[hobbit] Informal survey about commercial support for Hobbit
Hi Henrik
I have received no reply to my private messages to you sent out on 19.09.2006 (some sort of filter?), so apologies to the list.
Therefor I've attached it to this mail and send it through the list.
Sorry again for bothering the other...
Thanks Johann
-----Original Message----- From: Johann Eggers Sent: Dienstag, 19. September 2006 16:25 To: 'henrik at hswn.dk' Subject: RE: [hobbit] Informal survey about commercial support for Hobbit
Hi Henrik,
It's a couple of days ago that you started the "Informal survey about commercial support for Hobbit".
We are currently busy to set up a "Global Monitoring" project in which we are now in the phase to decide which way to go:
use Open source tools (Hobbit, bigbrother (not really open source), Nagios
Outsourcing the whole monitoring/alarming to an external provider
Use Enterprise class systems (Tivoli, MicroMuse, CA, HP Openview...)
After our last discussion it's getting clear that we will recommend using an Open source tool, preferably Hobbit, as the 1. option to the management.
There are a couple of reasons for that, I guess you should best know it :)
One concern from the team members was the lack of commercial support for Hobbit, because the management often prefers solutions providing commercial support.
We would most likely be interested an a reasonably priced annual fee for the opportunity to get either custom modifications to hobbit or consultation and assistance in implementing custom tests.
I guess this would be best done by direct email support with a fixed response time (to be discussed).
What are your thoughts/plans to offer this kind of commercial support?
Looking forward to hear from you
Best Regards
Johann
-----Original Message----- From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:henrik at hswn.dk] Sent: Donnerstag, 24. August 2006 17:19 To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: [hobbit] Informal survey about commercial support for Hobbit
I've had a couple of enquiries about providing commercial support for Hobbit. In essence they need a guaranteed response to e-mail support queries, as a supplement to the mailing list where mails do get answered, but not always within a day or two.
Making money off Hobbit never was my intention, but being paid for doing what is really a hobby for me does seem attractive.
So this is just an informal survey:
- Would you be interested in paying for Hobbit support?
- What kind of support do you need? E-mail for solving problems, custom feature developments, or ... ?
- What response-time requirements do you have? Since I'm in Europe and a lot of the Hobbit users are in the US or Australia, I have a problem with same-day response guarantees.
- How much are you willing to spend on it ?
Feel free to respond here on the list, or to me directly.
Just to avoid raising any panic, let me emphasize that this will NOT in any way stop or detract from the support I offer here on the mailing list. I think the mailing list will always be the primary support channel, and a place for discussing Hobbit developments, beta versions and all the other related issues. It's just that some companies feel more comfortable using software when there is a "normal" support contract.
Regards, Henrik
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 01:19:29PM +0200, Johann Eggers wrote:
Hi Henrik
I have received no reply to my private messages to you sent out on 19.09.2006 (some sort of filter?), so apologies to the list.
Sorry, I am currently quite back-logged with my mailbox and hadn't noticed your mail.
Therefor I've attached it to this mail and send it through the list.
I'll respond off-list.
Regards, Henrik
----- Original Message ----- From: "Johann Eggers" <Johann.Eggers at teleatlas.com> To: <hobbit at hswn.dk> Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2006 6:19 AM Subject: [hobbit] Informal survey about commercial support for Hobbit
Hi Henrik
<snip>
Sorry again for bothering the other...
To me, this is informational message.
<snip>
We are currently busy to set up a "Global Monitoring" project in which we are now in the phase to decide which way to go:
use Open source tools (Hobbit, bigbrother (not really open source), Nagios
Outsourcing the whole monitoring/alarming to an external provider
Use Enterprise class systems (Tivoli, MicroMuse, CA, HP Openview...)
After our last discussion it's getting clear that we will recommend using an Open source tool, preferably Hobbit, as the 1. option to the management. There are a couple of reasons for that, I guess you should best know it :)
So looks like you guys came to conclusion of selecting Hobbit by discussions, correct ? Is there a requirement analysis document that can be shared ?
I really like to see how Hobbit compare to Tivoli,CA .. enterprise class systems. Management would like to see unbiased review of monitoring systems.
