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Red Hat on Thursday announced plans for an enterprise systems management framework, combining Red Hat Network software delivery and maintenance functionality with the companys latest component, the systems management module announced Thursday.
The systems management module, available now for $120 per host per year, supports integration, features an agent-less software architecture, and is written as a plug-in framework for fast support of device and application monitoring.
Red Hat has also developed a Plug-in framework, which includes plug-ins at the system-level, port-level, application server level, as well as the database, network and custom levels.
As first reported by eWEEK, the framework and new systems management module significantly enhances Red Hat Network—which until now has been primarily a software update mechanism—and can be managed from a browser, eliminating the need for desktop software, while also being easy to manage and deploy and supporting heterogeneous environments, said Red Hat director Paul Santinelli.
“When customers buy Red Hat Advanced Server, they get a certain Red Hat Network entitlement, but they will have to pay a fee for the systems management module,” he said.
The new offering extends the monitoring software provided by NOCpulse, which Red Hat acquired last October.
Some customers have welcomed the Red Hat solution, saying the current Red Hat Network costs far less than comparable solutions such as HPs OpenView and IBMs Tivoli, which provide centralized management and uptime monitoring.
Sitel Corp., which offers outsourced teleservices and has some 70 servers running Linux—including a large deployment of Red Hat Advanced Servers—also uses Red Hat Network.
Scott Clark, Sintels director of systems engineering in Omaha, Neb., said on Thursday that Red Hat Network is some 10 times less expensive than Microsofts Systems Management Server and basically does the same thing. “I get capacity planning benefits as well as hardware configuration, all sorts of good stuff like that,” he said.
Sitel was a “failed Tivoli deployment” and will be deploying the systems management console in the second quarter of the year across its Red Hat, AIX and Windows. It will also be deploying its own internal applications through Red Hat Network.
John Rowell, vice president of operations and engineering for Opsource, Inc., which supports AIX, Solaris and Windows, said he has also looked at Tivoli and other comparable systems but has decided to go with Red Hat Network.
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