Search results matching tag 'OMi'

Software Universe in Hamburg sneak preview

pspielvogel — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:53:00 GMT

Software Universe is only five weeks away. We hold this event twice each year, alternating between a United States and European location. The upcoming event is in Hamburg at the Congress Centre Hamburg (CCH) from Wednesday, December 16th – Friday, December 18th 2009.

(If you missed our last Software Universe in Las Vegas, you can download some of the presentations here.)

I’m very excited about this year’s show, as it gives me a chance to connect with many European customers and colleagues, many of whom I have only “met” through email and phone calls. In addition, there are many interesting presentations. Some highlights* (based on their relevancy to managing IT infrastructure - both physical and virtual) include:

Wednesday December 16

16:00-16:45	Optimizing cost by automating your ITIL v3 processes Jeroen Bronkhorst, Hewlett-Packard
17:00 - 17:45	“Monitoring ....inside the Cloud" Vincenzo Asaro, Telecom Italia
18:00 - 18:45	Orchestrating Virtual Infrastructures with HP OO Ralph Capasso, Hewlett-Packard

Thursday December 17

09:00 - 09:45	Automating operations management with HP Operations Orchestration Ralph Capasso, Hewlett-Packard
09:00 - 09:45	HP management of VMware vSphere: How does VMware fit in with your HP Software Infrastructure? Terry Lyons, VMware
10:00 - 10:45	The all new Operations Center licensing model: escaping the hardware bonds Jon Haworth and Peter Crosby, Hewlett-Packard
11:45 - 12:30	HP Operations Manager i: Best practices and lessons learned at CMT Kai-Uwe Jensen, Hewlett-Packard
15:15 - 16:00	BTO Impact of Virtualization on IT Management Dennis Corning, Hewlett-Packard
15:15 - 16:00	Operations Center, the road ahead Norm Follett, Hewlett-Packard
16:30 - 17:15	HP Operations Manager on Linux Lillian Hull and Hans-Peter Schmollinger, Hewlett-Packard
16:30 - 17:15	Capabilities in a Virtualized environment Lutz Bartsch, Hewlett-Packard

Friday December 18

09:00 - 09:45	Virtualization SPI - VMware management plug-in for HP Operations Center Jagannath Harish Gangaiah, Hewlett-Packard
11:45 - 12:30	HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping: a solution to regain control on your infrastructure Thomas Wirtz, Hewlett-Packard
11:45 - 12:30	Integrated approach to monitoring and the challenges encountered and overcome Mark Laird and Romain Maitret, Steria Ltd

* dates, times, and speakers subject to change

Hope to see you there.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

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Operations Manager Basics (product overview videos)

pspielvogel — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:29:00 GMT

I spent the past two days in a planning meeting with my product marketing peers from different product groups including infrastructure monitoring, application monitoring, network monitoring, CMDB, service management, and IT financial management. We reviewed all our respective product plans and our go to market strategies (you will need to watch during the year to learn what we decided). While everyone had some idea about what high-level problems each product line solves, some people were not familiar with specific Operations Manager functionality, especially the current version's capabilities.

They asked for the fastest and easiest way to come up to speed. After some thought, I pointed them to two videos - one for Operations Manager (focused on consolidated event and performance management) and another for Operations Manager i (focused on advanced event reduction using topology-based event correlation). I have posted the links below.

HP Operations Manager
Peter Spielvogel and Jon Haworth discuss how Operations Manager allows customers to monitor heterogeneous IT environments, reduce management costs, and speed time to problem resolution.

(While the demo is on Operations Manager on Windows (OMW), the functionality is virtually the same for Operations Manager on Linux (OML) and Operations Manager on Unix (OMU).)

HP Operations Manager i
Jon Haworth and Dan Haller talk about increasing IT event processing efficiency with OMi.

If you have additional questions, please let me know.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

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The full stack (OMW, SiteScope, OMi, NNM, Service Desk, CMDB)

pspielvogel — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:35:00 GMT

As I was getting ready to leave yesterday, a colleague stopped by my desk and asked “do you want to be a hero?” That certainly peaked my interest. It turned out we had a customer downstairs in our executive briefing center that wanted some clarification about all the pieces of our stack fit together.

