HPSU 2009 - Part 6 - What is OMi?

OMi - What is it really?!
There's been a lot of confusion (on my part as well, I must confess) about what exactly OMi is, and how it works. On the plus side, I've just had a great chat with one of the developers & two of the solution architects to help me finally understand what it is, how it works, and why you might want it.

First things first - OMi is a name only appreciated by the marketing team because it has caused mass confusion - OMi is NOT the next version of OMW in the way that NNMi is for NNM. OMi is a "layer-on-top" tool that enhances your troubleshooting & root cause analysis capabilities for OMW/OMU (and OML?) and comes as part of the BAC suite. By purchasing & installing OMi you get BAC, and must install & operate the BAC server. So this loops back to those still running OVIS and wondering about what they'll need to do about moving off of it (topic for upcoming post - OVIS migration to BAC).
If you want to make use of OMi you need to do a couple of things...
1. Have OMW or OMU running with all requisite SPIs
2. Get your NNM up to NNMi (unless you don't have it, then skip this step)
3. Install BAC & OMi (kind of one step...)
4. In installing BAC & OMi you by default install uCMDB, which must now be configured
5. Run the automated configuration tool to pull the data from your OMW/U tool to populate the uCMDB
6. Start to configure your dashboards and views

Of course, I've grossly over-simplified, but it's a roadmap to get you started. As always - if you have specific questions you'd like me to answer or thoughts you'd like to share on any of this please reply to the postings!

HP Software OMW vs. OMi

Yesterday I was in attendance at a presentation by HP Software gurus and one of the topics was HP Software Operations Manager. One of the items I found a little confusing at first, and thought I'd share with the online community was the idea of OMW versus OMi. Currently, most of the install base of the Operations Manager product from HP software is one of the following:

"old naming conventions" old products (still supported, but not sold)
HP OpenView Operations for Windows 7.5x (OVOW)

"new naming conventions" current products
HP Software Operations Manager for Windows 8.x
HP Software Operations Manager i 8.x

(note that I'm just focussing on the Windows platform for the moment)

As it turns out, OMW & OMi are differing products, primarily in the interface. Keeping in mind that OMW (& OMi) architecturually are split into three peices - agentry, server, and console. OMi uses the same agentry & server components, but layers a new console on these.

Confused yet? :-)

OMW is currently at release 8.10 and will continue with future releases for now (next expected later this year to be 8.15) as fixes/improvements are added to the product. OMi is being developed in parallel, and is an upgrade (free for current OMW support contract holders) to OMW 8.10. Once you've "migrated" to OMi you stay on that platform. HP is not "pushing" customers to OMi at this time, so if you've got OMW running well, and don't see an immediate need for OMi features (to be discussed in my next posting) then don't rush out the door, but start your research.

Please feel free to ask for any further clarification that I can add to my next postings!

HP OM8 for Windows - First Review

While at PEG March '08 I've been attending the Operations Manager Windows 8/SiteScope training. I've had the web-delivered "intro to" session a couple of months ago, but there's nothing like the hands-on with the HP experts there to walk you through and answer questions.

Prior to this week, I knew at a high-level what most of the new features/functions to the Windows version of the product would be. A lot of the functionality that was previously only available with the Unix version has been ported. I also knew about Reporter, the HTTPS agents, and Performance being packaged up together in OMW8.

My initial thoughts after three days of instructor-led hands-on is that there are enough significant improvements here for any OVOW 7.x users to start planning their upgrade. And anyone who is going down the path of trying to find an ESM solution should give this product a fair shake in their evaluations.

Nodes Business Like ESM Business
Having the External Nodes feature available for the Windows platform is great. You can use the standard pattern matching syntax for OM to match messages from nodes not in DNS against "catch-all" groups and this is helpful as many organizations don't seem to have their DNS 100% clean... But besides processing messages, the ability (which has been there previously) to have nodes without agents in the node & service topology is quite handy. HP has put a new wrapper around the node config editor which is useful since the addition of the HTTPS agent type makes node config a little trickier than it used to be. However, you can always jump to "expert mode" and do things the "old" way. Obviously, the inclusion of the HTTPS agents is a huge leap forwards for the Windows management world, but beware - it's not just a single port each way to manage through the firewall. Another really nice touch is the ability to push HTTPS agents to UNIX nodes. This function is technically unsupported, but easy and useful.

Service Please!
Version 8 also brings the CLI access to the configuration of service via the service API.

Config This
For anyone who's rolled up their sleeves and dug into the OVOW registry previously, you'll be glad to hear about the Server Configuration editor in OMW8. Many of the settings and configuration that were largely unknown and only available through registry edits are now contained in this powerful GUI. Config items from auditing to database to agent certificates are accessed through this interface. Another long-awaiting config item is the ability to add AD groups to roles in the User Role Config Editor.

Other useful features include the unplanned/scheduled outages, remote action security, and detailed heart-beat polling config options.

