HP to show Sparc, Unix net monitoring software

Electronic News, April 27, 1992

PALO ALTO, CALIF. -- Hewlett-Packard today is expected to buttress its efforts to penetrate distributed-processing markets with the introduction of a performance monitoring system that supports networks running Sun SparcStations and HP's own proprietary and Unix-based systems

The performance-management software, dubbed PerfView, combines a series of existing HP products, including its Network Node Manager and various diagnostic, resource management and capacity planning tools, with new code in order to provide a single window into activity across a heterogeneous computing environment.

The package, to be available in July, can be expected to boost the attractiveness of HP in commercial environments, where its RISC-based mid-range machines have been rapidly winning adherents, but where many potential customers remain wary of employing Unix systems in mission-critical applications such as on-line transaction processing.

The first release of PerfView is planned for HP's family of HP 9000 systems running the company's HP-UX implementation of Unix and employing the Motif graphical user interface developed by the Open Software Foundation. Both the 700 series of RISC workstations and the 800 series of mid-range processors

within the HP 9000 line will be supported as managed nodes, along with Sun's line of SparcStation RISC machines.

Wayne Morris, marketing manager for performance and software management at HP's Software Technology division in Roseville, Calif., said Sun was selected as the initial non-HP platform to be supported because of its large installed base, but said it would be logical for the company to next support IBM's AIX implementation of Unix, given the rapidly growing volume of RS/6000 workstation users. In addition, Mr. Morris said, the company intends to encourage third parties to tie other platforms into the packages.

A key feature of PerfView is claimed to be its "management by exception" approach in which the central performance management console makes contact with a particular node only once that node breached a pre-set performance threshold. That threshold can be set to detect both over-utilized machines within the network and under-utilized machines that might be candidates for redeployment.

Price runs $26,000 for the central analysis software, which includes the $15,000 Network Node Manager, and additional price increments keyed to the number of platforms that are incorporated and the size of the overall environment.

Mr. Morris added that HP plans to broaden PerfView's capability in the future by adding simulation and analysis capabilities to enhance its capacity planning function.