Background
The customer was the CTO of a major IT firm in the Asia-Pacific region. They manage approximately 4,000 servers using OMW 8.1. They use both agents and SPIs, as well as SiteScope agentless monitoring. In addition, they monitor the faults and performance of their network using NNM, and roll those events into their Operations Manager console. In addition, they use Service Desk 4.5 along with a CMDB (configuration management database) that tracks all the configuration items and relationships among them across their enterprise. A *very* rough schematic of what they have appears in the diagram below in red.

Our discussions were divided into two main areas:
1. What they are doing today and what they should be doing?
2. What can they do in the future?

Current Situation
The first question was about best practices. Were they using the software correctly to manage their infrastructure? The answer is a resounding yes. They use OMW as the central event management console, collecting data from agents, SiteScope (agentless monitoring), and NNM for network events.

And, they integrate their service desk with OMW, opening and closing tickets, and tracking changes to the IT infrastructure in their CMDB. They implemented the CMDB about two years ago, in conjunction with their Service Desk implementation.

Next Steps
The next questions focused on what should they be doing or what can they do next to improve their IT management.

We started with a discussion about OMi. The customer was confused about how OMi fits with OMW - the first question was whether it replaces OMW, whether they receive OMi as part of an upgrade (entitlement), and finally, what specific value OMi provides since they currently use OMW as the centralized event consolidation tool.

As readers of this blog know, OMi is a separate product that adds on to Operations Manager. (See green box at top of the above diagram). Its main value is that it leverage the system topology information in the CMDB to greatly speed the time to repair IT problems, especially in complex environments. We have many resources to learn more about OMi, including:
Product overview
High-level webinar on OMi
Deep-dive technical webinar on OMi
Answers to technical questions on OMi

The next topic was automation. We talked about how companies use Operations Orchestration (OO) to automate their IT processes (runbooks). OO uses events in OM to trigger its process flows. The good news was that this customer has spent the past two years documenting and improving their IT processes. They already know what processes occur frequently and how much manual effort they require. This may be the next logical step for them as it leverages their existing IT infrastructure and processes. EMA recently write a white paper on how process automation augments event consolidation.

Migration Challenges
One issue that arose was that the CMDB connected to their service desk is not the latest UCMDB that OMi uses for its topology-based event correlation (TBEC). The customer has two options here.
1. Leave the existing CMDB in place and let OMi create an operational data store that contains the configuration information it needs. The advantage of this approach is that it leaves the current management infrastructure intact and just adds OMi on top. OMi uses the SPIs to auto-discover the IT infrastructure and relationships among the elements. OMi’s data store is self-contained and requires minimal external input.
2. Migrate the existing CMDB associated with Service Desk to the latest version of UCMDB. The advantage of this approach is that the customer ends up with a single CMDB. They can migrate their existing data using a tool such as ICM (information consolidation manager) from Netscope.

Conclusions
For organizations already integrating their events into a single Operations Manager console, you are on the right track. If you already use a CMDB to track your IT infrastructure, you are very far along the IT management maturity curve, even more so if you use some means of automatic discovery to keep it current.

To take things to the next level, you have two options: focus on further event correlation and reduction with OMi or automate your existing IT processes with Operations Orchestration. You can pursue these in series or in parallel, depending on your priorities. Both will deliver a tangible return on investment and fast payback period.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

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Network Management Customer Success Story (webinar)

pspielvogel — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:29:00 GMT

My colleague, Aruna Ravichandran, in Network Management Center Product Marketing, asked me to share information about a customer webinar in which they describe their success in upgrading to NNMi. Since many Operations Bridges also manage networks in addition to the server infrastructure, I agreed. As an aside, OMi and NNMi share the same underlying technology in their respective causal engines.

Listen to this on-demand webinar with a customer working for a leading $15 Billion consumer manufacturing company. You will get the complete story on their upgrade to NNMi. The speaker focuses on the ROI he was able to demonstrate to his management to justify spending the time and resources to go through the upgrade process.

In this webinar, you will learn how the 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

Here is the link to the recorded ROI webinar.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

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Fighting or friendly, Problem Isolation and OMi

Michael_Procopio — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:27:00 GMT

by Michael Procopio

In the post Event Correlation OMi TBEC and Problem Isolation What's the Difference, my fellow blogger, Jon Haworth, discussed the differences between TBEC and Problem Isolation. To be consistent, I'll use the acronyms PI for Problem Isolation and TBEC to refer to OMi (Operations Manager i series) Topology Based Event Correlation.

