My issue with ITM...well, one of many
issues, actually .. is that it
does so little out of the box. It will
monitor basic things like CPU
and memory usage, and tell you when filesystems
are getting full,
but just about any monitoring tool will do
that. Even a handful of
custom-written shell scripts will do that.
In its present form, ITM
really seems like a lot of work for little
gain. To me, the only real
advantage it has over DM is the ability to
correlate over time, rather
than just the current and previous values,
and it’s hard to see why
that capability could not have been added
to DM.
I am using it to monitor Windows 2003 and
Solaris servers, and
just about the first question I was asked
after implementing it was
“Why didn’t Tivoli tell us we had a disk failure last
night?”. So now
I am implementing the HP Insight Manager
agents on all the Windows
boxes simply to monitor the H/W that ITM
can’t monitor, and letting
TEC handle the correlation. That works on
Windows because the agents
can run without the Insight Manager server
component, but Sun MC
agents have no such capability so I still
haven’t come up with a good
way to monitor Sun H/W (the SMC server is way
overkill for this
environment).
Unfortunately, customers don’t
appreciate it when you tell them, “Yes,
you paid a lot of money for Tivoli, and yes, it’s
a lot of work to set up
and maintain, but sorry, you still need
all this other stuff to do the
things you want to do.”
While I am thinking of it, another issue I
have with ITM is that it’s
difficult to test. For example, say the
customer has provided a
number of detailed requirements that typically
look something
like “Tivoli will monitor xxx and when the
(customizable) threshold
yyy is reached, will send event zzz to the
management console”.
For every one of these requirements, I
have to write a test case and
be able to demonstrate in a repeatable
manner that every time “xxx”
increases beyond “yyy”, event “zzz”
will be generated. That’s difficult
to do with something like the Windows
memory resource model,
where I can run the same test script to
eat up memory and ITM,
depending on what it thinks is going on, may
send any one of about
17 different Windows memory events to TEC.
Since I can’t tell the customer “Run
this test script and I’m sure
you’ll get some sort of event on TEC,
I just don’t know which one”,
I had to rewrite all the basic OS resource
models so that I could
predict exactly what they would do and
what events they would
send in any given situation. That has
turned ITM into little more
than a glorified cron daemon to run my
custom code...
For what it’s worth, I asked an ITM person
at Planet Tivoli how they
test the RM’s and she said they have
basically the same problem.
Ok, I’m done typing now...
Loren Cain
Digicon
From: owner-tme10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-tme10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of eric_c_jones@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005
9:33 AM
To: tme10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [tme10] ITM
Okay, I was gonna' let this ITM berating pass and
die...but c'mon... Both IBM and Microsoft are the respective kings of
patches, LA fixes, and major product course corrections.
As
for the posting about MOM... MOM is a fantastic product...for monitoring
Windows infrastructures. In fact, I believe that it just won a best of
breed award. But the reality is that MOM is a Windows platform product. It
is a platform point solution that does it's tasks extraordinarily well with
minimal effort (comparatively speaking). There are and will be more
integration for the product to do other things across platforms, but the
following is unrealistic:
"I really think all
Enterprises will move to MOM 2005 in 1.5-2 years."
Tivoli
is a framework. Unicenter is a framework. There are and will be
more frameworks. We live the life of implementers of frameworks. We
do things with frameworks that would be insane to attempt with a point
solution. However, some point solutions do things that would be
ridiculous to do with a framework. C'est la vie...
The
technical impracticalities of requested/required monitoring and management
solutions are such only as the respective tools force them to be. So when
it comes to the solutions that we must implement using our designated
tools...there's effort, time, training...etc.
But
in our area of technology...the facts, although interesting...are irrelevant.
Thanks,
Eric C. Jones
Enterprise
Systems Management
SSMT Tivoli
Engineer, JP Morgan Chase
614.213.6537
eric_c_jones@xxxxxxxxxxx
Eric C Jones
|
|
jason_shamroski@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent
by: owner-tme10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
01/31/2005 08:39 AM
Please
respond to tme10
|
To: tme10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cc:
Subject: Re: [tme10] ITM
|
I can't tell what the point of this statement is?
IBM manages the listserv and doesn't contribute much at all and they make a ton
of money from us all.
BTW - How many companies sell services or products to shore shortcomings in
Microsoft products?
Jason Shamroski
JP Morgan Chase
Jason Shamroski
|
|
Robert_Traill@xxxxxxx
Sent by: owner-tme10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
01/29/2005 08:08 AM
Please respond to tme10
|
To: tme10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cc:
Subject: Re: [tme10]
ITM
|
Also, ITM is another reason why customers are
turning to external
consultants/experts to code ResourceModels to get
back functionality present
in DM. Notice that 1 or 2 companies are
dominating this list group. I
do recognize that they are providing much valued
input freely, but they are
also gaining much recognition.
Rob
From: owner-tme10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: 01/28/2005 08:06:34 PM
Subject: [tme10] ITM
Hi list,
is it possible to distribute an custom
configurationfile together with a
Ressource Model Profile , like the Distribution
Action in DM3.7.
--
10 GB Mailbox, 100 FreeSMS
http://www.gmx.net/de/go/topmail
<<http://www.gmx.net/de/go/topmail>>
+++ GMX - die erste Adresse für Mail, Message,
More +++
Rob Traill, Tivoli Specialist
Enterprise Systems Operations
ph: (905) 795-5400 ext 7315
fax: (905) 795-5404
email: robert_traill@xxxxxxx
email (rim): rtraill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
This transmission may contain information that is privileged, confidential
and/or exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended
recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution,
or use of the information contained herein (including any reliance thereon) is
STRICTLY PROHIBITED. If you received this transmission in error, please
immediately contact the sender and destroy the material in its entirety,
whether in electronic or hard copy format. Thank you.
