Hewlett-Packard Co has finally introduced the second part of its delayed Tornado distributed release of OpenView Network Node Manager claiming it allows management tasks and processes that until now ran on a single server to be shared by multiple servers – as long as each server is running a full-function copy of the Network Node Manager. HP says it’ll allow OpenView to manage corporate networks with tens of thousands of devices, up from thousands in the previous version. Each server can send information about the devices it is running to one or more other Network Node Managers. Topology and status information is consolidated at a central console. Network Node Manager comes with three new filters, claimed to reduce CPU and memory use; domain filtering, allowing operators to monitor only the IP devices they are interested in; inter-domain filtering, which can restrict what management information is passed from domain to domain; and map filtering for customizing views. A Windows NT release due by year-end will allow customers to deploy the Manager on NT as a domain manager only. HP says third-party solutions written to SNMP v2c or v1 standards can also be used in conjunction with the new Network Node Manager 4.1 which is priced at $16,000. An Entry Network Node Manager with distributed functionality, which is limited to monitoring 100 devices, is available now costing $5,000. IBM Corp and SunSoft Inc have previously claimed their own network management environments already provide Tornado’s functionality and that HP is playing catch-up.