Briefly, he mentioned that TBEC works “bottom up”, that is starting from the infrastructure, with events. PI works “top down”, that is, starting from an end user experience problem, primarily with metric (time series) data.

Jon did an excellent job describing TBEC; I’ll do my best on PI because like Jon I have a conscience to settle.

Problem Isolation is a tool to:

1. automate the steps a troubleshooter would go through

2. run additional tests that might uncover the problem

3. look at all metric/performance data from the end user experience monitoring and all the infrastructure it depends

4. find the infrastructure metric the most closely matches the end user problem using behavior learning and regression analysis techniques (developed by HP Labs)

5. bring additional data such as events, help/service desk tickets and changes to the troubleshooter

6. allow the troubleshooter to execute Run books to potentially solve the problem

Potentially the biggest difference in the underlying technology is that Problem Isolation does not require any correlation rules or thresholds to be set for it to do the regression analysis to point to the problem. Like TBEC, it does require that an application be modeled in a CMDB.

An example: Presume a situation with a typical composite application - web server, application server and database. No infrastructure thresholds were violated; therefore, there are no infrastructure alerts. Again, as mentioned in the previous post, end user monitoring (EUM) is the back stop. EUM alerts on slow end user performance, now what?

Here is what Problem Isolation does:

1. determines which infrastructure elements (ITIL configurations items or CIs) support the transaction

2. reruns the test(s) that caused the alert – this validates it is not transient problem

3. runs any additional tests defined for the CIs

4. collects Service Level Agreement information

5. collects all available infrastructure performance metrics (web server, application server, database server and operating systems for each) and compares them to the EUM data using behavior and regression analysis

Problem Isolation screen show performance correlation between end user response and SQL Server database locks

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6. determines and displays the most probable suspect CI and alternates

7. displays run books available for all infrastructure CIs for the PI user to run directly from the tool

8. allows the PI user to attach all the information to a service ticket, either existing or create a new one

Another key differentiator of OMi/TBEC and PI is the target user. There is such a wide variance in how organizations work that it is hard to name the role but let me do a brief description and I think will be able to determine the title in your organization.

There are some folks in the organization whose job is to take a quick look (typically < 10 minutes, in one organization I interviewed < 1 minute) at a situation and determine if they have explicit instructions on what to do via scripts or run books. When they have no instructions for a situation they pass it on to someone who has a bit more experience and does some free form triage.

This person might be able to fix the problem or may have to pass it on to a subject matter expert, for example if they believe it is an MS Exchange problem to an Exchange admin. It is this second person that Problem Isolation is targeted at. This is helping automate her job, reducing what might take tens of minutes to hours and performing it in seconds. If it ends up she can’t solve the problem it automatically provides full documentation of all information collected. That alone might take someone five minutes to write-up.

OMi’s target is the operations bridge console user. Ops Bridge operators tend to be lower skilled and face hundreds if not thousands of events per hour. Jon described how OMi helps them work smarter.

TBEC and Problem Isolation both work to find the root cause of an incident but in different ways. Much like a doctor might use an MRI or CAT scan to diagnose a patient based on what the situation is, TBEC and Problem Isolation are complementary tools each with unique capabilities.

Problem Isolation will not find problems in redundant infrastructure that OMi will. Conversely, OMi can’t help with EUM problems when no events are triggered, where Problem Isolation will.

We know this can be a confusing area. We welcome your questions to help us do a better job of describing the difference. But these two are definitely friendly.

For Business Availability Center, Michael Procopio

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Related Items

Everything you wanted to know about OMi... (Q&A from Vivit technical webinar)

pspielvogel — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:08:00 GMT

Thank you to everyone who attended the Vivit webinar. The recording is now available for viewing on Vivit’s web site. You can also download or view the presentation slides in PDF format. There were many questions from the audience. Jon Haworth and Dave Trout's answers appear below. I have grouped questions by topic.

