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OpenNMS compared to...
If you're just learning about OpenNMS, welcome! Here are a few facts to keep in mind as you learn:
- OpenNMS is a network management application platform that follows the FCAPS model.
- OpenNMS is designed to be an enterprise-grade solution.
- OpenNMS is 100% open source software. We believe that this is effectively the same thing as Free Software. All the functionality of OpenNMS is included in the open-source version; there is no other version.
- Worldwide support, consulting, training, and custom development services for OpenNMS are available from The OpenNMS Group.
CA eHealth® Performance Manager (former Concord)
Computer Associates' eHealth Suite (formerly from Concord Communications) is primarily a performance management-focused set of products known for its scalable poller engine, device certifications, and large variety of built-in reports. OpenNMS is able to replace much of eHealth's functionality, at the same or greater scale.
Unlike OpenNMS, eHealth is commercially-licensed proprietary software.
Component Mapping
| eHealth Component(s) | OpenNMS Component(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pollers | Pollerd (IcmpMonitor), Collectd | OpenNMS separates the concerns of availability and performance into two separate daemons. In addition to SNMP, OpenNMS can collect data via HTTP(S), JMX, WMI, and other protocols. |
| Discovery | Provisiond | |
| Fault Manager | Trapd | |
| LiveHealth | Thresholding | |
| SystemEDGE Agent | Net-SNMP agent, SystemEDGE agent, other SNMP agents | OpenNMS supports SNMP data collection from any standards-compliant agent. The SystemEDGE agent is supported "out of the box". |
| Service Availability | Pollerd | Unlike Service Availability plugin for SystemEDGE, OpenNMS' service polling is normally deployed as a part of the central installation. |
| Top-N Reports | Statsd statistics reports | |
| At-A-Glance® and other reports | Resource graphs, KSC reports, availability reports |
The author of this section worked for Concord Communications from 2000 through 2005.
HP OpenView Product Family
The OpenView® framework is one of the oldest surviving network management platforms that is still popular today. Several of the original creators of OpenNMS came from a company that became part of the OpenView business unit, and at least one came from a company that was one of the largest OpenView NNM shops in the world. It's unsurprising, then, that OpenNMS borrows some concepts, goals, and terminology from NNM.
Unlike OpenNMS, the OpenView suite is commercially-licensed proprietary software.
Component Mapping
| OpenView Component(s) | OpenNMS Component(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Network Node Manager | Pollerd, Collectd, Trapd | Service monitoring, performance data collection, reception of events as SNMP traps |
| OpenView Operations | Pollerd, Collectd | OpenNMS supports data collection and trap reception from HP's OVO SNMP agent |
| OpenView Performance Insight | Collectd, ad-hoc resource graphs, KSC reports, thresholds, Statsd | OVPI was formerly DeskTalk |
A User's Story
I have recently been working to replace HP OpenView Network Node Manager (NNM) and Operations (OVO) with OpenNMS as our primary monitoring application for our Network Operations Center. I evaluated several different network monitoring systems both commercial and open source and in the end eventually settled with OpenNMS due to its capabilities and flexibility, this is not to mention that the price was right.
To summarize my experiences with HP OpenView NNM and OVO...
The NNM map requires a lot of administrative overhead, both the NNM map and message browser are very antiquated, the OVO agents are a pain to work with as they often break during an OS upgrade/update, the OVO agent install process isn't very smooth, HP's support is great with 1st call resolution but if you get escalated you probably won't ever get resolution.
During my two years of research on monitoring systems I evaluated many commercial applications such as; Solar Winds Orion, NimSoft Nimbus, SiteScope, and several of the BMC products. Also we evaluated several open source products such as Nagios and Big Sister. We eventually settled on OpenNMS due to its capabilities, simplicity and flexibility.
While out of the box OpenNMS was unable to provide us with the functionality of NNM and OVO, we found that with a few extra open source packages and some in house development work we were able to eventually address 99% of the functionality of NNM and OVO and for a fraction of the price and time that we had spent on NNM and OVO. Integrating all of these things together would not have been possible if it weren't for the flexibility of OpenNMS.
I don't "yet" have support through The OpenNMS Group but the support that I have received from the mailing list alone as been far superior to that which we received from HP.
I have learned a lot about monitoring systems from my two years of researching network monitoring systems and the following are some of the ones that stand out...
Network maps are more work than they are worth, watching a screen of scrolling messages is a bad way to monitor anything, monitoring processes and procedures are just as if not more important that the application that you choose, ease of configuration is just as important as ease of use with a monitoring system because you spend just as much time working with the configurations as you do using it.
I hope that somebody out there finds this information at least a little bit useful. For anybody out there looking for a good monitoring platform my recommendation to you is do lots of research and strongly consider OpenNMS!
--Byron A. 16:02, 20 February 2006
IBM Tivoli Netcool Suite
The Tivoli® Netcool® suite, formerly from Micromuse, was originally focused primarily on fault management. Several OpenNMS maintainers have extensive Netcool experience and certifications. Parts of OpenNMS' event architecture are inspired by the Netcool OMNIbus product, and many organizations have [The Order of the Blue Polo - Member 000019|successfully] [The Order of the Blue Polo - Member 000020|replaced] Netcool deployments using OpenNMS.
Unlike OpenNMS, the Netcool suite is commercially-licensed proprietary software.
Component and Concept Mapping
| Netcool Term(s) | OpenNMS Term(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Netcool OMNIbus | Eventd, Alarmd | |
| Alerts | Alarms | |
| Event de-duplication | Event reduction | OpenNMS offers the option to retain the individual events that comprise an alarm |
| Automations | Automations | |
| Netcool Impact | Event Translator | |
| nco_p_mttrapd probe | Trapd | |
| nco_p_syslog probe | Syslogd | |
| nco_t_tl1 TSM | Tl1d |
Nagios
Nagios® is a system and network monitoring application. It watches hosts and services that you specify, alerting you when things go bad and when they get better. OpenNMS has a fundamentally different architecture and set of goals compared to Nagios. The official Nagios Core 3.x Documentation says:
Note: Nagios is not designed to be a replacement for a full-blown SNMP management application like HP OpenView or OpenNMS.
Like OpenNMS, Nagios is Free / Libre / Open Source Software. Nagios Enterprises sponsors and provides support for Nagios.
