Network Management Center Blog : ANLM

Fault and Performance management webinar with Analyst, Customer and HP

aruna13 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:18:00 GMT

Hello,

Listen to an on-demand webinar where leading consumer customer, analyst Jim Metzler, and HP discuss integration of fault and performance management, discuss some of the relevant best practices, while identifying some of the key features in Hp's integrated fault and performance management solution. The panelists on the Webcast present three different perspectives – that of an industry analyst, a senior IT manager and HP's view on network management solutions.

Webinar recording:

· http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/cli_NMCBlog/7/50673494/

Thanks
Aruna Ravichandran

ROI webinar on NNMi Upgrade - True Customer story

aruna13 — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:13:00 GMT

Are you currently a legacy NNM (7.x/6.x) customer and are looking to upgrade to NNMi? If so, listen to this on-demand webinar with a customer working for a leading $15 Billion consumer manufacturing company. You will get the complete scoop on his upgrade to NNMi and the ROI he was able to demonstrate to his management in terms of making a justification for spending the time and resources to go through the upgrade.
In summary, this customer was able to:

Increase network availability from 97.5% to 99.98%
Reduce capital and operating costs by consolidating 5 servers down to 1
Increase operator efficiency and productivity by decreasing the time spent on L2/L3 escalations from 8 hours to 2 hours/day through automation
Enhance its disaster recovery solution with automated application synchronization
More.....

Here is the link to the webinar recording.

Thanks,
Aruna Ravichadran
NMC Product Marketing

Use case for ESX vSwitch policy compliance

steliodalo — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:46:00 GMT

I’ve been asked a few times now for an example of what some network engineers are doing with our HP Network Automation ESX driver. What kinds of things might you want to do with the vSwitch, which is not a very complex switch? How could the example I used earlier, CDP being turned off, happen when it’s policy to have it turned on for all switches, and you use cool NCCM automation like you have with HP NA to check configurations for policy compliance before they’re deployed?

What if the server admin chose to have it turned off when ESX was being tested in the lab, which really wouldn’t matter, but then that vSwitch configuration was not changed for the production servers? Now the vSwitches have CDP turned off. That won’t show up as an issue because you can’t see the devices when you run your compliance checks. But every vSwitch is out of compliance, and can’t be discovered using CDP. Double trouble. With HP NA you can discover the devices, test active configurations against policy, and then autoremediate. I just spoke to a customer that routinely rolls out 20-40 servers temporarily at month’s end to handle peak application load for one of their applications. Those are tens of vSwitches coming into and out of production over the course of a week or so for that one application, every month. For that period of time, the network team has no visibility into them coming or going, or what state they’re in while they are in production. And if there’s a performance issue, those devices, which connect to the physical network via physical NICs, come and go. How would you like to debug that performance issue?

Let’s go one step further. Wouldn’t it be cool if the ESX servers were managed by a server automation (SA) product with heterogeneous platform support that integrated with the network automation (NA) product with broad device support, so that SA could notify NA when the VMs were deployed. NA would bring them under management, run policy checks, auto remediate issues, and update a shared compliance dashboard? That would be data center automation. Shameless plug: hp.com/go/DCA. And if the NA product were integrated with fault, performance and IT process automation, then that would provide single-screen full network management automation. Another shameless plug: hp.com/go/ANLM. Why do I shamelessly plug our wares? Because the more I talk to network geeks, the more I hear that they had no idea how far we’ve come.

New Automated Network Lifecycle Management Solution Configurations

catalanotti — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:10:00 GMT

Hi, I’m, Joe Catalanotti, Product Marketing Manager with HP Network Management Center and I’d like to briefly introduce you to three new promotional Network Management bundles being offered for a limited time only - 1) Unified Fault and Performance Management, 2) Automated Network Lifecycle Management, and 3) Service Provider MPLS Infrastructure Management. The bundles contain the related network management products in solution form that would increase the value of your existing NNMi environment or completely install new. Also, each bundle offers a choice for how much of the network environment (nodes) you want to cover. I encourage you to discuss these bundle promotions with either your direct HP sales rep or your HPSW certified partner. Both can offer you these whole solution configurations at affordable pricing. In the meantime, I’ve anticipated some questions and provided answers for your convenience.