Product Structure

Are these 3 different modules to be purchased separately? (topology, event and service views)	Yes three different modules. OMi Event Management Foundation is the base product and is a requirement before either of the other two products can be installed. OMi Health Perspective Views and OMi Topology Based Event Correlation are optional modules.
How is the licensing done?	There are three separate OMi modules. OMi Event Management Foundation is the base product and is a requirement before either of the other two products can be installed. OMi Health Perspective Views and OMi Topology Based Event Correlation are optional modules. Each module is priced / licensed separately and the pricing model is 'flat' - you purchase the license(s) required and that is all (no CPU or tier or connection based pricing).
How does that scale to thousands of machines?	Since we have just introduced OMi, we don't yet have a lot of "real" scalability data to report. However our internal testing so far indicates that OMi can handle the typical event rates handled by OMW/OMU in terms of forwarding events. Like OM today, the scalability of the total solution is not so much limited by how many thousands of machines are being managed but on the total event rate being handled.

Integration with Operations Manager, BAC, UCMDB

Is there any description about the interface between OM and OMi.	There are two interfaces used: 1) Message forwarding from OM to OMi, and 2) Web Services interface for message changes and Topology synchronization.
How is the integration with Operations Manager on Unix?	As mentioned during the webinar, OMi requires either OMU or OMW as the event consolidation point for forwarding events into OMi. The event forwarding is configured in OM exactly the same way as if forwarding to another OM server. For message updates and topology synchronization, a Web Services interface is used.
Since it was mentioned it works with both OMU 9.0 and OMW 8.10, does it work with the mentioned SPIs on both platforms ?	Yes. We are updating the SPIs to be "OMi ready". What this really means is that we're adding a little extra information to the event messages (via Custom Message Attributes) to make it 'easier' for OMi to associate a message with the correct CI in the UCMDB and to include specific indicators needed for the TBEC rules in OMi. For OMU 9 we will release some updated SPIs soon which include enhanced discovery - very similar levels of discovery to what OMW has. The discovery subsystem is an area that we enhanced in OMU 9 and we want to be able to use the SPI discovery data as the 'starting point' for populating and maintaining CI and relationship information in the UCMDB - which is what helps to drive the logic in OMi.
How flexible are the integration with BAC products? Are these factory built and need factory to modify due to target environment requirement	OMi and BAC use the same UCMDB instance so they are tightly integrated 'out of the box'. OMi is completely built on top of the BAC platform technology. It supports the same security mechanisms, the same HA configuration options, the same user/group definitions, etc. In short, OMi is just like any other BAC "application" that is leveraging the platform.
In the installation guide, it says that one of the requirements is to install the "BSM platform". What exactly do you understand on "BSM platform"?	BSM platform means "BAC". OMi 8.10 requires BAC 8.02 as the BSM platform.
Can you run OMi without BSM?	No, the BSM platform provides the user interface 'framework' and the runtime UCMDB. OMi plugs into the BSM foundation.
Which security model will take precedence - OMU responsibility matrix or the BAC security for views?	OMi security is entirely based on the BAC platform features. Access to OMi views, admin UIs, etc. is all controlled through the standard BAC security features (users/groups, roles, permissions, etc.)
Which security model will take precedence - OMU responsibility matrix or the BAC security for views?	OMi security is entirely based on the BAC platform features. Access to OMi views, admin UIs, etc. is all controlled through the standard BAC security features (users/groups, roles, permissions, etc.)
What is the price policy if you have / have not BAC already installed?	Having BAC installed makes no difference to the price. OMi includes all components needed (runtime UCMDB etc.) in the license. Pricing is based on a 'flat' price for each of the three modules (see earlier question). You need to contact your local HP sales representative to obtain local pricing.
CI treeview scale?	The CI Tree view is basically a UCMDB VIEW/TQL under the covers. TQLs in UCMDB are tuned for VERY efficient retrieval of CI information.

