RapidOSS Primer for Netcool Users

Added by Berkay Mollamustafaoglu, last edited by Okay Mollamustafaoglu on Jan 27, 2010  (view change)

RapidOSS is a complete integration, automation and presentation solution for IT operations management. The capabilities provided by RapidOSS span through a number of different products in Netcool suite such as Netcool® ObjectServer, Gateways, Probes, Impact, Webtop, Reporter, Portal, and TBSM.

RapidOSS offers a risk free, flexible upgrade path for Netcool users. RapidOSS can be used to:

  • complement your existing solution by addressing the most common pain points
  • replace parts or all of the solution to reduce complexity and administrative overhead

This document is an attempt to describe the capabilities provided by RapidOSS in terms that are familiar the users of Netcool suite of applications.

A Netcool solution architecture may look like this:

A Unified, Consistent, Web Based Console for IT Operations

Native Netcool console is a client/server application. Webtop provides a web based console for Netcool, and Portal may be used to integrate Webtop and other Netcool products such as Reporter, TBSM and 3rd party products in order to provide a unified console to IT Operations teams.
Solution architecture can be quite complex, and difficult and costly to implement and maintain as it includes multiple products that needs to be integrated, and end result is not a consistent, simple user interface.

Although Webtop is meant to provide a web based interface for Netcool, it still relies on Java applets to work with the Netcool events interactively, which introduces support overhead due to compatibility challenges, etc.
Implementation and maintenance is quite difficult and costly due to out of date architecture and proprietary nature of Webtop, requiring organizations to invest resources to learn various quirks and workarounds and become "Webtop gurus"

Portal may provide access to different applications through single sign-on, but each application consists of different user interfaces, with little or no integration among the different applications.

RapidOSS provides a web based user interface for Netcool and other applications that is superior to both Netcool Webtop and the native desktop console.

  • Native web application, built using modern web technologies (AJAX), does not rely on Java applets or ActiveX.
  • Seamlessly integrated with Netcool Object Server to bring events from the Object Server into RapidOSS repository.
  • Highly scalable web based architecture designed from ground up to handle very large number of events and users.
  • Dynamic (read/write) user interface.
  • Full text search to query events and other management information, without having to learn SQL to find relevant information, create filters, etc.
  • Full access to historical events through the same user interface
  • Integration with performance graphs and inventory, ticketing systems,etc. to provide access to all relevant IT Operations management information
  • Open web development framework and web based UI Designer to customize the user interface. No need to invest time in learning proprietary products for customization; it's standard web development

You need to see it to believe it? It takes under an hour to install RapidOSS, integrate with Netcool ObjectServer, and start using the web based console to work with Netcool events.

Event Enrichment, Suppression, Prioritization, Correlation, Automated Actions, Escalations, Notifications

Impact is Netcool Object Server's windows to the outside world. It is not possible to access external databases, etc. from Netcool rules files or (SQL based) automations, therefore an external system is required and the official solution is the Impact product. Impact can integrate with external systems, databases etc. in addition to the Netcool ObjectServer. Unfortunately, Impact requires a completely different set of skills, with yet another proprietary language (to write policies), and is often overkill both technically and commercially for many requirements.

RapidOSS is a superior alternative to Netcool Impact that is based on open technologies and uses a standards based fully featured scripting language rather than a limited proprietary language. The total cost of ownership is significantly lower as it does not have steep learning curve of a proprietary system and hence much easier to implement and maintain.

RapidOSS integrates with databases, other management systems, as well as Netcool. RapidOSS can be used to process Netcool event stream, enrich, suppress, prioritize, correlate events, add intelligence, automate actions, notify interested parties, etc.

RapidOSS provides:

  • A federated CMDB (modeling engine) to represent the environment
  • Integration facilities that abstract the complexities of external interfaces and expose information from multiple sources in simple common data format
  • Standards based, fully featured scripting language to express the business logic without having to master the complexities of external systems, Netcool interfaces, and proprietary languages.
  • Ability to use any java library ensuring integration with any external system or data source

    What can you see in action? You can setup enrichment of Netcool notifications with data from an external database within an hour

    • Install and configure RapidOSS instructions here
    • Install and configure Netcool plug-in instructions here
    • Create data source to work with the external database (or use the embedded data store for your testing)
    • Modify the sample enrichment script
      Contact us for free support during your evaluation. We'll answer any questions you may have and help with developing the enrichment script to save you time.
      If you already have Impact and considering replacing it, send us your enrichment policies and we will convert them for you.

