Open Source Management

With shrinking IT budgets and a continued need to control IT environments, the use of open source solutions to manage infrastructure and operations is no longer just an interesting experience but a viable alternative for enterprises of all sizes. The IT management market offers plenty of solutions spanning from monitoring to automation. Open source covers many of these subject areas as well, and end users in both midsize and enterprise markets are looking at these tools as a way to save operational expenses and time. Typically, open source solutions are more lightweight and functionally to the point and can be a real alternative for managing your IT environment.

Communities supporting open source projects could actually be a better resource for enterprise IT looking to fix glitches in their software than commercial software support teams. The strength of the open source approach is the community that develops around a solution. Open source proponents also cite advantages, such as more rapid bug fixes, more brain and person power adding functionality, and its low cost (in many cases it's free). While these are just some of the advantages among many, there's also a downside to open source.

For pure open source solutions, the biggest disadvantage is managing the software itself. Users must download distributions, compile code, download fixes and updates and keep track of software distributions. Although there is flexibility in this environment and techies find themselves in their element with open source, it isn't for everyone. All of the open source management suite vendors offer a free, open source version of their solution, as well as a user community. In addition, all of them also offer for-fee services and/or make product enhancements available for purchase.

There are lots of different Open Source management offerings available. Many of them rely on the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) which defines both a  protocol for an SNMP manager to access a remote SNMP agent, and also defines the data that can be transferred.  SNMP data values that an SNMP manager can request, are defined in Management Information Bases (MIBs) which can either be standard (MIB­2) or can be “enterprise­specific” ­ in other words, each different manufacture can provide different data about different types of device.  Information events emanating from an agent (typically problems) are SNMP traps.  Of the Open Source management solutions available, some are excellent point solutions for specific niche requirements. MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher)  written by Tobi Oetiker, is an excellent example of a compact application that uses SNMP to collect and log performance information and display it graphically.  If that  satisfies your requirement, don't look any further – but it will not help you with defining and collecting problems from different devices and then managing those  problems through to resolution.