Integration with Ticketing Systems (Service Manager, Service Center)

How does OMi interact with any ticketing system like Service Manager or Service Center. Will the Ci's health be reflected based on ticket info?	In this first release of OMi, there is no direct interaction with a ticketing system. The interaction is driven through the existing OM (OMW or OMU) to Service Manager / Service Center interface. Because OMi synchronizes message changes back to the OM server that it is connected to, trouble tickets can be triggered from that OM server.
How does this interface to Service Manager 7?	The interface to SM 7 is driven through the existing OM (OMW or OMU) interface to Service Manager. Because OMi synchronizes message changes back to the OM server that it is connected to, trouble tickets can be triggered from that OM server.
The slides implied "assignment" which looked similar to NNMi. How do the new features of OMi integrate to Service Manager?	The concept of assignment is 'internal' to OMi. In many organizations the tier 1 support personnel will deal with non Business Service impacting issues without raising a trouble ticket. NOTE: this is purely dependent on the individual process and organization structure that is selected, we know that a lot of companies work this way to minimize the number of TTs. Some organizations insist that every actionable 'incident' becomes a TT. Where an event is dealt with in OMi then assignment makes sense, where events are forwarded to SM7 or another TT system then assignment will likely take place in the Incident / Helpdesk system.
Will OMi integrate with ITSM (change management app from Front Range)? Also, I'm assuming that we will need to purchase CMDB for event correlation regardless - is that true?	Cannot comment on the Front Range application. It is likely that an integration may be possible but it would be wise to verify with the vendor what external interfaces they provide for integrating event management systems with their product. No you do not need to purchase UCMDB - we provide a 'free' runtime with OMi.

UCMDB, Discovery and Smart Plug-Ins (SPIs)

Is it necessary to have UCMDB to have OMi?	OMi ships with a "BAC 8.02" media kit. This actually provides the BSM PLatform - including UCMDB - and is licensed using your OMi license key. If you do not have an existing UCMDB then this will provide a runtime UCMDB as part of the OMi product package. If you have an existing BAC 8.02 installed (which includes UCMDB) then you can utilize that for OMi.
Is discovery best done in OMi or uCMDB?	All discovery data is maintained in the UCMDB. The 'base' discovery for OMi will be provided by the Smart PlugIns that have been deployed from the OMW or OMU instance that OMi is connected to. Additional discovery data can be added to the UCMDB - for example from NNMi or DDM - and OMi will make use of this discovery data if it exists. If using DDM for discovery, DDM-Advanced is recommended since it can discover not only hosts but also applications and their relationships.
Can you please tell me if DDMi can be used as a feed?	Yes. Servers discovered by DDMi are inserted into UCMDB. However be aware that DDMi does not discover applications and dependencies/relationships. DDM-Advanced is the recommended discovery approach if you plan to use OMi and leverage the TBEC rules in particular.
If uCMDB already has CIs populates by DDM, would the new sources like NNMi , SPIs conflict with them , in other words do we need a clean uCMDB ?	No. A clean UCMDB is not required. OMi is designed to work with CIs reqardless of how they are discovered and inserted into the UCMDB. In general, reconciliation of CIs discovered from multiple sources is handled automatically.
Can you clarify what you mean by "we are including these SPIs"? Does this mean it's part of the shrink wrap deliverable with OMi? What specifically will the virtualization SPI provide? We were considering another product for that space, but want to hear more about those capabilities.	We are not including SPIs with OMi. We are including pre-defined content (event type indicator mappings, health indicators, TBEC correlation rules) for the SPIs that we noted. If you have these SPIs deployed then the time to value when OMi is deployed will be very quick. HP released a SPI for Virtualized Infrastructure monitoring earlier this year. Initial focus is on VMware but we will be providing an update soon with more features. You can contact your HP Software Sales Representative to get more details of the specific functionality provided.
What is the virtualization SPI? Is it nWorks SPI ?	No. HP released the Smart PlugIn for Virtualized Infrastructure early in 2009. This is a HP developed and marketed product.
nWorks is the "SPI" we were considering	This is a different SPI and is based on a different architecture (agentless polling). It has no OMi content at present and it will be the responsibility of Nworks / Veeam to provide this.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

What is a KPI?	KPI - means Key Performance Indicators
where do you define the KPIs?	OMi provides four KPIs to the BAC platform: Operations Performance, Operations Availability, Unresolved Events, Unassigned Events. These are defined by OMi, not by users. What IS configurable is which Health Indicators (HIs) are assigned to impact either the Operations Performance or Operations Availability KPI for specific CI Types. This is done using the Indicator Manager in OMi.
If the difference is KPI, why data is not collected from PM. Instead I see that the data is collected from OVPA & OV agents.	OMi is focused around event processing. Events (alerts) are 'collected' from OVPA and OV agents to enable operations staff to understand what needs to be 'fixed'. PM (Performance Manager) is one tool that can be used to assist in the analysis / diagnosis of performance problems. PM is actually integrated into the OMi user interface.