1. What is the HP NMC solution bundle promotion? Three distinct and affordable solution packages containing the necessary products to initially deploy fault/performance management, ANLM, or if you are a Service Provider, MPLS infrastructure monitoring and management. Each bundle is offered with either 250 nodes or 1000 nodes. Media kits are also included.

2. Can I add products to this offer? Not as part of these specific bundles. You may certainly add products outside of these bundle offerings.

3. What are the costs of the HP Bundles? Each bundle is priced affordably and vary due to the type of products and the different node amounts. Please refer to your rep for pricing information.

4. Who can I get these bundles from? Either your HP sales rep or your HPSW channel partner

5. What is the qualifying purchase period for this offer? From September 1, 2009 to March 1, 2010

6. Can I combine this with other HP promotional offers? Yes.

7. Is there a limit to the number of HP promotional bundles that I can purchase? No limit.

New NNMi integration module with IBM Netcool Software now shipping

aruna13 — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:50:00 GMT

We recently launched a new software product module which will now allow you to integrate NNMI with IBM's netcool software.

For more details on this integration, look at the latest NNMI deployment guide at:

http://support.openview.hp.com/selfsolve/document/KM763632/binary/nnmi_deployment_guide_81x_p5.pdf .

Read chapter à Integrations and Plug-ins à HP NNMi Integration Module for Netcool Software

Thanks,
Aruna Ravichandran

Sr. Product Marketing Manager,
Network Management Center, HP Software

aru@hp.com

The HP NNMi Integration Module for Netcool Software forwards NNMi management events as SNMPv2 traps to a Netcool/OMNIbus SNMP Probe on the NNMi management server. The probe filters the NNMi traps and forwards them to the Netcool/OMNIbus server. This module adds network-level fault and performance information to Netcool/OMNIbus, so that Netcool/OMNIbus users can detect and investigate potential network problem

The primary features of the integration module are as follows:

Automatic management event forwarding from NNMi to Netcool/OMNIbus.
Forwarded management events appear in the Netcool/Webtop event lists and the Netcool/OMNIbus Event List.
Access to the NNMi console from Netcool/Webtop and Netcool/OMNIbus.

NNMi integration with HP System Insight Manager ( HP SIM)

aruna13 — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:40:00 GMT

Hi,

I have had several questions lately asking about the integration between NNMi and HP System Insight Manager.

The HP NNMi–HP SIM integration provides actions for accessing several SIM tool from the NNMi console. Wit this integration,

NNMi users can detect and investigate potential network problems for HP ProLiant servers and storage devices.

Detailed documentation outlining this integration can be found in our latest version of deployment and configuration guide at:

http://support.openview.hp.com/selfsolve/document/KM763632/binary/nnmi_deployment_guide_81x_p5.pdf .

Read chapter à Integrations and Plug-ins à HP System Insight Manager

Thanks,
Aruna Ravichandran
Sr. Product Marketing Manager
Network Management Center,
HP Software
aru@hp.com

New Exciting Promotions with great discounts- live and kicking now !

aruna13 — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:15:00 GMT

Hello,

We are now offering 4 new exciting promotions which we just launched starting September 1st 2009 from HP Software Network Management Center !!!

In this blog post, I will cover 2 of the promotions and Joe Catalanotti, Sr. Product Marketing Manager for Network Performance Suite of products will introduce the other 2 promotions. I am responsible for the Fault and Availability Network Manager suite of products (NNMi/all the iSPIs). In short, I am "fault" and he is "performance", though I wish I could reverse it :-)

So, here are the details on these promotions....

3.645 HP Network Management Center (NMC) Promotion
3.644 - Back to the Future Promotion
3.643 - HP Automated Network Lifecycle Management (ANLM) Promotional bundles for New Opportunities Promotion
3.642 - HP Automated Network Lifecycle Management (ANLM) Promotional bundles for Installed base Promotion

3.645 HP Network Management Center (NMC) Promotion

Are you looking to buy the state of the art network management solution with the broadest and deepest integrations in the network management industry today ? Or are you an existing NNM/NNMi customer and want to expand your portfolio with advanced performance suite of products or our industry leader, HP Network Automation? If you answered yes to either of the above questions, then you now have the opportunity to buy these innovative products at a huge discount price !!!

