Rivals enhance their admin suites

Network managers have been spoilt for choice when it comes to monitoring and management systems recently, as vendors try to differentiate themselves from their competitors with product upgrades.

Entuity last month announced the 2008 edition of its flagship network management system Eye of the Storm, called Eye 2008. The vendor said it aims to fill a gap in the market between single-function tools and “heavily laden frameworks that are difficult to deploy, learn, use, and expensive to support”.

One of the key enhancements in Eye 2008 is a module that Entuity said gives “efficient scalability and administrative control of distributed Eye installations on the latest operating environments, including VMware.” The firm added that said the new module “makes VMs visible and manageable in the context of the overall network infrastructure so businesses can reap the benefits of virtualisation without running the risk of losing control to VM-sprawl.”

Available now, Eye 2008 runs on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Sun Solaris, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and VMware ESX Server. Pricing starts at around £24,000.

Meanwhile, Network Instruments has upgraded its Link Analyst network resource monitoring system. Network Instruments’ chief executive, Douglas Smith, said, “While our network protocol analysis suite, Observer, shows network traffic and is a fairly passive system, Link Analyst is focused on infrastructure and is an active system for querying devices.”

Smith added that whereas Observer can show admins how apps are performing on a particular system, it cannot report on CPU utilisation or hard disk status ­ which is where Link Analyst comes in. New in Link Analyst 5 is the ability to put devices into named groups and then to monitor and report on both software and hardware on a group basis.

Smith said one of the main advantages of deploying Link Analyst is the seamless way it integrates with Network Instruments’ powerful network protocol analysis suite, Observer, and its retrospective forensic analysis system, the appliance-based Gigastor.

Firms looking to update their network mapping and management capabilities may be interested in the latest version of the Whatsup Gold platform from Ipswitch. The system has been upgraded to enable enterprises to better management networks across multiple distributed sites. Called Whatsup Gold Distributed, the new package is available now with pricing starting at about £1,770 for the central installation and about £1,260 for each remote installation with up to 100 devices each, although installs are also available for 300, 500 and unlimited device counts.

All these paid-for products face competition from version 2.0 of the free network monitoring and inventory package, Spiceworks, which ships this week. Another free monitoring package, Packet Trap 360 Pro, is expected to hit the market early in 2008. Currently being beta tested, the package will be modified before its final release in light of tester feedback according to Packet Trap’s Matthew Bolton.

See also:

Spiceworks upgrades IT management package

Spiceworks' IT network management tool wil help firms manage desktops  10 Dec 2007

SolarWinds' Cirrus helps managers configure network

New version of Cirrus adds community features  06 Dec 2007

Review : Network monitor sets Gold standard

Whatsup Gold 11 makes checking and reporting on network hardware quick and easy  20 Nov 2007

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