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gadget — Episode 108 – Network Management with the EM7
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The EM7 is a complete, turnkey network management solution from ScienceLogic.
At the core of the solution is the EM7 appliance. The appliance integrates EM7 software with a hardware platform that provides most of the core network and system management capabilities out of the box. It can monitor bandwidth usage and availability, allocate IP addresses and manage address conflicts, autodiscover network devices, manage asset control and just about everything else an enterprise might have to do with its network. Just a quick note about the demonstration unit that was sent to us. You’ll notice that there are a few missing devices and image errors, that’s just because the guys at ScienceLogic populated it with the data from Interop Las Vegas 2008 so that we could get a real-world data set. Unfortunately this also had the side-effect of occasionally glitching when EM7 tried to download all of the required content. That’s a problem that I never ran into when I was using EM7 in realtime. Of all the features included in the ScienceLogic package the one that we have to start with, because it is perhaps the most useful feature in EM7, is the autodiscovery function. After setting the range of IP addresses for which EM7 is responsible, the software will aggressively find all of the devices that might be connected to the network. It can discover printers, switches, auxiliary power units, consoles, servers, and the like. Most all high-end management solutions provide a similar function, but unlike many of those other management solutions that can only find network devices that fit in a very narrow band of hardware and software configurations, EM7 has been designed with flexibility in mind. It contains a dynamic app engine that lets EM7 discover, model and manage ANY device that speaks SNMP, XML, SOAP, AXL/SOAP, ODBC or SQL. Once a device has been discovered, EM7 represents it via an icon that the administrator can drill down into if more information about that device is required… and all that information is available to you at your fingertips. You can search for devices by their network names or the IP addresses. You can sort by device type, manufacture, network health, condition, and a dozen other parameters. The end result is that administrators are given the holy grail of network management… a “Single Pane of Glass” that can instantly convey the health of the network and all the devices and services contained within. |
This isn’t to say that EM7 just provides device and service status for the network uberGeek. The autodiscovery feature is also useful for IT execs who need to track the assets of their enterprise. Since the appliance will continually poll for information about your network, you can configure it to warn you if an asset is removed from the network.
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At the 2008 Interop networking conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, EM7 was an integral part of not just their network management strategy, but the physical security of the millions of dollars worth of equipment on the show floor, in the various meetings rooms, and all the public areas. — It wasn’t practical to station a security guard at every location in which equipment could walk away, but with EM7 they could be warned instantly if a network-connected asset, like a VoIP phone or Wireless Access Point, was disconnected for any reason.
While the autodiscovery and asset management features of EM7 are incredibly useful, one of the features that I enjoyed the most was the way that ScienceLogic handled their reporting. All enterprise-class management solutions can gather inordinate amounts of data, but the real value of a management product lies in how it presents it to the end-user. EM7 is extraordinarily efficient in the way that it presents that data. It communicated with the network Auxillary Power Units and let us know how much runtime was available in case of power outage. It gave us an at-a-glace look out our network assets. It broke down bandwidth usage by time, capacity and device. It showed us the cumulative CPU usage of all the servers on our network — something that is especially useful when administrators look at adding physical boxes or virtualizing their servers within existing hardware. EM7 can chart device types and compare them against state conditions, essentially letting you know what kind of equipment works best in the conditions in which your network exists. It will let you know which files servers have been most active, which stations have been most taxed and where the latency is located on your network. EM7 doesn’t just report data on your network, but also on your human resources. It can show you the number of trouble tickets that have been issues for your network and the amount of time it took to resolve those problems. It will let you know on what kinds of problems on which your people spent the most time. It can monitor what resources your enterprise is using most often and help you to decide where your network resources ought to be allocated. — In other words… EM7 isn’t just a tool that helps you manage your network, it’s a new way of networking. EM7 is available now and starts at $25,000 for the entry level appliance that can manage several hundred devices. It can be scaled to $100,000 and more for a distributed solution using several appliances that are able to monitor thousands of network assets. That sounds like a lot, but remember that similar solutions from ScienceLogic’s competitors (HP, Computer Associates, IBM, and the like) can run 2 to 4 times the cost of a fully configured ScienceLogic package. |