All-in-all, if you're an OVOW shop today, start talking to your consultants about the upgrade (it's going to take some planning!) and if you're not using a tool like this yet, check it out. Pricing is still going to be the major issue for anyone new to this market space, and I'm waiting to hear from HP if they'll be offering an "Express" package like they did for OVOW 7.5x to make it more affordable to the mid-tier market.

HP Partner Enablement Galaxy - March Edition

St. Patrick's Day finds me back in New Orleans, and back at the HP Software Partner Enablement Galaxy (PEG) for ramping up my Ops Centre & Site Scope skills/knowledge.

So first off, Happy St. Patrick's day to everyone!

This morning started off with the general session from 8:00 to noon (well, 6:00 to 10:00 according to my body) but despite the fact that I don't handle jet lag well, I was able to be completely attentive. Steve Myers from HP started things off with over-views and clarification on HP's bail policy for people who decided to go out to Bourbon Street. Steve also shared some other interesting facts about PEG in general such as:

• This PEG has 30% greater attendance than the last one
• This PEG has a large Central/South American contingent
• 155 "students" are here representing partner companies from Canada (yay!) to Argentina
• This time 'round there are 8 tracks and 23 instructors
• Onsite certification will be available this Friday

Jim Murphy came on stage to discuss the vivit training lined up for HP Software Universe in June and encourage everyone present to consider attending those sessions.

Steve finished up his sessions by letting us all know that PEG will be here once more, the week of Oct 6 2008.

Next up was Mike Procopio from HPSW to address the group on the HPSW Network Lifecycle Management initiatives, and how HP wants partners engaged in that. Mike went through the standard aligning IT to business pitch, and discussed the concern of CIO/CTOs of keeping the network operational, meeting SLAs, and cost-effective. An interesting factoid he brought up was an estimate of average network downtime impacting business bottom-lines at $70,000/minute. I'm thinking this is an average across Fortune 500s, but interesting factoid none-the-less.

Mike talked in depth about NNM8i, the Performance iSPI for NNM, change & config management, and AlarmPoint Express. Gotta say I've never personally been a huge AlarmPoint fan, but I will make the time to take a look at the new offering bundled with full purchases of NNM8i. Stay tuned for a review at some point.

A major point Mike made that clarified some confusion for me was that Performance iSPI is NOT intended to replace OVPI (or HP Software Performance Insight), but instead it appears to me to be more like a "pay for" integration piece that gives you "OVPI light" integrated into your NNMi architecture. Again, more on that topic as things develop!

Chuck Fugee & his team of SAs were introduced to everyone. Nice to meet them. :-)

Next up was Scott Strubel. I haven't had a chance to talk to Scott for a while; not surprising because he always seems to me to be one of the busiest execs in HP - although if you can find him he always does make some time to talk. Scott addressed us partner organizations about ways that the HP sales force and partners should be working together, the state of BTO (Business Technology Optimization) solutions today, what HP needs from the partners in as far as solution offerings go, and some re-iteration around HPSU in Vegas, and the Partner Summit to be held there.

Personally, I've never been a big fan of the Partner Summit when I've attended HPSU or OVFI conferences. It's nice that the big partners get their pats on the back & trophies, but the info there I find really oriented towards software sales and not implementation guys & gals. Give me case-studies or in-depth techie sessions anytime!

Scott is planning on being in Central Canada next week so heads up HP Canada Software Sales folks!

Scott made reference to the number he mentioned last October, of FTE and professional services consulting hours that HP software sales were planning on driving to the partner base. Then he informed us that it looks like HP is tracking to exceed those numbers. Good news for the partners! Well, the ones that HP is working actively with anyhow.

The last item from Scott that really caught my attention was the mention of HP shifting some percentage of it's software sales attention towards the upper end of the SMB market. There wasn't a lot of info on that, but as it's a space that Tsunami actively engages in I must admit that piqued my curiousity - More info please, Mr. Strubel! Perhaps my channel manager can update me after he's had his visit with Scott next week. ;-)

Last up was Victor Fadool from HPSW Professional Services. Victor spoke on a number of items, but I must confess that I glazed over a bit as it was very US oriented, and rarely discussed how the Canadian organization might find ways to work better with the Western Canadian partners... It was interesting to hear him make mention of work done in conjunction with some mysterious un-named partner at BC Hydro. Apparently Service Management work. Sounds like a good story, if the work has been as successful as it was promoted as being - so mystery partner(s), here's your invitation to contact me for an interview about the project, and give a presentation to our Vancouver local chapter of Vivit!

So that was the general session and the morning of DAY ONE. We next went to lunch where I was able to briefly chat to Scott Strubel and get a little more detail on what's up for Canada (I'm not posting that though, it'll be a suprise for my Canuck counter-parts!).

The afternoon got us started on our break-out sessions. Stay tuned for updated posts on those. I'm taking the OVOW8/SiteScope session, and I'll post all the late-breaking news I get from that. I know my customers are eager to hear more about OVOW 8.