's virtual reality navigation system is proving to be the most 
   useful--both for higher-ups and the company's LAN support team. 
   
   "The interface does seem a bit strange at first, but once you get used to 
   it, it's not a problem at all," said Resh, senior vice president and CIO 
   of Retired Persons Services Inc., the largest nonprofit mail-service 
   pharmacy in the United States, based in Alexandria, Va. 
   
   The Real World interface lets Resh easily demonstrate to nontechnical 
   users or systems managers unfamiliar with a particular RPS facility 
   exactly where all the systems and applications are physically located and 
   how everything is interrelated. Users get a global view of their WAN, 
   even if it is spread out coast to coast, and they also can drill down on 
   any location to take a virtual walk through a building. 
   
   If there is a network bottleneck within a certain location, Unicenter TNG 
   flags the area with a colored ball so the LAN administrator can get a 
   closer look. That way, administrators can get right to work diagnosing or 
   even fixing the problem from hundreds of miles away. 
   
   That kind of bird's-eye view was a critical sales tool for Resh in a 
   recent budget meeting with RPS' chief financial officer. Resh was having 
   trouble explaining why the company needed to dole out close to $100,000 
   for additional CPU capacity for one of its AlphaServer 8400s. Instead of 
   a panicky presentation, Resh used The Real World interface to walk the 
   CFO through the network topology, spotlighting system bottlenecks and 
   their impact on the company's ability to fulfill prescriptions. 
   
   "It was as easy as that: I showed him the problem, and he signed the 
   check," said Resh. c 
   
   <<PC Week -- 03-20-97>>