Rochester, N.H. - Cabletron Systems, Inc. in the second quarter will unveil a version of its Spectrum management platform that should help users recover more quickly from network failures.
Spectrum 5.0 will feature a significantly enhanced version of Cabletron's Enterprise Configu-ration Manager (ECM), which will allow users to store the configuration files for thousands of network devices and download the files to the devices with a few mouse clicks. This should help users bring up devices faster after network outages.
Usually, device configuration is a manual process that is time-consuming and error-prone. Alternatively, users can write script files to achieve some level of automation, but that, too, is time-intensive.
"In 5.0 I can say, 'Go out and verify all of the router configurations.' Under the current release I have to say, 'Go out and verify configuration for Router A, verify Router B,' etc.," said Michael O'Brien, senior systems management engineer at Winstar Communications, Inc., a Tysons Corner, Va.-based competitive local exchange carrier.
Configuration issues
Bill Tracy, director of Spectrum product strategy, acknowledged that the configuration tool in current versions of Spectrum is "piecemeal.""Now you can list [multiple devices] into a single configuration" with Spectrum 5.0, Tracy said.
"It avoids a lot of unnecessary traffic being run around the network and equipment being taken offline while [users] reload configurations," said Rick Sturm, principal of Enterprise Management Professional Services, Inc., a Boulder, Colo., network management consultancy.
"It gets you around the problem of having to use the individual vendor's element management systems to configure devices."
Cabletron's challenge, observers noted, will be to con-vince users with heavy installations of Cisco Systems, Inc. routers, 3Com Corp. switches and Bay Networks, Inc. hubs to manage those environments with Spectrum 5.0 and ECM.
ECM can be used with any SNMP-based device or server managed by Spectrum. It uses SNMP and other standard and vendor proprietary Management Information Base variables to configure devices.
From the ECM screen, a network manager can capture configurations by clicking on a device, which brings up a template. From this template, the manager can select specific device MIB and configuration attributes, save this data and then download it to multiple devices with a couple of mouse clicks.
For example, a manager can click on an icon representing Cisco routers to launch ECM. The manager can then change passwords and access control list information, save the edits and then download the file to scores of Cisco routers in one shot.
The other enhancements in Spectrum 5.0 include the Live Links application, which shows the status of network connections, now will show only relevant, instead of all, connections.
Spectrum 5.0 is expected to cost about $15,000, while the new version of ECM will cost $10,000 for a single server license and $7,500 for additional servers.
Cabletron: (603) 332-9400.
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Cabletron uses Optimal to bulk up Spectrum
Network World, 7/21/97
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