How we did it
 
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In our evaluation of these network management aids, we looked primarily for the ability to monitor and manage the health and availability of our servers and network devices. The ability to take corrective action to resolve a problem automatically was a plus. We tested the sending of alerts by pager, Web page and single or multiple recipient e-mail to notify us of network problems. We expected a product to produce reports that helped us establish baselines, show available and unavailable devices, log device availability histories, identify trends and spot future problems.
We noted whether a product checks for TCP/IP port device availability and monitors TCP/IP services such as SMTP, HTTP and telnet. We also noted whether a product uses SNMP to retrieve details about a device. We studied these products to see if they collected Windows NT/2000 auditing information, filtered Unix log activity and monitored Unix system activity and Win 2000/NT services and events. Network device inventory was important, and we also wanted these products to monitor and reveal server or client CPU usage, disk space and memory consumption.
The test bed network consisted of six Fast Ethernet subnet domains connected by Cisco routers and a Covad synchronous DSL internet link. Our client platforms included Windows 98/
Millennium Edition/NT/2000; Red Hat Linux 6.2; Macintosh System 8; and OS/2 Warp 4.0. Relational databases on the network were Oracle 8i, Sybase Adaptive Server 11.5 and Microsoft SQL Server 2000. Win 2000/NT and NetWare 5.1 shared files, while Internet Information Server, Netscape and Apache software served up Web pages. The network's transport layer protocols were TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, AppleTalk and SNA.
We ran Lucent's VitalSuite, Concord's eHealth and Chevin's Tevista network management products on a four-way Compaq ProLiant ML570 computer with 900-MHz Pentium III CPUs, 2G bytes of RAM, eight 18G-byte SCSI RAID drives and two NC3134 10/100 network adapters. For these three products, the operating system platform was Windows NT Server 4.0 with Service Pack 6. Tavve preloaded its eNMS software on a Solaris 8.0-based Sun Blade 100 Workstation with a 500-MHz UltraSPARC-IIe CPU, 2G bytes of RAM and a 15G-byte Integrated Drive Electronics disk drive. Tavve also installed Hewlett-Packard Network Node Manager 6.2 on the Sun machine. An Agilent Advisor protocol analyzer generated packets as well as decoded and displayed network traffic. The generated traffic let us cause performance slowdowns for the products to analyze, and we simulated connectivity problems by unplugging Ethernet cables at the switch.
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Network World on Network/Systems Management
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