3.644 - Back to the Future Promotion

Were you a previous HP Software Network Management customer? Are you unhappy with your current network management solution? If you answered yes to both these questions, then it is time to explore our our new innovative NNMi product? Now, you have the opportunity to come back to HP and get our innovative NNMi product at a steep discounted price.

Please contact your direct HP sales rep or your HPSW certified partner about these promotions as they are only available for a limited short time !!!

Joe, will be blogging about the other 2 promotions soon....

Regards
Aruna Ravichandran
Sr. Product Marketing Manager
Network Management Center, HP Software

aru@hp.com

HP announces support for ESX vSwitch virtual devices

steliodalo — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:28:00 GMT

Read the HP press release? Still wondering what we’ve added to HP Network Automation software? Here’s the straight talk. HP NA now supports ESX vSwitch devices. What does that mean? Well, we’ve had available for a while now a beta driver (www.hp.com/go/BSAEssentialsNetwork) that allows you to find and manage vSwitch devices using the same HP NA you’ve come to know and love to manage NCCM in your conventional network infrastructure. That means HP Network Automation software allows you to mange thousands of types of physical network devices, virtual devices such as Cisco FWSM and ACE modules, and now vSwitch devices as well.

Why does that matter? I’ll be writing more on this hot topic in future posts, but did you know that every ESX server has and embedded vSwitch? These virtual switches connect VMs and they connect also to the physical network. You know, the one you’re responsible for keeping up. Yup, that one. So now, let me ask you this – how many vSwitches are currently deployed in your IT environment? How many will be deployed next month? How about during the last week of your fiscal quarter? How are they configured? Are they compliant? What is the default CDP setting on vSwitches?

What does your policy call for? How will you enforce that policy with vSwtiches )? Okay, sorry, didn’t mean to scare you like that. But hey, it’s happening, so you might as well get a grip on it.

Want to take the first step? Download an excellent independent Impact Brief written by Jim Frey at Enterprise Management Associates (http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/about/team/Jim_Frey.php). You can buy it at EMA’s website, or read it from our website, www.hp.com/go/NAsoftware.

I’ll be back soon, giving you more to worry about. Unless, of course, you’re one of the many happy HP Network Automation customers. In that case, I’ll be giving you more reasons to be thrilled with your HP Network Automation software.

Using Opsware NAS? Might be a good time to consider upgrading to HP NA 7.5, virtually speaking.

Network Management at HP Software Universe

Michael_Procopio — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:46:00 GMT

by Michael Procopio

HP Software Universe is next week, 16-18 June, in Las Vegas. Network Management will be well represented.

Aruna Ravichandran is speaking in three sessions, you can see information on those at her post HPSoftware Universe/HP Technology Forum (HPTF) - Network Management sessions.

Here is the list of sessions, I have marked Aruna’s with an –A next to the session number:

Session ID	Title	Presenting company
1028	Deploying HP Performance Insight in large scale environments	HP
1076	HP Network Node Manager-i SPI for performance: become a power user in less than an hour	HP
1081-A	HP Network Node Manager 7 to 8i: a migration story	Melillo Consulting
1092	Melillo: how to deploy data center infrastructure monitoring in small and medium business environments	Melillo Consulting
1299	Integrating voice and video management into network operations	EMA
1345	NetScout: unified service-delivery management for improving application performance in the modern IP network	NetScout Systems
1353	Automated network lifecycle management: transforming network management to a fully integrated and automated approach with breakthrough ROI	HP
1354	HP Performance Insight: techniques to drive performance management productivity	HP
1403-A	HP Network Node Manager-i: a review of functionality that can yield significant ROI to your network management operations	HP
1404-A	Network Node Manager-i 8.11 Smart Plug-Ins: adding value to your network and fault management operations when deploying NNMi	HP
1410	HP Network Node Manager-i upgrade tips and tricks	HP
1411	HP Network Node Manager-i deployment by example	HP
1488	HP Network Node Manager-i upgrade tips and tricks	HP

You can get the details of all the Network Management sessions at the HP Software Universe Track Session Catalog.

