HP NNM 6.0 GAINS USABILITY BOOST

Hewlett-Packard Co.'s OpenView NNM 6.0 doesn't break any new network management ground, but a Java-based interface, event correlation software and data warehousing capabilities boost the package's usefulness over the previous version.

Competitors such as Cabletron Systems Inc.'s Spectrum, Tivoli Systems Inc.'s NetView and the network management component of Computer Associates International Inc.'s Unicenter TNG can't beat Network Node Manager when it comes to SNMP-based network management. NNM is far easier to install and maintain because it doesn't require its own agents, relying instead on native SNMP agents.

PC Week Labs found that the most useful new feature in NNM 6.0, which began shipping last week and is priced from $4,995, is ECS (Event Correlation Service). ECS provides only basic event correlation information, but HP previously offered event correlation capabilities only in its high-end IT/Operations application, which costs $25,000 just for starters (see PC Week Labs' review of IT/Operations at http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/reviews/0915/15hp.html ).

Although rudimentary, NNM 6.0's ECS is effective. In tests, the event correlation system reduced the number of event messages sent to our console by more than 75 percent.

Administrators who need more extensive event correlation facilities can purchase the $25,000 ECS developer kit, which is required for creating new correlation models.

The addition of a data warehouse is much welcomed in NNM; we used the warehouse to store NNM trend, topology and event information. We were able to track topology changes and network events over time, which made it much easier to spot chronic problems in our test network, such as overloaded routers.

The data warehouse uses an embedded relational database, but we could also access the data using SQL or Open Database Connectivity. It was also easy to export threshold information, such as interface traffic statistics, that we accessed via Microsoft Corp. Excel templates included in NNM, making it possible to get performance reports from any machine with Excel and a browser.

In fact, this version of NNM uses Web content to greatly simplify the lives of operations staff. For example, we accessed the alarm screen from machines across our network (using either Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 or Netscape Communications Corp.'s Navigator 4.6). Unlike previous versions of NNM, and for the first time we've seen in any network management product, we were able to conveniently acknowledge and dismiss alarms from the Web interface. This saved us from constantly returning to our management console to acknowledge alerts after we'd fixed them in the field.

Because NNM 6.0's interface is Java-based, we were even able to see real-time graphical maps of our network, another feature we haven't seen in other products. However, the real work in NNM is accomplished via the alarm message screen, so the usefulness of this addition is limited.

One thing that remains unchanged in NNM is the lackadaisical pace of topology updates. Although faster than Version 5.0 in tests where we ran the two side by side, the results were only marginally better for 6.0. This means that managers should briefly override the automatic discovery interval with a suitably short time--say, every 30 minutes--when changes are made to the network.

PC Week Labs Executive Summary: OpenView Network Node Manager 6.0

Tracking problems on SNMP-enabled networks is still best accomplished with HP's OpenView Network Node Manager. NNM doesn't break new ground in how it manages network devices, but a new event correlation system, data warehouse and Java- based interface make it much easier to accomplish day-to-day tasks by making network information more accessible.

Pros: Built-in event correlation; data warehouse makes it easier to spot trends; Java-based interface makes acknowledging alarms a snap.

Cons: Anything beyond rudimentary event correlation requires costly, complex add-on; still slow to acquire topology changes.

For more information, see http://www.hp.com/openview