Network Management Center Blog : Automated Network Lifecycle Management

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

Register for HP IP Telephony Lifecycle Management Technical Webinar - Live - Oct 20th

aruna13 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:37:00 GMT

Hello,

Are you looking for a network management solution to manage your IPT Infrastructure? An increasing number of enterprises are faced with the challenge of supporting and maintaining IP telephony systems from multiple IP-PBX vendors.In this live webinar session you will learn the key challeges faced by enterprises, along with technical use cases on how HP's Smart Plug-in (iSPI) for IP Telephony along with Clarus Systems can help you in the IP Telephony lifecycle including plan, design, implement, operate and optimze. This is technical webinar geared towards usecases to help you understand how you can solve your IP Telephony challenges with HP's solution.

You can pre-register for the webinar at:

http://hpbroadband.com/program.aspx?key=5831Telephony20Oct09

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Length: 60 minutes

Time: 8:00 PDT /11:00 EDT/17:00 CET

Speakers:

        Aruna Ravichandran, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, HP Network Management Center, HP Software
        Anil Kuriakose, Product Manager, HP Network Management Center, HP Software
        David Roberts, Director for Product Management, Clarus Systems.

Thanks,

Aruna

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

Automated Network Lifecycle Management (ANLM) Webinar available now

aruna13 — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:04:00 GMT

Listen to an on-demand webinar with leading industry network analyst Jim Metzler and Stelio D'Alo from HP's Network Management Center and hear them discuss:

Trends that are driving IT over the next 2 years
The changing practice of network management
The simple steps that can transform your network management processes using HP's Automated Network Lifecycle Management (ANLM) solution

Here is the link to the on-demand webinar now.

Thanks,
Aruna Ravichandran

Your "friendly" HP network management product marketing manager

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

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

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