MOM for Heterogeneous Environments (part 1)
I talked with the CTO of
Jalasoft yesterday at MMS 2005. They build connectors and management packs for MOM. The interesting thing about their product is that they also support linux monitoring. They do this via an agent that is installed on the managed systems. When I asked him why he didn't just use SNMP he stated that there were some issues with the default version of SNMP on redhat (NetSNMP) where they weren't getting the most reliable information set and performance. The agent is compiled C code, so in theory should be able to be ported to other OSes if the need is there. Once I get home and have some time to set up my home lab, I'll play around with the Jalasoft software with MOM and tell you what I find.
The feedback I've received from some other Hosters who have looked at using MOM to monitor their complete heterogeneous environment is that while there are a few companies out there providing capabilities to manage linux systems, they're not designed for the scale that web hosting companies are typically looking for. We'll see how these new products stack up and if they can truly create a more heterogeneous management solution.
Expect another blog post on my conversation with Vintela, which is another company making management tools which integrate Linux management into the Microsoft management tools. I'll also report later on what Steve Ballmer had to say about management of a heterogeneous environment.
