UnixWare 2.0 has landed its first comprehensive Simple Management Network Protocol environment courtesy of IBM Corp. Although IBM has beaten the likes of SunSoft Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co or anyone else to Novell Inc’s latest Unix, the NetView version it is offering is rather oddly based on the Windows implementation, rather than on NetView for AIX, which is closely tied to Novell’s NetWare Management System. The Windows version of NetView is derived from the NMC Vision product from UK firm Network Managers Ltd, Guildford, Surrey. The companies are already beta testing the product which uses the same application programming interfaces – and has the same functionality as – the Windows version of NetView announced last June (CI No 2446), also based on NMC Vision. IBM and Novell say that they are actively pursuing other vendors to develop systems for NetView for UnixWare, and that 140 are currently under development. The reason for putting NMC Vision rather than NetView for AIX up is down to time-to-market, the two companies say. It has taken a year to get the Windows version across to UnixWare 2.0 – an implementation of the higher-end AIX environment would take much longer, IBM’s manager for NetView vendor development, Art Peters, said. The other attraction of the Network Managers’ technology is that it has got far more object technology embedded in it than NetView for AIX, which is based on Hewlett-Packard Co’s OpenView. The 140-odd NetView applications are currently being moved across. NetView for UnixWare 2.0 has been enhanced with features such as trap-forwarding and some topology extensions but it is aimed, like NetView for Windows, at sites with no more than 150-odd nodes to manage. NetView for AIX can accommodate hundreds of nodes.
Gambit
NetView specifically lacks Common Management Information Protocol, XAMP and pieces of NetView for AIX’s topology that provide ability to manage systems network architecture and DECnet network applications. NetView for UnixWare 2.0, which was implemented by IBM, and will be sold by IBM, is not on Novell’s price list but is due next quarter under Motif. Although it says it is looking at options for AIX network management technologies under UnixWare, IBM’s next network management gambit will be its integrated network and system management environment, called Karat. The notion is to offer a single product suite across a range of IBM systems that will include performance management and software distribution and licensing, in addition to enhanced network management. Customers will use one order number and choose the pieces of Karat they require. Although seen as a more unified set of application programming interfaces in the long-term, initial implementations will inherit existing technologies such that the Karat for AIX release is based firmly on OpenView. It has been in beta since last year’s Unix Expo, and IBM is working on migration tools to enable NetView/AIX applications to move across to Karat with as few changes as possible. Karat for AIX in this half of the year will be followed by OS/2, MVS and other versions. With discovery and reactive-mode network management already nailed, IBM says automation is still the on-going challenge.