I hope to see you there, but if you can’t make it we will be doing follow-up posts. You can also follow on Twitter, the hashtag is #HPSU09. There are already a number of Tweets and the show hasn’t started yet. The Twitter account for the show is HPSU09, if you’d like to follow us. Or visit the HP Software Universe Facebook page.

HPSoftware Universe/HP Technology Forum (HPTF) - Network Management sessions

aruna13 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:30:00 GMT

I will be presenting the following 3 sessions at HP Software Universe, which runs in 2 weeks from June 16th - 18th, at Venetian in Las Vegas. The overall theme of the conference is “focusing on initiatives that can deliver immediate improvements and rapid ROI.” All of my sessions fit very well into that theme. Here are the three sessions I will be presenting:

Session 1081 - HP Network Node Manager 7 to 8i: a Migration story - Thursday, June 18 09:00am - 10:00am Speaker(s):
Keith Wilson, Director, Melillo Consulting
Ken Herold, Principal Architect, Melillo Consulting
Aruna Ravichandran HP

Abstract:
Attend this session and hear how, at a time when most IT organizations were taking a wait-and-see approach to HP Network Node Manager-i version 8 (NNM 8i), a global consumer products company made the commitment to migrate NNM 7 to 8i in its production network management infrastructure. Presenters will explain how they migrated from NNM 7.5, running on three distributed Solaris servers and a DR server, to NNM 8i on a single primary server with one DR server. They’ll describe the project from proof of concept to 24 x 7 monitoring of nearly 6,000 nodes to eliminate two servers and client software, reduce the number of hardware vendors, simplify the management of NNM, and provide a complete disaster-recovery solution. They’ll cover the cultural and technical challenges of moving from UNIX to Windows, the training required to bring staff up to speed on NNM 8i, and the need to migrate custom action shell scripts to Windows without rewriting them. And you’ll come away with detailed knowledge that can make your migration to NNM 8i a success.

Session 1403 HP Network Node Manager-i: a review of functionality that can yield significant ROI to your network management operations
Speaker(s):
Aruna Ravichandran

Schedule
Tuesday, June 16
03:00pm - 04:00pm

Abstract:
This session will go into detail about the key features of HP Network Node Manager-i (NNMi) 8.11. Specific topics will include spiral L2/L3 discovery, advanced scalability, advanced root-cause analysis, the intuitive GUI with advanced map management, and the n-tier architecture. You will also learn how the innovative NNMi technology with the intuitive design, intelligent automation, and immense scalability delivered breakthrough ROI for one our NNMi customers.

Session - 1404 Network Node Manager-i 8.11 Smart Plug-Ins: adding value to your network and fault management operations when deploying NNMi
Speaker(s):
Aruna Ravichandran

Schedule
Wednesday, June 17
10:30am - 11:30am

Abstract:
The session will focus on the Smart Plug-ins (iSPI) that add value to NNMi. It will cover the features, capabilities, integrations, and benefits of the iSPI for Performance, iSPI for Network Engineering Toolset, iSPI for Multicast, iSPI for MPLS, and iSPI for IP Telephony.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are planning to attend HP Technology Forum which runs at the same time at Mandalay Bay, I will be presenting an ANLM (Automated Network Lifecycle Management) session along with the Product Manager, Pete Zwetkof. Here are the details to the HPTF session.

Session - 3780 - Automating Network Management

Speaker(s):
Aruna Ravichandran, Pete Zwetkof

Schedule
Wednesday, June 17
2:30pm - 3:30pm
Room: Surf F

Abstract:
This session will show how daily operational tasks around fault, performance, and configuration management can be automated, human errors reduced, and network availability improved with detailed usecases. A demonstration of integrated network management tools applied to common real-life network problems will visualize the concepts discussed. This session will provide you with a thorough understanding of the capabilities of automated network management. You’ll also understand the concepts of map-based management, continuous spiral discovery, causal engine and management by exception, and how to apply them to increase the efficiency of your network department. Through this session, you will gain insights into the use of automation to move beyond labor-intensive approaches to network management. Today labor accounts for 70 percent of IT costs. Networks continue to grow in size and complexity but IT staffs do not. The challenge is to increase IT staff productivity. The traditional silo approach of deploying point tools to address network management is inefficient. Manual processes used to manage the network are prone to human error.

