Infrastructure Monitoring
09/14/2000In the past year, the perception of Linux as a serious operating system for people other than "do-it-you-selfers" and programmers has gone from invisible to in-your-face. Linux is popping up everywhere, like mushrooms after a rainstorm. Every day there are announcements of new initiatives that involve Linux in some high-profile application, whether it's Linux-based supercomputers used by oil exploration companies or hand-held Linux PDAs or the GNOME foundation's promise of delivering a common desktop environment that can actually provide some useful services and applications across all Unix platforms (unlike the failed OSF CDE effort of the early 1990s).
Despite all the glitzy announcements and high expectations, there is still a lot of hard, serious groundwork to be done to ensure that Linux systems are successful players in the enterprise computing arena.
Getting down to business means "Infrastrucure Ready"
For the next several Linux in the Enterprise columns, I'll explore some key services and facilities that are needed to make sure that Linux deployments are successful and will allow your systems to be integrated as seamlessly as possible into your firm's existing infrastructure. These tools and facilities will also be useful to you if your definition of "enterprise" is a small company or start-up that isn't in the Fortune 500 just yet. Among the areas we will consider are: infrastructure monitoring, backup and recovery, automated installations, enterprise file sharing, security and automated log analysis.
One of the most important areas that you will need to tackle if you are planning on deploying Linux systems in an enterprise environment is how to integrate the Linux systems into any existing infrastructure monitoring tools.
At first blush, this might seem like an easy task -- after all, Linux suppports SNMP (the Simple Network Management Protocol) -- but SNMP alone is, for real-world applications, a way-point on a journey and not a destination unto itself. Even though Linux supports SNMP, tools are still needed to make that capability useful. The ability to look at SNMP variables or walk through SNMP MIB by hand isn't gonna cut it. What most people want in a network monitoring and management tool is something that lets them see a nice graphical representation of their network and other facilities and supports a lot of automated, scripted interfaces to manage the systems with a minumum of effort.
There are several tried and tested systems that can allow Linux to be managed just as easily as other systems.
Pages: 1, 2 |
