Low Calorie Network Management

Enterprise Networks & Servers, Nov 2003 by Piech, Maria

Brigham Young University-Idaho Opts for David, Not Goliath

As the anti-tobacco litigation runs down, the attorneys involved are setting their sights on another deep-pocketed target - the fast food industry. Bolstered by reports from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control showing the growing number of growing waistlines, the initial volleys have already been fired against McDonald's, KFC and their ilk. They are charged with deceiving the public regarding the caloric dangers of super-sized meals.

While not the subject of lawsuits as yet, administrators sometimes make the same claims about network and systems management software. They complain that the products are too big, too expensive, and take too long to deploy and learn to operate. While they would like to cut a few pounds (or euros or dollars) from their budget, they are not sure they could survive on a lighter management diet.

"We go on this pendulum swing in the market between enterprises wanting to buy a single, all-encompassing solution and buying best of breed niche products for which the enterprise then suffers the burden of integration," says Debra Curtis, research director in Network and Systems Management for Gartner Inc. (Stamford, Conn.)

Smorgasbord Approach

The old, monolithic network and systems management frameworks from one of the Big Four vendors - IBM, Computer Associates (CA), Hewlett-Packard and BMC - had the reputation of needing a college doctorate degree just to run the software. That reputation is not undeserved. In fact, Hewlett-Packard has its own Software Solutions University complete with a 16-page catalog detailing more than 60 courses on how to use its Open View management suite. IBM offers 90 courses on Tivoli. Implementing one of these is definitely not for the faint of heart, but it is a lot simpler than it used to be. Faced with competition from smaller vendors, they have adopted the suite approach to management.

CA, for instance, abandoned its framework approach and broke its flagship Unicenter product into multiple modules. Any piece can work with others in order to simplify things. Other vendors have followed CA's lead. Tivoli consists of 58 different modules customers can choose from and HP Open View has 62. These newer packages also are based on open standards and so are designed to work well with products from other vendors, allowing customers to pick and choose the features they want. Despite these improvements, however, they are still geared for use by larger firms and public entities which have the necessary funds and dedicated staff to operate the software and keep it updated.

They are all extremely difficult to integrate and comparatively expensive," says Brian Fogg, technical director for systems integrator SRA International (Fairfax, Va.). "The simplest are on the order of $200,000 or more just to get infrastructure going and then another $40,000 or more per year for maintenance. In complicated scenarios, this can get into half million range easily."

Going on a Diet

For smaller enterprises, using such a system is simply out of the question, leaving many with no method of managing the network other than reacting when there is a problem. Fortunately another class of lower-cost management software has arisen which make it possible for such institutions to effectively manage their networks and systems without breaking the bank. Brigham Young University - Idaho (BYUI), for example, opted to purchase an open source based package from Somix Technologies (Sanford, Maine) called WebNM.

"We looked at various other network management platforms and software packages, but they have long implementation times and are very expensive," said Michael Rydalch, BYUI's network manager. "WebNM has most of the functionality we needed and to get the rest from HP Open View we would have had to pay 10 times as much."

BYUI, based in Rexburg, Idaho, was established by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints in 1888 as a two year institution called Ricks College. In 2001, it became a university, changing its name to Brigham Young University - Idaho, joining the other BYU campuses in Utah, Hawaii and Jerusalem. Over 10,000 full time students attend courses at the Rexburg campus.

The university is primarily a Windows shop. Most servers run Window 2000, but a few operate on Linux and there is also an IBM iSeries server running OS/400. The desktops largely run Windows 2000 as well, though there are about 300 Apple MacIntoshes used in the art, history, music and religion departments and a few Linux workstations in the computer labs. It uses Microsoft Exchange, but the rest of its enterprise applications were written in house.

The 3000 node network connects via gigabit Ethernet in the backbone with 10 or 100 Mbits going out to the desktops. Cisco 6509s and 4006s do most of the switching. Rydalch reports that the school is also in the midst of deploying a WLAN. Some remote buildings already have 802.11b wireless nodes installed and some common areas on the campus will be receiving them later this year.