Hoping to meet see you all soon !

Aruna

8.x Spiral Discovery Explained – Feature, Benefits, How is it different from 7.x discovery

Michael_Procopio — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:30:00 GMT

HP Network Node Manager i software offers continuous Layer-2 and Layer-3 network discovery as a feature known as Spiral Discovery. This feature avoids episodic loads on the network for management purposes, and allows NNMi to track dynamic changes in near real time. Spiral Discovery uses a variety of MIBs and protocols to reduce overhead and manage multivendor environments. This means that NNMi can discover network topology changes, and use that information, much sooner than previous versions or competitor products. The new architecture improves the CPU and Memory performance of NNMi, so your management system has ample capacity to monitor larger networks and more interfaces.

In Spiral Discovery, discovery and inventory data collection occur in stages where each stage provides information that is used to drive subsequent stages. This figure illustrates the process:

You define the starting points for discovery, and your NNMi configuration settings flexibly control address ranges and system object ID ranges, exceptions, and limits to be added to the NNMi database. When a device is identified, Spiral Discovery collects the basic information to understand what kind of device it is. That information, in turn, tells it what additional device inventory information is available and details are then collected, augmenting the inventory with additional information and connections that continue the process.

NNMi gathers information about neighboring devices using ARP cache, DNS, discovery protocols and other protocols including BGP, EIGRP and OSPF. In Wide Area Networks such as ATM, Frame Relay, and Point-to-Point (where ARP cache is not available), the optional Ping Sweep feature locates nodes for Spiral Discovery to use when gathering neighbor information and evaluating connections. A new system for modeling proprietary MIBs lets NNMi define device-specific collections that are incorporated into Spiral Discovery, capturing proprietary inventory information and correctly representing devices in both OSI layer 2 and OSI layer 3 topology. Further, if the device is found to support virtual network services like VPNs, VLANs, routing systems such as multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) and other technologies, then NNMi will develop and maintain the topology of that logical network overlay so it can be depicted for the operator and used in root cause analysis.

In addition to automatic discovery, NNMi also allows for connection editing and subnet connection rules to override the link-level discovery protocol information when needed. A higher precedence connection overwrites a lower precedence one if both data are available and conflict with each other. Discovery protocols employed by Spiral Discovery include CDP (Cisco), EDP (Extreme), NDP (SONMP-Nortel), FDP (Foundry), EnDP (Enterasys), and LLDP (link-level discovery protocol). You can also configure when you would like NNMi to proactively look for new devices and connections.

Benefits of this new technology in NNMi:

Spiral discovery is dynamic. It continuously discovers the existence of network devices —so network changes are quickly detected and incorporated into topology automatically. The topology is always up-to-date, enabling NNMi operators to identify and troubleshoot problems in real-time as they happen.
Spiral Discovery is extensive. It collects detailed information about each device, including component health such as CPU, memory, fans, and maintains the detailed inventory information in the NNMi database. Spiral Discovery determines how devices are related to each other in network topology and topology overlays like virtual private networks (VPNs) and virtual LANs (VLANs). It also discovers and understands routing cluster protocols (HSRP, VRRP) and Port Aggregation (NNMi Advanced feature only)
Spiral Discovery is automatically incorporated into Root Cause Analysis -- When things change in your environment, your topology accurately reflects those changes in near real-time, and the NNMi casual engine reacts to topology changes as they occur for quick analysis of root cause for incidents. In older causal analysis technologies such as codebook approaches, topology changes require a recompile of rules.
Spiral Discovery is extensible—designed so that HP can easily support new devices with NNMi as they become a part of your network in the future.
Spiral Discovery benefits not only the core NNMi product, but also all the associated iSPI products which add content, performance, and analysis detail.

Spiral Discovery with NNMi 8.x differs in many ways from the discovery engine which came with NNM 7.x. The NNM 7.x releases used an episodic discovery technology known as Extended Topology (ET) to find and create L2 connections. ET technology depended upon device-specific agents that used a device’s SNMP MIBs to acquire device information. The technology was not easily extensible, and changes were not discovered in real-time.

