Tornado Touches Down

The oldest and best-known Unix-based enterprise manager on the market today is Hewlett-Packard's OpenView, which was introduced in 1990. OpenView uses the industry-standard SNMP protocol to gather data from multiple network elements via many different network management applications that run on a common workstation.

In 1993, HP began working on a new version of OpenView that was designed to manage very large networks through the distributed interconnection of multiple OpenView servers. This new version, code-named Tornado, was HP's answer to OpenView's limitations. At that time, the software could manage a maximum of only about 1000 nodes.

Development problems caused the delivery of Tornado to be delayed more than a year, but last year HP shipped an initial release that expanded the system's ability to process management data as well as increase the number of operators that could work from one OpenView server. However, Tornado 1 didn't provide the distributed capabilities required in the largest corporate networks.

In March, HP unveiled the Tornado 2 release of OpenView, which offers much-expanded distributed management capabilities. Tornado 2, officially designated HP OpenView Network Node Manager 4.1, lets managers use multiple Unix workstations to gather information about networks of 10,000 nodes or more. In the fall, HP will deliver the same software on a Windows NT platform.

The new release of OpenView also includes a new management tool, called OpenView Workgroup Node Manager, which is designed to manage smaller workgroups or departmental networks. The workgroup management tool, which also runs on Unix or NT, can interface with Network Node Manager 4.1, enablin g users to handle some management tasks locally without giving up the ability to pass some management information to an enterprise management platform in the central network-control center.

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Monitor the Hordes

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HP OpenView Network Node Manager 4.1 lets multiple Unix and Windows NT workstations monitor networks with thousands of nodes.