Benefits of Using Network Management Tools | Solaris System Management (New Riders Professional Library)

Traditionally, networks of interconnected computer systems required someone to sit at a console, or a number of consoles, checking the status of each machine periodically. This was normally the system administrator or sometimes a computer operator. The advent of network management software means that the systems can be monitored from a single position. When set up correctly, there isn't really anything to monitor, unless the console receives an alarm. In this case, it normally warns the operator by either flashing an icon or sounding an audible alarm ”it also writes to a log file.

Network management tools allow distributed systems to be managed from a centralized management console; for resilience, from multiple consoles acting as peers with the same privileges; or as a network management hierarchy.

The health of the entire network can be seen from a single screen, giving a global view of every computer system that the system manager is responsible for. This reduces the staff resources needed not only at the central site, but also at remote sites because management can be carried out remotely. This is especially valuable for out-of-business-hours management.

A major benefit of a network management tool is that the management console is automatically informed of any problems (called events) as the remote systems are being regularly polled to see if any thresholds have been exceeded or conditions have been met. With a large network, however, there might be numerous events, some of which require immediate attention. The event processing and notification software included with a network management product also includes a priority mechanism allowing important events to be highlighted and attended to first. The Solstice Domain Manager suite of software additionally provides the capability to launch a program or script when a specified event condition is encountered , for example, to take corrective action such as compressing or removing files if a disk partition becomes full or reaches a predefined capacity threshold.

Performance and statistical information can be gathered and displayed as text or in graphical form for later analysis and reporting. This provides useful data when trying to establish whether service level agreement targets have been achieved.

Top