[WBEL-users] Enterprise Managment Suggestions

[Jason Balicki]

Tony <> wrote:
> Sorry if this is a tad OT, but does anyone have suggestions for
> 'enterprise management' tools?

What type of management?  There are all kinds of tools out
there (many half-finished, but I digress) to help you manage
machines of all types.

There's patch management, network management, server management,
user management, antivirus management, resource accounting (printers,
etc.,) fried shrimp, shrimp gumbo, asset management, backup management
and more; not to mention the Windows & Linux variations of all of these.

For the record, I use a multitude of tools.  Here's a short list
off of the top of my head:

1)  Scripts.  Scripts.  Scripts.  For a lot of things.  For example,
I use a relatively simple script to retrieve anti-virus logs off
of my workstations and sort through them for errors, warnings
and virus reports.  I have another that performs auxiliary backups
to firewire hard drives connected to my backup server.  There
are many, many more.  You can't beat the portability and tweakability
of shell or perl scripts for quick and dirty tasks that turn into
long term solutions.

2)  ntop.  Get good stats on your servers.

3)  Avalon.  Ditto, but different.

4)  Vendor tools.  For example, my phone system comes with an
"enterprise class" web based administration tool.  What I can't
figure out is why some vendors believe "enterprise class" means
"make it with a bad UI and make it with Java".

5)  snmp/mrtg/rrdtool.  Sort of falls in the "scripts" category but
has a special place in my heart.  Every network device you own
probably has SNMP capabilities.  If it doesn't, you're using the
wrong network device.  :)  You can use mrtg or rrdtool (with
supporting software) to report stats back from those devices.
Want to know which users are sucking up your bandwidth?  Point
snmp & mrtg at your managed switch & go bonk the offender on
the head.  Want to know which virus you get sent the most?  Do
some data massaging on your mail logs and report with rrdtool
(in a script, of course), then you can see your virus stats at
a glance.  You can add all this info to a single web page and
have all your important network information available at one
bookmark.

6)  "Network Management Suites" such as HP Openview and others
that try to tie a lot of things together into one central
application.  Sometimes these work well, other times they don't.
Most vendors are willing to give you a crippled demo, but the
demo invariably cripples the part that you were interested in.

Most of these are reporting tools, but that's a big part of
management.  The context of your message makes me think that
you were looking more for user/client computer management tools.
For the user part LDAP seems to be one answer, but it's big and
complex and difficult to wrap your head around at first.
"Lightweight" my ass. :)  For the computer management:  you can
use samba to some degree.  You can also use the pstools suite
to craft your own remote management stuff.  There may be a
third party tool out there that might help.  Novell might
be cooking something up to add to NDS (or maybe they already
have -- I haven't looked at Novell in a long, long time.)

HTH, and I'm looking forward to a good discussion on the list
about this sort of thing -- if it's not too OT.

--J(K)