I made an attempt to do some comparison but turn out I don't have enough time and knowledge to do a fair comparsion.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/System_Monitoring_with_Hobbit/User_Guide#System...
Is there a third-party that can spent time on doing this task ?
Regards
tj
<snip>
Johann
<snip>
On 9/22/06, T.J. Yang <tj_yang at hotmail.com> wrote:
I really like to see how Hobbit compare to Tivoli,CA .. enterprise class systems. Management would like to see unbiased review of monitoring systems.
Well, I can't really give you an unbiased view of CA, but I can tell you that as of the last time I looked (about 2 years ago), Unicenter's Web Monitoring Option (WMO) sucked big time. I wrote up a long email rant fairly recently for a co-worker, which I won't repeat here, but just to hit some highlights:
o The WMO agent crashes if you "click the icons too fast" - that's actual word-for-word from CA themselves.
o If any checks are disabled, they automatically get re-enabled when the agent starts up. See above point...
o The reports show up on the Event Console with the nodename of the machine running the check, *not* the nodename with the problem.
o The checks are written in a sort of XML format, and the builtin editor is nasty.
o The check can execute an external program, but there's no way to pick up any output from it. I needed that, obviously...
OK, I'll stop there before my blood pressure gets any higher.
The above was enough justification for my manager to scrap the "switch from Big Brother to WMO at all costs" plan. So I'm still happily banging out Bourne shell scripts that use curl to grab web pages, with the reports being delivered to Hobbit.
Ralph Mitchell
Hi all,
Anyone had any success with sending out SMS alerts from hobbit? If so could you let me know what methods you used and whether we need to purchase any software to do this? Reverse charge is acceptable
Thanks, Jason.
Yes - a lot of success. We're actually using a few companies to
deliver SMS's and other content (it's a core service for the client I
support). The hobbit SMS alerts we send are just utilising the same
service - I've written a simple wrapper script which takes the
various environment variables, and sends out an SMS to either a
group of folk (eg 'ADMINS'), or an individual (eg. 'MGMT' for combo
alerts).
The actual mechanism is an HTTP GET (so wget does the job nicely),
with our reference information, to our SMS provider. I understand the
API also results in a confirmation in some situations, but I've not
incorporated that as it currently is tied into the customers systems.
I don't know off the top of my head who the SMS companies are, but
could perhaps find out for you if you're interested. I'm in the UK,
but I think they have an international presence.
In years gone by (when I was using BB) I found some 'free' SMS
companies, but that was about as good as a chocolate fire guard.
I might be able to tidy up the script and push it out for others to
use in due course. Let me know if there's any interest, although it's
nothing particular fancy.
r.
-- Richard Leyton - richard at leyton.org http://www.leyton.org
On 22 Sep 2006, at 12:30, Jones, Jason ((Altrincham)) wrote:
Hi all,
Anyone had any success with sending out SMS alerts from hobbit? If so could you let me know what methods you used and whether we need to purchase any software to do this? Reverse charge is acceptable
Thanks, Jason.
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
Hi Richard,
So does that mean we would need to pay for the ability? If so whom do you represent/support/something else and I will see if we can get an account open? As far as the script goes why didn't you put it as a script option in hobbit-alerts.cfg? but would be interested in that too (if I can persuade boss to get the account :) ). We're in the UK too, with offices everywhere else but all the hobbit monitoring stuff is based in the UK and Ireland (mostly UK) and we take care of the rest of the world :)
There are only two other concerns after opening the account etc. would the text messages be reverse charge to our phones? And would we be getting texts every 30 minutes or just one once the error occurs?
Thanks, Jason.
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Leyton [mailto:richard at leyton.org] Sent: 22 September 2006 14:09 To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: Re: [hobbit] SMS alerts
Yes - a lot of success. We're actually using a few companies to
deliver SMS's and other content (it's a core service for the client I
support). The hobbit SMS alerts we send are just utilising the same
service - I've written a simple wrapper script which takes the
various environment variables, and sends out an SMS to either a
group of folk (eg 'ADMINS'), or an individual (eg. 'MGMT' for combo
alerts).
