A recent visit to NetIQ's NetConnect User Conference shows a company that is expanding and deepening its product line.

NetIQ has been known for monitoring Windows environments, but a year after it announced support for Unix, it now supports Linux and Solaris, with HP-UX and AIX support coming shortly.

Leveraging the core technology of AppManager and extending its capabilities to manage Unix and Windows platforms from a common console provides NetIQ customers with a way to monitor heterogeneous environments. The core AppManager technology still runs on Windows, while Unix boxes are monitored through agents. NetIQ monitors many components in the application infrastructure, including various flavors of Unix-based Web servers, application servers, load balancers, cluster support, e-mail, and file and disk managers.

This year, NetIQ is increasing support for databases on Unix platforms. NetIQ offers these products for database management: AppManager for SQL, Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server, Recovery Manager and Configuration Manager. AppManager for SQL Server leverages and extends NetIQ's AppManager technology to help monitor SQL. Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server provides about 40 deep drill-down screens that are launched within context. Recovery Manager allows a database administrator to view the transaction log with query capabilities. This can help in finding changes to data, and can be used to diagnose data control problems. Interestingly, it allows an "undo" of an operation by right-clicking on it. That provides an easier way to recover data or deleted tables. Finally, the Configuration Manager watches for changes on the SQL Server box, providing a history of changes to the hardware, software, database schema and configuration settings.

NetIQ has been investing in security management, in response to customers' requests for integrated system management and security management capabilities. NetIQ offers identity management, security policy compliance, vulnerability assessment, intrusion detection, e-mail spam/content filtering, and more. Its recent acquisition of Pentasafe and the VigilEnt products adds more security to its offerings. NetIQ's Marshal product line offers policy-based management of e-mail, instant messaging and the Web. NetIQ intends to integrate its security products to provide an integrated security management suite.

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.