NNMi’s Spiral Discovery has dropped the outdated ET technology, as all connectivity logic has been rewritten using updated algorithms written exclusively in Java. Major benefits of refreshing the discovery technology are a reduction in technology complexity, superior node discovery rates and L2 connection creation performance. Moreover, NNMi L2 connection discovery also becomes dynamic and continuous. With properly configured state poll monitoring or via LinkDown/LinkUp traps, the L2 connection are updated instantly to accurately present up-to-date network topology. Competitive offerings still require batch or episodic processing of layer 2 connections.

In summary, NNMi Spiral Discovery is a key new technology that brings unique efficiency and depth to HP’s network management solution. HP has a 20-year legacy of commitment and success in this domain. Instead of resting on its laurels, HP has dedicated extensive development resources into NNMi’s java-based architecture and components, building an extensible platform to ensure HP will continue its leadership role for the next 20 years.

How does Discovery with NNMi differ from NNM 7.x discovery?

NNMi has just one consolidated discovery engine and one SNMP stack for both L2 and L3discovery that is easy to configure. NNM 7.x uses netmon and ET technology and 2 SNMP stack for L2 and L3 discovery.
Discovery is continuous and spiral with NNMi. The NNMi Spiral Discovery process provides ongoing updates to the topology information as changes occur in your network. Topology changes (both inventory and Layer 2) can be discovered more frequently than the scheduled rediscovery interval. Discovery is episodic and batch oriented with NNM 7.x
NNMi stores all the inventory and discovery information in one relational database – the built-in PostgreSQL database or Oracle database. Having a single relational database for holding all the inventory and discovery information, makes it faster, more reliable and more maintainable and very easy to do an online backup. NNM 7.x stores the data in Topology database, Object database, Map database, ET database which could be proprietary/Solid/oracle/MSSQL. Having different databases, makes it less reliable, and hard to maintain.
In NNMi, all discovered nodes are counted against the license limit regardless of the management mode ( managed , unmanaged , or out of service ). You cannot discover nodes beyond the license limit. With NNM 7.x, you could discover any number of nodes, and license only the nodes you managed.
NNMi Spiral discovery discovers device component health such as CPU, Memory, Buffers (needs iSPI for Performance) and Sensors such temperature, voltage and fan. This was not discovered in NNM 7.
Spiral discovery with NNMi Advanced automatically discovers and understands routing cluster protocols (HSRP, VRRP) and Port Aggregation (NNMi Advanced feature only). This feature in 7.x was available with ET discovery

Why do you need to set a discovery period if discovery runs ALL the time?

Continuous Spiral discovery uses "hints", such as the various boot traps, that appear in the network. These traps indicate possible changes in the network and trigger investigation by the discovery engine. If the network is very quiet, or if traps have been disabled, or if there is a trap consolidator, then spiral discovery might be handicapped. To prevent this possibility and to ensure accurate topology, a discovery period is established. Sort of like wearing a belt and suspenders to hold one's pants up.

Is there a way to throttle the discovery with NNMi?

With netmon (NNM 7.x discovery engine) if you set a discovery period to be once per week, netmon would spread that discovery over a 7 day period, thus we could "throttle" discovery to minimize SNMP traffic. There is no way to throttle the discovery with NNMi; it discovers "like crazy" until it completes the discovery and then goes into "hint mode" until the next discovery is triggered. Point here is that we don't have a throttle mechanism in NNMi but neither is SNMP a "heavy" protocol.

Is the Licensing for discovered nodes different than for Managed Nodes?

Yes. In NNMi, all discovered and managed nodes are counted against the license limit regardless of the state of the management mode ( managed , unmanaged , or out of service ). You cannot discover nodes beyond the license limit. With NNM 7.x, only managed nodes are counted against the license limit. NNM 7.x customer could discover any no. of nodes, and only license the nodes that are managed. Hence, if any of the 7.x customers are using the discovered nodes in their database, (i.e beyond the number of licensed/ managed nodes), they will not be able to now have access to all their discovered nodes unless they buy additional licenses for the discovered nodes as well.