The actual mechanism is an HTTP GET (so wget does the job nicely),
with our reference information, to our SMS provider. I understand the
API also results in a confirmation in some situations, but I've not
incorporated that as it currently is tied into the customers systems.
I don't know off the top of my head who the SMS companies are, but
could perhaps find out for you if you're interested. I'm in the UK,
but I think they have an international presence.
In years gone by (when I was using BB) I found some 'free' SMS
companies, but that was about as good as a chocolate fire guard.
I might be able to tidy up the script and push it out for others to
use in due course. Let me know if there's any interest, although it's
nothing particular fancy.
r.
-- Richard Leyton - richard at leyton.org http://www.leyton.org
On 22 Sep 2006, at 12:30, Jones, Jason ((Altrincham)) wrote:
Hi all,
Anyone had any success with sending out SMS alerts from hobbit? If so could you let me know what methods you used and whether we need to purchase any software to do this? Reverse charge is acceptable
Thanks, Jason.
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
Hi Jason,
Yes, the script is called out of hobbit-alerts.cfg
ie.
SERVICE=raid SCRIPT /home/hobbit/bin/sms_notify ADMINS FORMAT=sms
REPEAT=600 DURATION>10m MAIL alarm at mydomain.com REPEAT=60 MAIL myboss at mydomain.com DURATION>60 REPEAT=480
This sends a specific alert when a RAID alert occurs. The
DURATION>10m ensures a quick resync on reboot doesn't create SMS's.
They're repeated every 10 hours.
Apparently my customer (for whom I have implemented Hobbit) uses a
company called MIG, who I think are these guys: http://
www.migcan.com/, also Opera telecome, who are these folk I think:
http://www.operatelecom.com
To stress - I can't say which one the Hobbit alerts use right now,
nor can I say with much certainty what reliability/costs/etc. the
services have. It seems pretty good, but then my client does bulk
SMS's. I've had no influence in the choice of these SMS companies. I
really don't know whether or not they'd be suitable for the
(comparatively) low volume you're probably talking about, or what
they'd charge. Somebody else may be able to point you in the
direction of other companies that could be better. You may even find
your mobile operator has a service you can use?
As to charging, well, my client has an account with these companies,
so it doesn't cost me anything to receive an SMS. However, to be
pedantic, we *could* push content that does reverse charge the phone,
but that would be an incentive too far for getting a problem fixed! ;-)
As to repeat SMS's, I'm relying on Hobbit configuration to restrict
the number of SMS's. But it would be trivial to put a 'throttle' in
sms_notify to perhaps act as a 'safeguard' for something going AWOL
if you were worried about it.
r.
-- Richard Leyton - richard at leyton.org http://www.leyton.org
On 22 Sep 2006, at 15:08, Jones, Jason ((Altrincham)) wrote:
Hi Richard,
So does that mean we would need to pay for the ability? If so whom do you represent/support/something else and I will see if we can get an account open? As far as the script goes why didn't you put it as a script option in hobbit-alerts.cfg? but would be interested in that
too (if I can persuade boss to get the account :) ). We're in the UK too, with offices everywhere else but all the hobbit monitoring stuff is based in the UK and Ireland (mostly UK) and we take care of the
rest of the world :)There are only two other concerns after opening the account etc. would the text messages be reverse charge to our phones? And would we be getting texts every 30 minutes or just one once the error occurs?
Thanks, Jason.
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Leyton [mailto:richard at leyton.org] Sent: 22 September 2006 14:09 To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: Re: [hobbit] SMS alerts
Yes - a lot of success. We're actually using a few companies to deliver SMS's and other content (it's a core service for the client I support). The hobbit SMS alerts we send are just utilising the same service - I've written a simple wrapper script which takes the various environment variables, and sends out an SMS to either a group of folk (eg 'ADMINS'), or an individual (eg. 'MGMT' for combo alerts).
The actual mechanism is an HTTP GET (so wget does the job nicely), with our reference information, to our SMS provider. I understand the API also results in a confirmation in some situations, but I've not incorporated that as it currently is tied into the customers systems.
I don't know off the top of my head who the SMS companies are, but could perhaps find out for you if you're interested. I'm in the UK, but I think they have an international presence.
In years gone by (when I was using BB) I found some 'free' SMS companies, but that was about as good as a chocolate fire guard.
