Network Node Manager for Windows NT

HP OpenView’s flagship sails in NT waters

Network Node Manager (NNM) is the flagship of the HP OpenView suite. NNM for Windows NT is a 32-bit port of the UNIX-based implementation that offers all the capabilities of its UNIX counterpart. NNM for NT is not the same as the NNM in HP OpenView for Windows Professional Suite, which HP targeted for workgroup-size networks.

NNM for NT is a powerful network management tool. When you first run NNM,
it uses standard discovery utilities and protocols, such as ping, Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP), and Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) to discover
all the active nodes in your immediate network. With this information, NNM
creates a network map to illustrate your network’s topology and contents. Screen 1 shows the map NNM discovered in my test environment.

NNM is not limited to your immediate network. You can point NNM at routers
or give it specific network ranges, and NNM will discover information about
additional networks or network segments. You can then maintain the information
about additional networks as part of your main network map, or you can create
and save separate maps.

Besides laying out your network, NNM lets you look inside each node. NNM
shows you which computers are Web servers, FTP servers, and more. Because NNM
uses SNMP as the basis for its management, it can manage a broad array of
networking products: routers, bridges, network printers, intelligent hubs, or
any device that supports SNMP. NNM can detect nodes that do not support SNMP,
but NNM cannot manage them.

Your level of control over a node depends on the capabilities of the SNMP
agent on that node and the operating system (if any) the node is running. For
example, if you select an NT node, you can run a variety of standard NT tools
(e.g., Event Viewer, Registry Editor, Windows NT Diagnostics) on that node to
gain more information. This level of information is not available for Windows 95
or other desktop operating systems.

In the Lab with NNM
NNM installed easily on a 133MHz Pentium with 64MB of RAM. HP designed NNM
to run as a network management console, so if you want to track or trap network
problems, don’t run other applications on the console.

NNM replaces the standard NT SNMP agent software with the HP SNMP agent
software, which reports more information to the NNM console than the standard NT
SNMP agent software; so, also consider implementing HP’s agent on your NT
workstations. NNM works with other vendors’ SNMP agents, but you will get more
information if you use HP’s agent.

Watching NNM go through the discovery process was scary. If you’ve ever
played with hacker tools, you know where hackers get some of their ideas. NNM
dutifully probes your network, using discovery tools to locate each system on
it. Because NNM uses standard open protocols, nothing is fishy about its
discovery methodology. Currently, NNM can detect both TCP/IP and IPX systems,
but not NetBEUI-only systems.

After NNM discovers all the nodes in your network, it monitors them for
changes. For example, if someone turns off a computer, NNM sees that node drop
out of the network and changes the color of that computer on the map from green
to red, signaling a problem. NNM supports various alert capabilities, so it can
also notify you by email.

Most networks consist of multiple segments, and NNM lets you view your
network from different perspectives. A high-level view represents your main
network segments, or you can look at specific nodes on specific segments. NNM
propagates any problem in a network segment up to the high-level view, and you
can easily navigate from the high-level view to the detailed view.

When your network has a problem, you simply navigate to the node and use
NNM’s diagnostic tools to analyze the problem. You can also use NNM as a
monitoring tool to view statistics for nodes or network segments, and you can
set up traps to alert you when certain conditions arise. For example, NNM can
tell you when you exceed a threshold of network errors or reach a specific level
of network utilization.

The information you can monitor on a per-node basis depends on the SNMP
agent you’ve installed and the Management Information Base (MIB) available to
the agent. The basic SNMP agent included with NT supports only a limited amount
of information. As I mentioned, NNM’s SNMP agent supports more information;
however, to get detailed information out of a node, you must install one or more
MIBs on that node.

A MIB is a database that tells an SNMP agent what statistical information
and management options are available for a specific type of node or service. For
example, MIBs are available for Internet Information Server (IIS) and SQL Server
for detailed statistics about their performance. NNM includes several MIBs, and
you can get additional MIBs from other vendors, including Microsoft. MIBs are
the key to getting detailed, service-specific information via NNM.

Tried-and-True
NNM is reliable and easy to use, and you can integrate it into any size of
network. You can easily combine NNM with other system and network management
products, including Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) and CA/Unicenter.
If you need a rock-solid, SMNP-based network management product, look at NNM.