Thanks to the following who replied:
matthewm_at_voyager.sgate.com (Michael Matthews)
Brenden Phillips <B.C.Phillips_at_massey.ac.nz>
hat_at_zso.dec.com
My original post was:
>We're currently looking at purchasing system management software to manage
>our Alpha's running Oracle 7 across a WAN..
>
>The current contenders are:
>
>- Platinum - DBVision
>- BMC - Patrol
>- EcoTools from Compuware
>
>I would appreciate hearing opinions from anyone who has used, or is using one
>of these, just to get a feel for how the product _really_ performs, as
>opposed to all the glossy hype and predetermined demonstrations.
Summary of replies:
RE: EcoTools
>As of v3.3.1, it's actually pretty stable. The amount of information
>you can get out of it is pretty useful if not amazing. I would not
>call it as efficient as it can be. In fact, the glossies are somewhat
>incorrect. The efficiency of its underlying protocol is nice, but the
>way the agents run is pretty nasty. Some stuff has little to no
>overhead, some stuff has lots.
>
>It's interface isn't great, but functional. Its ability to let you
>hook in any shell script or program you wish is pretty cool.
>
>Overall, it's a very good product at this stage. I still think it's
>the most capable systems *monitoring* (not management) package out
>there.
RE: BMC - Patrol
>We got Patrol at the begining of the year.
>
>It's really easy to use
>
>It installs in about 15 mins
>
>In it's base form ( out of the box ) it's OK, but it's really easy to add
>functionality to - I've added about 15 different monitoring functions for
>in house pieces of software
>
>We use it to monitor ingres not the big O, so I can't comment on that,
>but the ingres stuff is fine
>
>It can be a biggish CPU hit at times, and quite a big memory hit 10M
>total with 6M resident with the Unix and ingres knowledge modules
>It actually took a couple of our marginal systems over the edge memory
>wise but...
>
>All those history graphs has meant that we have got about 512M more
>memory in various systems and our DB alpha server 1000 upgraded from dual
>4/233's to 5/300's.
>
>Managers and the accountants can't easily fight proposals for upgraded
>systems with "please justify with metrics" if you can produce lots of
>cool graphs doing just that ( see the last point :)
And from Digital themselves:
>For the performance aspects of Digital Unix(DU) and Oracle check out
>Performance Manager(PM) V2 on the Associated Products CD which ships
>with the OS CD. PM provides for monitoring and thresholding of over 700
>metrics including visibility to all Oracle performance data. For more
>info see:
>
>http://www.unix.digital.com/unix/sysman/perf_mgr/pmweb/
>
>PM can be used with any SNMP application including BMC Patrol.
>
>No matter what release of DU 4.x you are using please use the version
>of PM from the DU 4.0B associated products CD - you will need this
>version for monitoring Oracle. If you are using DU 3.2c or later DU 3.2
>releases, please send an email giving your street address to:
> koontz_at_zso.dec.com
>and we will ship you a CD containing appropriate versions of PM.
>Please do not hesitate to contact us directly at:
>
> pm_feedback_at_zso.dec.com
>
>if you need further information or we can be of any assistance.
Received on Mon Mar 31 1997 - 13:02:25 NZST