Questions: Contact : Aruna Ravichandran – aru [at] hp.com

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Gartner gives HP Network Automation highest possible rating of Strong Positive

Michael_Procopio — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:27:00 GMT

by Stelio D'Alo

Network change and configuration management (NCCM) matters. That’s what network engineering teams are telling us. And when we check back with them, they often describe to us how the investment in our automation software paid for itself in months. I mention this because it’s a topic that everyone I talk to has on their mind: which IT software investments are safe bets? One of the reasons they are able to get that kind of ROI is because, they tell me, our app is easy to install and fast to become productive with, in part due to the browser-based GUI. More and more customers are starting to use HP NA (Network Automation) with HP NNMi (Network Node Manager i) and/or HP OO (Operations Orchestration) (see the Automated Network Lifecycle Management page hp.com/go/ANLM for additional material). As referenced in the Gartner report, the trend is towards linking Network Engineering to Network Operations and the rest of IT. Change management can be a pain , or it can be something that helps reduce mundane work and steal back some time to do those things that matter more. “Currently, NCCM tends to be a discipline unto itself, but in the future, it must increasingly be considered part of the configuration and change management processes for an end-to-end IT service and viewed as an enabler for the real-time infrastructure (RTI). This will require participation in the strategic, companywide change management process (usually implemented through the IT service desk tools) and integration with configuration management tools for other technologies, such as servers and storage.” Gartner MarketScope for Network Configuration and Change Management G00162055,Debra Curtis, David Williams, 21 November 2008*. You can access this report from our website on the HP Network Automation page under the +Analysts link, hp.com/go/NAsoftware. What’s your experience? Have you saved a ton of time with HP Network Automation software? If you have, and are willing to share an example, we’d love to hear from you.

I’m Stelio D’Alo a senior marketing manager for the Business Service Automation solution from HP Software. My background encompasses more than 20 years of industry experience in the fields of data center automation, enterprise software and telecommunications systems in Canada, Europe and the United States. I work with HP teams, including HP Partners, that help companies automate their data center operations with solutions including HP Network Automation, HP Network Node Manager and HP Operations Orchestration software.

*The MarketScope is copyrighted 21 November 2008 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The MarketScope is an evaluation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the MarketScope, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest rating. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose

HP Software Universe and the big announcements

Michael_Procopio — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:49:00 GMT

HP Software Universe is in Vienna, Austria this week.

We have a number of announcements we will make there this week in Business Availability Center, Business Service Automation, Operations Center, Service Center and uCMDB. The title of the news advisory is HP Unveils New Software Solutions for Better IT Operations Management.

Announcements

The Network Management Center (NMC) is announcing version 8.10 of NNMi, NNMi Advanced, a set of Smart Plug-ins and a number of new integrations. NMC is also part of the Better Business Service Management announcement.

NNMi v8.10 adds a number of features:

Advanced map support - hierarchical container views built from node groups
Thresholding on device metrics such as CPU and memory. Also checking status on items such as fans and power supplies
iSPI Performance also adds reporting on device metrics
Path View is enhanced to support integration (NNMi Advanced only) with HP Route Analytics software (RAMS). This shows directional equal cost multi-paths
Support for application level failover. This adds to the high availability support using cluster technology.
A new version of AlarmPoint, 4.0, is shipping in the box with NNMi 8.10
And an advanced version of NNMi with the creative name NNMi Advanced - which adds HP RAMS integration and support for virtualized networks: HSRP, VRRP and aggregated ports

Also announced are a set of new add-ons called Smart Plug-ins or iSPIs:

iSPI Network Engineering Toolkit - provides troubleshooting help. An embedded run time version of Operations Orchestration with run-books we wrote. A Find command to 1/ find where a host is connected to the network given an IP address, host name or MAC address and 2/ find all hosts connected to a switch. Trap analytics to help tune the management environment.
iSPI IP Telephony - discovery and management of Cisco and Nortel IP Telephony
iSPI Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) - discovery and management of MPLS including L3 VPNs, L2 VPNs and Traffic Engineered (TE) tunnels
iSPI IP Multicast - discovery and management of IP Multicast networks

And new integrations:

With HP RAMS for alerts and Path View in NNMi Advanced only
With HP Network Automation - synch of community strings, Access Control Lists (ACLs) and the like. Notification of maintenance windows so that NNMi won't send alerts during scheduled downtime.
With uCMDB - first NNMi becomes the authoritative source of network CIs. Also, NNMi can query uCMDB to find out which services the selected object rely on. This allows the operator to know, prior to taking a device offline, which important services might be impacted.
With Operations Manager - bidirectional sync of incidents. This and the uCMDB integration together allow all for complete ITIL closed loop incident process
With Real User Monitor (RUM) - to determine if an application slowdown RUM detected is more likely to be the network or not

All of this together is what we are calling Automated Network Lifecycle Management that I covered in the last post.

