Workshop

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Hour 22
Who Watches The Watchmen? Network
Management Tools
Nothing strengthens the judgement and quickens the conscience like individual
responsibility.
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“Network management” is possibly one of the most overused phrases in networking. Used to mean
everything from change management to network monitoring to remote reconfiguration, network
management started out as an amorphous marketing blob of a phrase used to soothe you into parting with
your money. It used to be that you could buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of hardware and
software, end up with a proprietary solution that didn’t do you much good, and be left with the net result
of being tens of thousands of dollars poorer.
Not anymore! Today’s network management packages can provide powerful tools to help you coordinate
the task of keeping track of hundreds of network devices and thousands of network stations. Although
the high-end management stations and associated network probes can be costly, you now have a choice
between comprehensive and complex or simple and slick tools to help you monitor your network’s
general health or to simply report proactively when things stop working.
Certain management packages include everything but the kitchen sink. In particular, they include tools
that we’ve briefly discussed:
• Automated network application deployment tools (Hour 16, “Beauty Is Consistency Deep:
Saving Yourself Trouble”)
• Remote control and support (Hour 17, “Where Do I Start?”)
For this hour, we’ll define a network management tool as any tool that helps you monitor your network
infrastructure gear, applications, and servers remotely. You’ll see how network management can help
you take the bull by the horns and build a more reliable network.
Big Monitor Is Watching