Exchanging Data With External Systems

Although Impact can be used for integration, Netcool also provides Gateways, configurable components to exchange events between ObjectServers and external systems such as Help Desk systems and databases. Gateways can be implemented through configuration files without programming/scripting hence may be preferable if the integration requirement is not sophisticated.
RapidOSS provides integration layer to facilitate easy integration with external systems. As it is based on open web technologies, RapidOSS integration layer can leverage vast array of Java libraries, yet provide simple scripting interface to work with the external systems. RapidOSS can export Netcool events to databases or other management systems easily, offering both simplicity and extensibility.

Historical Events

Netcool uses an in-memory database to store events, therefore events cannot be stored in Netcool in the long term. Netcool Reporter product is used to export events from Netcool into a relational database such as Oracle, and create reports from the data stored in the database. Reporter is yet another product, another moving part that needs to be learned, and maintained, and for the users to be able to see the older events, the UI needs to be integrated into the operations console. Reporter also lacks many of the features provided by the reporting solutions available in the market.

Unlike Netcool, in RapidOSS events do not have to be removed from RapidOSS repository when they become inactive. RapidOSS storage engine is capable of storing data both in memory and in the file system seamlessly enabling RapidOSS to store vast amounts of data efficiently.
RapidOSS can export Netcool events to a relational database if required, however historical events are available in RapidOSS without requiring an external relational database. Historical events are accessible from the same web based user interface, eliminating the need to integrate with yet another system to present historical events to the users.

Note that you don't have to do anything for this to work. Just click on Historical Events tab to see inactive events.

Integration with Trouble Ticketing (Service Desk) Systems

In Netcool, Gateways to ticketing systems such as Remedy can be used to open/update/close tickets in the ticketing system and populate ticketid field of the event.
RapidOSS ticketing integration layer goes beyond most IT management tools including Netcool. RapidOSS models trouble tickets and relation between events, services, and tickets within RapidOSS using built-in modeling engine, making it possible for users to work with tickets within RapidOSS UI, instead of having to launch and use another tool. Tickets can be created by the users interactively via the user interface or programmatically.

Self Service notifications

In Netcool, ObjectServer automations or Impact policies are typically used to notify users for specific events. This function can introduce significant administrative overhead since the administrators have to maintain notification rules for different users in an attempt to find the balance between too much information and missing important information.

RapidOSS notifications lift this burden off of the administrators by enabling users to create their own notification rules through the web based user interface by point and click or Google like searches, without having to learn SQL. Users can create rules, turn rules on and off, as they want and control which events they want to be notified themselves.

RapidOSS Event Collection

Netcool provides hundreds of probes to receive events from devices, element managers, etc. Significant majority of these probes use common standard mechanisms such as SNMP Traps, log files, TCP Sockets, Database tables, etc. Although you will not see such a list of probes with RapidOSS, most if not all of the same standard mechanisms are also supported by RapidOSS as well, hence RapidOSS connectors can be used to receive events from the same sources.

Instead of the proprietary and limited Netcool rules language, RapidOSS leverages fully featured Groovy scripting language, making it possible to receive events from any external system.

iFountain provides rules file migration as a service, converting your existing rules files into Groovy scripts, minimizing migration risks. For your evaluation, provide us one of your rules files and we'll convert it to groovy with no cost to you.

Business Services Management

Netcool suite includes TBSM as the business service management solution to model business services and their dependencies to the IT infrastructure components and determine business impact of problems, providing a business context to assess events. TBSM can use events from Netcool ObjectServers as well as data from external systems and databases to determine state of business services. Recent packaging of TBSM includes Portal, ObjectServer and Webtop as components and TBSM also provides functionality that overlaps with Impact. TBSM solution architecture can be quite complex and a lot of the complexity is due to number of different products that are included, and their integration.

RapidOSS includes a robust modeling engine that is capable of modeling business services and their relationships and dependencies to IT infrastructure components they rely on. The state of services can be calculated in number of different methods using events from Netcool or any other system. RapidOSS offers a much simpler solution as the functionality is part of the same product and separate products with yet another set of things to learn, implement, and maintain and integrate with. One consistent, unified product to implement and maintain.

Netcool, Tivoli, TBSM, Impact, Precision are trademarks of IBM

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