Conference azur::mcc

502.0. "SunNet Manager Comments" by ADO75A::SHARPE (C is bliss?) Thu Nov 29 1990 22:14

    At the prompting of Bill Gassman, here are my comments of SunNet
    Manager.
    
    Firstly, Sun used an IPC I believe. We were only able to use a
    VAXstation 3100/30, so we appeared a bit clunky. However, I hope that
    the perceived performance difference has not colored my perceptions.
    
    GOOD:
    
    SunNet Manager installed easily and quickly, compared to DECmcc, where
    first I had to install UCX, NMS, and then DECmcc Dir et al, then TCP/IP
    AM.
    
    SunNet Manager seems to have better drawing capabilities, including the
    capability to set object to specified colors. They to use an object
    oriented approach of domains with sub-domains and sub-nets etc.
    
    SunNet Manager is able to get system performance stats out of Suns and
    other boxes that run rstat (I think), and are able to put up strip
    charts in a strip chart window of performance and other
    characteristics, like packets in/out etc. This looks very impressive
    from a demonstration point of view.
    
    SunNet manager seems more complete than DECmcc does at this stage, and
    seemed intuitive enough to use that I could sit down and make progress
    with it after 10 to 15 minutes. I have never used Sun workstations
    before, but have used a 3/280. I have also not used SunNet Manager
    before.
    
    The ability to do everything from within the Iconic PM (may be the only
    PM they have) was good. I have found with DECmcc I need to register
    snmp entities with FCL, then populate the domain via FCl, and then I
    can manipulate them with the Iconic PM. Maybe this is just my erroneous
    impression.
    
    BAD
    
    No support for DECnet. From my customer's point of view this is bad.
    They need both DECnet and TCP/IP.
    
    Limited to no support for analysis and reporting on historical data.
    You can keep logs of the polled data, but after that you are on your
    own. You get to write awk/nawk/perl scripts to analyze the data and
    present reports. DECmcc's (hoped for) support for performance analysis
    of TCP/IP as well as DECnet should be a big plus.
    
    Limited or no support for gross ethernet monitoring like LTM-reports
    (although that is a seperate PP).
    
    Comments obout the user interface may be just because of my lack of
    familiarity with their paradigm, but I felt that not being able to
    click in the field where a option should go, and have the list of
    values pop up was a bit annoying.
    
    Regards
    Richard Sharpe
    PS, I will reply with more comments as they come to light.      

    The ability to do everything from within the Iconic PM (may be the only
    PM they have) was good. I have found with DECmcc I need to register
    snmp entities with FCL, then populate the domain via FCl, and then I
    can manipulate them with the Iconic PM. Maybe this is just my erroneous
    impression.
 
>
> This has been fixed in the EFT kit. Any global entity that can be 
> registered can be added to the map.
>

/Jim

    RE: SunNet Manager

    Richard,

    Can you elaborate on the SunNet's FM capability. For example 
    do they have Alarms capability? If they do, how  does it 
    compare with ours? Do they have HDR? 

    Thanks for entering the original note again.

    Anil Navkal
    
    

    Hmmm, second time I have entered this reply. First one got blown away
    by the network. In the mean time I asked the customer to clarify some
    things.
    
    1. Alarms.
    
       This is handled by the SunNet Events system. So, you can set up Ping
       to poll a node at a certain frequency, and if an event happens, like
       unreachable, then they can change the colour of the node on the map.
    
       Events can also happen at the SNMP level etc.
    
    2. HDR
    
       If HDR means Historical Data Recording, then you can record logs of
       each poll. This would be usefull if you were looking at traffic for
       example. However, you then get to roll your own awk/nawk/perl
       scripts to analyze the data.
    
    Regards
    Richard Sharpe