I might be able to tidy up the script and push it out for others to use in due course. Let me know if there's any interest, although it's nothing particular fancy.
r.
-- Richard Leyton - richard at leyton.org http://www.leyton.org
On 22 Sep 2006, at 12:30, Jones, Jason ((Altrincham)) wrote:
Hi all,
Anyone had any success with sending out SMS alerts from hobbit? If so could you let me know what methods you used and whether we need to purchase any software to do this? Reverse charge is acceptable
Thanks, Jason.
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
Jason,
We run a similar setup to Richards, we have a hobbit server that sends emails to an sms provider who then forwards them via sms to our phones, it's not a reverse charging operation, you have to buy so many credits, but it's very reliable and they do let you know when your credits are running low so you can top them up.
As to how often you get alerted that would be down to how your alerts are setup in the hobbit-alerts.cfg file, in our case we wait 5minutes before sending out an alert for most things (in case it's a brief cpu spike etc) then we send out every 30minutes after that, mainly so you don't get barraged by sms's.
Regards,
Mike Rowell
-----Original Message----- From: Jones, Jason (Altrincham) [mailto:JasonAS_Jones at mentor.com] Sent: 22 September 2006 15:08 To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: RE: [hobbit] SMS alerts
Hi Richard,
So does that mean we would need to pay for the ability? If so whom do you represent/support/something else and I will see if we can get an account open? As far as the script goes why didn't you put it as a script option in hobbit-alerts.cfg? but would be interested in that too (if I can persuade boss to get the account :) ). We're in the UK too, with offices everywhere else but all the hobbit monitoring stuff is based in the UK and Ireland (mostly UK) and we take care of the rest of the world :)
There are only two other concerns after opening the account etc. would the text messages be reverse charge to our phones? And would we be getting texts every 30 minutes or just one once the error occurs?
Thanks, Jason.
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Leyton [mailto:richard at leyton.org] Sent: 22 September 2006 14:09 To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: Re: [hobbit] SMS alerts
Yes - a lot of success. We're actually using a few companies to
deliver SMS's and other content (it's a core service for the client I
support). The hobbit SMS alerts we send are just utilising the same
service - I've written a simple wrapper script which takes the
various environment variables, and sends out an SMS to either a
group of folk (eg 'ADMINS'), or an individual (eg. 'MGMT' for combo
alerts).
The actual mechanism is an HTTP GET (so wget does the job nicely),
with our reference information, to our SMS provider. I understand the
API also results in a confirmation in some situations, but I've not
incorporated that as it currently is tied into the customers systems.
I don't know off the top of my head who the SMS companies are, but
could perhaps find out for you if you're interested. I'm in the UK,
but I think they have an international presence.
In years gone by (when I was using BB) I found some 'free' SMS
companies, but that was about as good as a chocolate fire guard.
I might be able to tidy up the script and push it out for others to
use in due course. Let me know if there's any interest, although it's
nothing particular fancy.
r.
-- Richard Leyton - richard at leyton.org http://www.leyton.org
On 22 Sep 2006, at 12:30, Jones, Jason ((Altrincham)) wrote:
Hi all,
Anyone had any success with sending out SMS alerts from hobbit? If so could you let me know what methods you used and whether we need to purchase any software to do this? Reverse charge is acceptable
Thanks, Jason.
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs service.
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Mike Rowell wrote:
Jason,
We run a similar setup to Richards, we have a hobbit server that sends emails to an sms provider who then forwards them via sms to our phones, ...8<... As to how often you get alerted that would be down to how your alerts are setup in the hobbit-alerts.cfg file, in our case we wait 5minutes
I'm taking the lowest-rent approach, simply having a line that SMSes the phone(s) directly, which raises a question i've been meaning to ask:
MAIL <number>@<provider>.net FORMAT=sms COLOR=red DURATION<60 REPEAT=30 RECOVERED
MAIL <number>@<provider>.net FORMAT=sms COLOR=red DURATION>5 REPEAT=30 RECOVERED
In the first, a maximum of 2 pages will be sent, as only the first 60 minutes of redness count and they're 30 minutes apart. In the second, a page is still sent every 30 minutes, but not until the status has been red for 5 minutes. In both cases the target phone determines the cost; if you have company phones with a messaging plan, this is easy. If you're sending to people's own phones, you might want to have an agreement to get reimbursement in case of disaster.
