RedCell

You can never have too many network management tools, so let’s take a look at RedCell from Dorado Software.

RedCell is an integrated suite of products that allows extensive discovery and management of network configurations. RedCell Management Center is the core of the product and provides a multi-vendor management interface to each of the other products in the suite.

The RedCell NetConfig module is vendor-specific and provides comprehensive configuration management capabilities, including the ability to back up, compare, restore and synchronize device configurations. Dorado builds RedCell on Oware, its framework for developing carrier-class applications.

RedCell supports a variety of vendor equipment, including Juniper, Cisco, Dell, Extreme, Foundry and Riverstone Networks equipment.

Dorado’s system was easy to stop and restart, either via the command line or an icon in the system tray. The tray icon changes color to indicate system status, showing red when services are stopped, yellow when initializing and green when the system is ready to use. The software runs on Solaris and Windows server platforms and will use all the memory you can throw at it.

In our test, RedCell accurately pinged and discovered all the devices in our network. All our Cisco components were accurately picked up as Cisco devices, although some were displayed as type CiscoRouter or CiscoSwitch instead of the actual model type.

When the device type is identified correctly, RedCell builds a hierarchical view of the device, complete with line cards, interfaces and ports – you can drill down to get detailed information (this is what Dorado terms “deep discovery”), add notes to specific interfaces, and change and edit device parameters. Configurations are easily backed up, restored or synchronized. Configurations on the same device or different devices can be compared side by side, but there is no contextual way to see what changes have been made. RedCell also includes a firmware and operating system image library and diagramming capabilities. The image libraries are a nice touch, but diagramming capabilities are probably best left to systems such as HP OpenView.

While the user interface is sometimes too complex for easy understanding and management – common actions such as perusing the equipment manager required significantly more hunting through screen items and clicking options than in the other systems we tested. Make no mistake, this is a very powerful system that is chock full of features.

For the full report, go to https://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2004/0419rev.html