On Mon, November 10, 2008 13:01, T.J. Yang wrote:

But this bring up another issue/concern of mine(as an Unix admin)twoward Xymon.

"Not able to pay for Xymon for support service from a company"

This is feedback/comment I got from mangement (of mine).

Trying to understand why, from their perspective and I think I got the answer as following.

Management want to avoid the lock-in from admin also. They want your in-depth knowledge of the tool become a serivce that management can get from other sources, not just in-house admins.

Well, of course you can pay for Xymon support from a company. There are a couple of specific sources noted in the Wikipedia article, and most any high-competence Linux hired gun could do a strong job. There are hordes of them available on a part-time or retainer basis, from contracting firms that have bench depth. There may not be as many experienced resources as with Nagios (which I see as the biggest open source functional competitor), but then Xymon is not nearly as difficult to configure and support as Nagios.

Now, if you're talking comprehensive vendor software support/maintenance agreements, then you're pretty much limited to proprietary products like HP OpenView. And although you then have a vendor on the hook for product quality and problem resolution, it's hard to get an SLA-based contract that costs them money for non-performance unless you're a Fortune 500 company buying an enterprise solution.

And even when you've bought the high-end commercial solution and the ironclad support contract, you're still faced with the strong possibility that open source results in a higher quality product inherently. As the man said, "You pays your money and you takes your choice".

Just some ramblings from the bench by a 25-year+ practitioner....