My question is, can i combine DURATION directives? AFAIK, you cannot combine both minimum and maximum... can you? In the first example, there's an absolute limit to how long pages get sent - but it starts the instant you go red. In the second, it waits until the problem persists for 5 minutes - but could send pages until the end of time. It'd be great to be able to specify both <X and >Y.
-----Original Message----- From: Jones, Jason (Altrincham) [mailto:JasonAS_Jones at mentor.com] Sent: 22 September 2006 15:08 To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: RE: [hobbit] SMS alerts
Hi Richard,
So does that mean we would need to pay for the ability? If so whom do you represent/support/something else and I will see if we can get an account open? As far as the script goes why didn't you put it as a script option in hobbit-alerts.cfg? but would be interested in that too (if I can persuade boss to get the account :) ). We're in the UK too, with offices everywhere else but all the hobbit monitoring stuff is based in the UK and Ireland (mostly UK) and we take care of the rest of the world :)
There are only two other concerns after opening the account etc. would the text messages be reverse charge to our phones? And would we be getting texts every 30 minutes or just one once the error occurs?
Thanks, Jason.
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Leyton [mailto:richard at leyton.org] Sent: 22 September 2006 14:09 To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: Re: [hobbit] SMS alerts
Yes - a lot of success. We're actually using a few companies to
deliver SMS's and other content (it's a core service for the client I
support). The hobbit SMS alerts we send are just utilising the same
service - I've written a simple wrapper script which takes the
various environment variables, and sends out an SMS to either a
group of folk (eg 'ADMINS'), or an individual (eg. 'MGMT' for combo
alerts).The actual mechanism is an HTTP GET (so wget does the job nicely),
with our reference information, to our SMS provider. I understand the
API also results in a confirmation in some situations, but I've not
incorporated that as it currently is tied into the customers systems.I don't know off the top of my head who the SMS companies are, but
could perhaps find out for you if you're interested. I'm in the UK,
but I think they have an international presence.In years gone by (when I was using BB) I found some 'free' SMS
companies, but that was about as good as a chocolate fire guard.I might be able to tidy up the script and push it out for others to
use in due course. Let me know if there's any interest, although it's
nothing particular fancy.r.
-- Richard Leyton - richard at leyton.org http://www.leyton.org
On 22 Sep 2006, at 12:30, Jones, Jason ((Altrincham)) wrote:
Hi all,
Anyone had any success with sending out SMS alerts from hobbit? If so could you let me know what methods you used and whether we need to purchase any software to do this? Reverse charge is acceptable
Thanks, Jason.
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs service.
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To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
Rob Munsch Solutions For Progress IT www.solutionsforprogress.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFFFDtZBvBcJFK6xYURAsSiAJ9/VCzssIMS3zHsUJsDcT/YV5rx9gCdEiWP t7KrCTy2KsDzr0g6lP98ato= =qi7n -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Hi Jason,
I'm working on the same thing. I'm using the SMS Server tools package (http://www.meinemullemaus.de/), as I've had some experience with it in combination with Big Brother at a previous employer (I had it running for a proof-of-concept system at a customer site and was working on setting this up on the BB system of my employer when I left the company).
For the hardware I'm using a USB GSM modem, model Samba 55 by Falcom (http://www.falcom.de/index.php?id=199). I needed the USB because the Hobbit host is a Sun Fire X2100, which has no serial ports whatsoever. The X2100 runs SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (integrating the Samba USB modem in SLES9 was definitely non-trivial, but I got it working now ...)
You'll need a SIM card for the GSM modem of course.
Best regards,
Eric.
Jones, Jason (Altrincham) wrote:
Hi all,
Anyone had any success with sending out SMS alerts from hobbit? If so could you let me know what methods you used and whether we need to purchase any software to do this? Reverse charge is acceptable
Thanks, Jason.
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
Thanks for your comment, I don't have experience of using CA. But if I have chance to review this product, I know where to look for problem ;)
Regards
tj
From: "Ralph Mitchell" <ralphmitchell at gmail.com> Reply-To: hobbit at hswn.dk To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: Re: [hobbit] Informal survey about commercial support for Hobbit Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 06:01:06 -0500
On 9/22/06, T.J. Yang <tj_yang at hotmail.com> wrote:
I really like to see how Hobbit compare to Tivoli,CA .. enterprise class systems. Management would like to see unbiased review of monitoring systems.
Well, I can't really give you an unbiased view of CA, but I can tell you that as of the last time I looked (about 2 years ago), Unicenter's Web Monitoring Option (WMO) sucked big time. I wrote up a long email rant fairly recently for a co-worker, which I won't repeat here, but just to hit some highlights:
o The WMO agent crashes if you "click the icons too fast" - that's actual word-for-word from CA themselves.
o If any checks are disabled, they automatically get re-enabled when the agent starts up. See above point...
o The reports show up on the Event Console with the nodename of the machine running the check, *not* the nodename with the problem.
o The checks are written in a sort of XML format, and the builtin editor is nasty.
o The check can execute an external program, but there's no way to pick up any output from it. I needed that, obviously...
OK, I'll stop there before my blood pressure gets any higher.
The above was enough justification for my manager to scrap the "switch from Big Brother to WMO at all costs" plan. So I'm still happily banging out Bourne shell scripts that use curl to grab web pages, with the reports being delivered to Hobbit.
Ralph Mitchell
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
I have used, and currently am using the entire CA suite where I work. While it is capable of many things, it is STUNNINGLY complicated and requires an army of people to maintain and a mountain of top level hardware to run on. In addition, it requires so many agents to be installed on the monitored hosts that it can be it's own worst enemy. We actually discovered on one of our hosts that 70% of cpu and 85% of memory were being used up by the agents! Also, the price for software and associated licenses from Microsoft is so high that it is beyond the financial means of most small to medium sized companies!
By contrast, Hobbit is easy to setup, quite simple to maintain, and can easily run on a piece of junk without any problem. In addition, the agents associated with it are virtually invisible with respect to system resources....and the price is quite attractive as well!!
K
T.J. Yang wrote:
Thanks for your comment, I don't have experience of using CA. But if I have chance to review this product, I know where to look for problem ;)
Regards
tj
From: "Ralph Mitchell" <ralphmitchell at gmail.com> Reply-To: hobbit at hswn.dk To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: Re: [hobbit] Informal survey about commercial support for Hobbit Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 06:01:06 -0500
On 9/22/06, T.J. Yang <tj_yang at hotmail.com> wrote:
I really like to see how Hobbit compare to Tivoli,CA .. enterprise class systems. Management would like to see unbiased review of monitoring systems.
Well, I can't really give you an unbiased view of CA, but I can tell you that as of the last time I looked (about 2 years ago), Unicenter's Web Monitoring Option (WMO) sucked big time. I wrote up a long email rant fairly recently for a co-worker, which I won't repeat here, but just to hit some highlights:
o The WMO agent crashes if you "click the icons too fast" - that's actual word-for-word from CA themselves.
o If any checks are disabled, they automatically get re-enabled when the agent starts up. See above point...
o The reports show up on the Event Console with the nodename of the machine running the check, *not* the nodename with the problem.
o The checks are written in a sort of XML format, and the builtin editor is nasty.
o The check can execute an external program, but there's no way to pick up any output from it. I needed that, obviously...
OK, I'll stop there before my blood pressure gets any higher.
The above was enough justification for my manager to scrap the "switch from Big Brother to WMO at all costs" plan. So I'm still happily banging out Bourne shell scripts that use curl to grab web pages, with the reports being delivered to Hobbit.
Ralph Mitchell
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
participants (10)
-
eric-list-1＠softlution.com
-
henrik＠hswn.dk
-
JasonAS_Jones＠mentor.com
-
Johann.Eggers＠teleatlas.com
-
khanrahan＠charter.net
-
Mike.Rowell＠Rightmove.co.uk
-
ralphmitchell＠gmail.com
-
richard＠leyton.org
-
rmunsch＠solutionsforprogress.com
-
tj_yang＠hotmail.com