Topology-Based Event Correlation (TBEC)

In the slide with "Carol" and "Bill", they applied their knowledge to (I guess) develop some rules? Is that work that still has to be done manually? What were they developing - KPIs?	No not KPIs. The example is there to show how TBEC rules are simple to create but that the correlation engine 'chains' them together to provide quite complex correlations logic which adapts based on the topology that has been discovered. We (HP) are providing content (Event Type Indicators, Health Indicators, TBEC rules as per "Carol and Bill") for a number of our existing Operations Manager Smart PlugIns with OMi and we will continue to add additional content moving forwards. The example in the slide is there to illustrate the process (simple process) of creating very powerful correlation rules which adapt to changes in the discovered infrastructure. You would only need to undertake this process where HP does not provide out of the box content with OMi.
I have some questions regarding the TBEC, is there any experience regarding the performance? How many events can be handled by the correlation engine per sec?	The engine is tuned for very high performance. It is basically the same engine that is used in NNMi for correlations.
With topology synchronization with NNMi do you have to have OMi licenses for every node in NNMi as well? ... I.E. if you are using Topology Synchronization with NNMi will it only show the nodes from NNMi that have OMi agents installed?	No. All CIs in the UCMDB are visible to OMi. No additional license costs are required for NNMi nodes which are added to the UCMDB.
Which language is used for the correlation rules? And where are the rules defined ? (UCMDB?)	TBEC is configured in the OMi Correlation Manager GUI, there is no programming language involved. The rules are based on topology (a View from the UCMDB) and on specific Health Indicators with specific HI values.
Does OMi support the execution of validation routines when closing an Alert/Event that also closes other related items?	Not currently out of the box. There are several configurable settings which affect TBEC behavior (e.g. correlation time window, automatic extension of time windows, etc.), but currently this is not one of them. We are considering additional options for the future.

OMi Features

Scalability, High Availability Cluster Support? Estimated max seats before going distributed?	OMi supports the same cluster/HA features as supported by BAC. For example, you can have multiple gateway servers connected to a clustered Data Processing Server and a remote database server. In this case, OMi software is installed on each of these separate servers (gateways and DPS). In general, the "max seats before going distributed" (i.e. adding gateway servers) would be driven by the same considerations as documented for BAC itself. More information specific to OMi environments will be available over time as we have a chance to do further testing and characterization.
Does OMi have a reports generator showing things like daily TBEC, etc.?	Not currently. However the BAC reports (e.g. KPIs over Time) can be used to look at how the OMi KPIs are changing over time on CIs.
Comment: We feel that most of these features being discussed in OMi should have been as an upgrade to OMW. Too many modules to buy and try to integrate ourselves. For example we wanted a better version of the OVOWeb to come as an upgrade in OMW8.1. Too many products to buy just to manage our network.	OMi is providing discreet and incremental value above and beyond what is provided in OMW or OMU. We are continuing to enhance both OMW and OMU (for example the recent release of OMU 9.0) and customers who are happy with the capabilities of these platforms can continue to move forwards and take advantage of the enhancements that we are providing. There is no requirement to move to OMi.
We feel we are being charged for features that were supposed to be in products that we already purchased. We are not happy about the tactic of releasing new products to fix features that were advertised in prior software. As a consultant, even I get lost in the vast amount of monitoring tools being sold by HP.	OMi is providing discreet and incremental value above and beyond what is provided in OMW or OMU. This functionality was never offered as part of OMW or OMU - it is new and unique to OMi. The reality is that it would have been extremely difficult, and time consuming (slow to release) to provide the high value capabilities of OMi within OMW or OMU. The strategy we have choosen is to base these new capabilities on a 'clean' build based on contemporary technologies - but HP has specifically ensured that existing OM customers who wish to take advantage of these new capabilities can do so without having to disrupt their existing OM installation.
I had some issue when trying to setup and run the synchronization tool and event forwarding. Who can I contact?	You should contact your normal HP support channel for assistance.