The connection with RUM is a part of Application Aware Network Management (AANM). Our integration with NetScout's nGenius is also part of AANM.

For more information on all of the above, go to the Automated Network Management Lifecycle page.

Vienna

The Network Management Center is also on the demo floor at HP Software Universe Vienna. The NMC training sessions are:

Tuesday, December 9^th

TS-TU-1700/2 HP Network Node Manager i-series: Ready for Primetime, a deep dive presentation

- Pete Zwetkof, Product Manager NNMi

- Larry Besaw, R&D Architect NNMi

Wednesday, December 10^th

TS-WE-1015/5 Automated Network Lifecycle Management Technical Blueprint

- Pete Zwetkof, Product Manager NNMi

TS-WE-1515/A HP Network Management Center Advanced Workshop

- Pete Zwetkof, Product Manager NNMi

Thursday, December 11^th

TS-TH-0900/8 HP Network Node Manager i-series: deployment, migration and optimization

- Kevin Smith, R&D Engineer NNMi

BS-TH-1500/1 Users like simplicity; serve them through automated operations

- Thomas Edberg, HP

- Lars Erik Gjervan, NetCom, Norway

This post is getting long so I will end for now but I'll have additional posts on Vienna and the products later.

For the Network Management Center - Michael Procopio

Salt Lake City UT ANLM seminar

Michael_Procopio — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:08:00 GMT

If you are in the Salt Lake City, UT, area please join us for a seminar. We are doing this with our partner Greenlight Group. We will be covering the HP Automated Network Lifecycle Management (ANLM) solution. The event is this Thursday 11 Dec 2008; the invite is here.

I haven't covered ANLM yet in the blog so let me provide some background.

The product most folks know us for is Network Node Manager, no surprise - it has been around for 15 years. But we have done a lot more since NNM came out, even beyond the NNMi re-write. The integration of these other products are what we call ANLM.

We built a Smart Plug-in for NNMi called the iSPI for Performance; it provides unified fault and performance. It collects interface and device metrics and reports on them. The "so what" about this iSPI is it can show you the performance information on the NNMi map and a in a path view.

We have a product called HP Route Analytics software or RAMS. This product connects to the network like a router. It listens to and records the router-to-router messages. With this information, RAMS can show a complete network, detect changes in real time and do "what if" analysis

We purchased Opsware and got NAS, now called HP Network Automation (NA). This is a network change and configuration management (NCCM) system. As part of ANLM, we have a tight integration between NNMi and NA.

We also got Opsware Process Automation, now called HP Operations Orchestration (OO). This is IT process automation (or Run-book automation) software. We have built a Smart Plug-in for NNMi called iSPI for Network Engineering Toolkit (iSPI NET) that uses an embedded version to OO to implement run-books for troubleshooting network problems.

HP Performance Insight reporting software has been around for a while and integrates with NNMi as well.

HP Universal Configuration Management Database (uCMDB) came from a combination of organic investment and acquisitions. The integration with NNMi makes NNMi the authoritative source of network Configurations Items (CIs) and allows NNMi to determine the potential impact of a network device on an upper level service (ex: order entry).

NNMi is also integrated with HP Business Availability Center's Real User Monitor and Operations Manager (formerly OVO). The connection with Real User Monitor allows the detection of an application slowdown to directly launch an NNMi path view to see the performance along the path. This quickly tells the operator this is likely a network problem or likely not a network problem providing faster problem isolation.

These are all the components that make up ANLM; we will be talking about how their integration helps folks do a better job managing their networks at reduced cost and showing demonstrations. I'll do a post next week on how the event went.

For the Network Management Center - Michael Procopio