Other

Is there an estimated time line for detailed technical training on OMi?	We have just run a series of virtual instructor led training sessions for our partners. HP Education Services will be releasing an OMi class in the near future.
Where can I get an evaluation version of OMi?	You can request a DVD from the trial software web site. A download will be available at http://www.hp.com/go/omi soon.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

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Innovation Week Part 2 - Operations Manager i 8.1

pspielvogel — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:01:00 GMT

While OMU 9.0 represents evolutionary innovation, Operations Manager i 8.1 (OMi) is truly revolutionary. Operations Manager i is a set of add-on products which extends existing HP Operations Manager to provide advanced event correlation and system health capabilities.

It uses the proven causal engine from NNMi with a completely new set of rules designed for server infrastructure rather than network components. This topology-based event correlation reduces duplication of effort in the Operations Bridge by automatically determining which events are symptoms and which are the cause of a problem. If you don’t have TBEC, you have to write and maintain a ton of rules to eliminate events that are symptoms and not causes. This is time consuming (eight full-time people for a medium-sized European bank) and error prone.

Conservative estimates indicate that OMi can save over $3 million annually in event processing per year for a company the size of HP. If I can get the real numbers next year, I will post them here.

To learn more about OMi, you can attend a Vivit webinar on July 21, 2009 or EMA webinar on July 28, 2009.

For Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Free Webinar: HP Operations Manager i Software Deep Dive Presentation

pspielvogel — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:34:00 GMT

My colleague and consolidated event management expert Jon Haworth is the guest speaker at an upcoming Vivit webinar on Tuesday July 21 . Vivit is the independent HP Software users community.

Jon will talk about using an operations bridge effectively and how the latest advanced correlation and visualization technology can help you reduce downtime. His presentation will address:
• What are the major differences between HP Operations Manager and HP Operations Manager i software?
• How does Topology Based Event Correlation (TBEC) work?
• How does HP OMi fit into my existing Operations Manager environment?

There will be plenty of time for Jon to answer your questions at the end of the session.

For Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Free Webinar: 5 Tips to Reduce Incident Resolution Costs

pspielvogel — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:22:00 GMT

On Tuesday July 28, I will be participating in an EMA webinar with researcher and Vice President Dennis Drogseth. The official title “What is New in the Not-so-New Area of Event Management: Five Tips to Reduce Incident Resolution Costs” is very telling. Many people believe that there is nothing new in managing IT infrastructure. The reality is that some of HP’s biggest R&D investments have been in this area.

Displaying disparate events may not be rocket science, but correlating events from different IT domains to determine which is the cause and which are the symptoms certainly is. This is exactly the premise of OMi, which uses topology-based event correlation (TBEC) to consolidate event storms into actionable information.

Here’s the webinar abstract:

Event management may not be the next new thing but it is quietly making dramatic advances that can save your company both time and money. These new approaches rely on understanding up-to-date service dependencies to accelerate problem resolution.

During the 45 minute webinar, we will answer the following questions.

Why should you reconsider your event and performance management strategy?
What is the impact of ITIL v3 and the concept of an operations bridge on your people, processes, and tools?
What innovations can help you more cost-effectively manage events?

We will also leave time at the end to address your questions.

For Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Customer Advisory Board for BSM at Software Universe

pspielvogel — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:24:00 GMT

Today was the first day of Software Universe. I attended the parts of the Customer Advisory Board meeting that pertained to Operations Manager.

Some common issues emerged from the discussions:
Customers still face challenges regarding integrating information from disparate IT silos. They are looking for a manager of managers to consolidate events into a single console. One customer from the health care industry said in his presentation “a single pane of glass does not mean the same pane of glass”. The implication is that front-line operator need an event console, second tier subject matter experts need advanced diagnostic tools, and executives need a dashboard that just shows what is running.

In jest, someone from the financial services industry suggested that business executives could use the event console, just on a 30 minute delay, analogous to a stock ticker that runs on a delay. This would give the operators time to fix problems before the execs panicked and started calling people in the middle of the night. Eliminating these calls was a high priority of the IT executives in the room.

What got people excited:

OMU 9.0, especially the new Web-based admin GUI that allows multiple operators to work in parallel in different roles.
OMi, especially the ability to connect BAC end-user events to business services and more quickly identify the root cause of problems.

More from the show floor during the week.

For Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel