ERPUG Newsletter
May 1999
WELCOME
Eastern Regional PATROL Users Group
Board of Directors:
Brenda Kirkpatrick, President
Dave Voegele, Vice President
Brian Nickols, Director of Marketing
www.kirkpatrickconsulting.com/erpug/erpug.htm
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ERPUG Newsletter May 1999 | |
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WELCOME | |
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Eastern Regional PATROL Users Group Board of Directors: Brenda Kirkpatrick, President Dave Voegele, Vice President Brian Nickols, Director of Marketing
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www.kirkpatrickconsulting.com/erpug/erpug.htm |
1999 Patrol Technical Symposium
BMC Software's PATROL 1999 Technical Symposium was nothing less than great! The agenda was packed full of valuable information. If you couldn't attend, or even if you did attend, and you wish to receive a copy of all the great presentations on CD. You can contact Don Jameson by calling him at 800-841-2031 or email him using don_jameson@bmc.com. Another great way to stay in shape with PATROL is to join in on one of BMC Software's awesome teleseminars. You can get a great education at no travel cost and without leaving the office. Call BMC Software or visit their web site (www@bmc.com) to find out about their upcoming teleseminar offerings. BMC Software is committed to providing excellent education and their Education and Services Department has proven it over and over again. Visit www.certisource.com to see a current list of course offerings. The ERPUG wants to take this opportunity to thank BMC Software for all the great educational offerings. Thanks!!!
| Time | Description |
|---|---|
| 08:30 - 9:00 | Registration (Continental Breakfast Provided) |
| 09:00 - 9:45 | COMMAND/POST Integration with PATROL |
| 10:00 - 10:45 | PATROL3.3 |
| 11:00 - 12:00 | SLA-MANAGE Knowledge Module |
| 12:00 - 1:00 | Lunch Provided |
| 1:00 - 1:45 | PATROL Network Knowledge Module |
| 2:00 - 4:00 | Advance PSL and Knowledge Module Development |
| 4:00 - 4:45 | Open Technical Discussions |
COMMAND/POST Integration with PATROL Presented by Gene Slaughter, Boole &
Babbage "While some companies have invested in framework solutions to
manage their enterprises, BMC has chosen to supply it's customers with two
best-of-breed vendors. BMC Software and Boole & Babbage have outstanding
track records and proven ability to deliver products that work. The integration
of PATROL agents and Knowledge Modules with the COMMAND/POST enterprise
management console provides a single-point-of-control. The integration of PATROL
and COMMAND/POST provides service levels access second to none and it's
end-to-end! Join us for this exciting presentation which will show us the power
of COMMAND/POST integrated with PATROL.
PATROL 3.3 Is Here! Presented by
Sean McDonald, BMC Software PATROL 3.3 is here and it's everything we wanted and more! We have been
waiting for PATROL to have a software distribution element built in to the core
product. PATROL 3.3 greatly reduces distributed management complexity for
enterprise customers through new features which include remote installation and
deployment, centralized management and advanced security capabilities. In
addition to these cross-platform enhancements, PATROL 3.3 takes Microsoft
Windows NT application management to a new level. BMC Software has outdone
themselves again! PATROL 3.3 is designed to simplify the management of complex
IT environments and help customers deploy PATROL management solutions quickly
and effectively to experience a rapid return on investment. This brief will be a
how to use PATROL 3.3 with a live demonstration of the product. This is a must
see.
SLA-MANAGE Knowledge Module Presented by Steve Jones, Proxima Technology How many of us are held to Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
PATROL provides the monitoring and management elements necessary to ensure we
meet or exceed SLAs but we really needed an interface to show our managers, and
customers, we are really providing the return on investments stated by sales and
marketing. Proxima has developed a great KM, SLA-MANAGE, which provides an
awesome graphical user interface for showing SLA statistics. I am really excited
about Proxima's solution and hope you can join us for this presentation. You
will be surprised at the positive results of having a graphical user interface
showing the most critical aspect of your operations - performance, reliability,
and accessibility. We want to thank Steve Jones, Principle member of Proxima, in
advance for his participation, Thanks. Network KM Presented by a Brenda
Kirkpatrick, Starbound Software Solutions The PATROL Network KM provides a deep down look at your network
traffic. This KM, written by BMC Software, has the unique ability to analyze
network performance from the user request through the user response. The ERPUG
believes this KM will be extremely important to PATROL customers. At last we can
get the best network performance possible by understand the true traffic
bottlenecks and minimize the impact of the bottlenecks. Thanks BMC Software for
another job well done.
URL Content KM and Smart UPS KM
Presented by Jeff Jeffress and James Perry, BMC
Software Jeff Jeffress and James Perry of BMC Software gave one of the
most exciting presentations at this years BMC Technical Symposium. This
presentation provides the ultimate "how to" on writing Knowledge Modules. We are
so excited to be able to offer this presentation to our ERPUG members. This
presentation will include a code walk through of 2 KMs created by Jeff and
James: URL Content KM and APC Smart UPS KM. This is a must see for KM developers
and PATROL Users as well! Jeff and James are both extremely talented KM
developers and great presenters too. We are very lucky to have them join us and
want to thank them both in advance for their awesome contribution to our group,
THANKS! Open Discussions We created the Eastern Regional PATROL Users Group in order to
provide a forum to exchange ideas and talk about woes and successes. Let’s take
this 30-minute time slot to do exactly that. I am hoping that you will come with
questions or success stories in mind. All new members should be forewarned, our
group is chalked full of innovative, fast on their feet people so we always have
a lively discussion. BMC representatives, knowledgeable ERPUG members and myself
will try and make sure that you receive answers to all your
questions. A Message from ERPUG President…
Brenda
Kirkpatrick We have had great turnouts for ou Eastern Regional PATROL
Users Group (ERPUG) meetings! BMC Software is committed to having someone
from BMC Education and Services and/or BMC Software Consultant group at
all the meetings. This is great for us because we receive exceptional
education at a substantially discounted rate. I believe we learned a lot from our presenters over the
past couple of years. We shared antidotes, woes, and success stories,
which is the purpose of the ERPUG. I couldn't be more pleased with the
group. I receive requests for ERPUG membership on a daily basis, which
tells me that we really needed this kind of forum. For the members who
have been in the ERPUG in Nov 1997, yearly membership dues are due on or
by Nov 4, 1998. We would like to include PATROL-related articles in the
newsletter from users like you. Please send articles electronically to
snmp4u@erols.com or by US mail to Brenda Kirkpatrick, ERPUG, PO Box 548,
Winter Harbor, ME 04693. Articles will, for the most part, be printed
unedited; therefore, they should be copy-ready. If you need any help with writing an article,
just ask. We have extend the PATROL umbrella to include integrated
products such as Remedy, CuraMessage, Network Node Manager, Spectrum,
PeopleSoft, SAP R/3, HP/ITO, so articles on these products are equally as
welcome. Keep in mind that the presentation agendas are strictly
based on comments from members like you. We count the number of requests
for each topic and create the agenda based on the requests. If you want to
see a presentation then vote either at the meeting, via email, via US mail
or by calling the ERPUG. Please send questions for a "Dear ERPUG" column.
Responses will be both e-mailed to you and included in the ERPUG
Newsletter. If you have an answer for a commonly asked question, please
send both question and answer to "Dear ERPUG". If you have any ideas for regular columns, please send
ideas and/or columns to me. If you have an idea, but don't wish to author a column, or vice
versa, please contact me at (207) 963-2047 and maybe we can find a
solution. The ERPUG Newsletter is picture-friendly. I encourage any
and all pictures that can be made available, from pictures of authors to
spectacular consoles. Pictures in .tif format are best for me, but we'll
use anything from electronic to hard-copy. ERPUG dates, meeting agendas, previous meeting agendas,
newsletters, and much more can be found on our web site
www.kirkpatrickconsulting.com/erpug/erpug.htm. You can also get to the ERPUG web pages by going to
www.bmc.com/Events/Users Groups/Eastern Regional PATROL Users Group where
there is a link to our pages. I hope to see all of you on May
19th!! "Dear ERPUG" Brenda Kirkpatrick, Starbound Software
We received a lot of questions on the Network Knowledge Module,
COMMAND/POST Integration, and PATROL 3.3. I hope the this newsletter and
the presentations given on these topics at our May 19th meeting
will answer all the questions. Q: I'm running on NT 4.0 and I don't have a C drive. PATROL won't run!
Can you help? A: Yes, you need to set 2 environment variables, under control
panel->system, add the 2 variables: TMP_PATROL and PATROL_CACHE. For
example, you might have TMP_PATROL = E:\tmp\patrol and PATROL_CACHE =
E:\users\patrol. Q: BMC Software is growing so fast! Do you know where I can get phone
numbers so that I can reach their offices? USA and Canada (Houston, TX) 800-841-2031 Hong Kong 852-2588-118 U.S. Federal Gov't (Bethesda, MD) 800-233-1502 Italy (Milan)
39-2-754114-1 Australia (ACT) 61-6-239-6881 Italy (Rome) 39-6-519-62369 Australia (VIC) 61-3-9810-2010 Japan 33-1-41-12-88-00 Australia (NSW) 61-2-8912-1900 Korea 33-1-41-12-88-00 Austria 43-1-606-52750 Malaysia 33-1-41-12-88-00 Belgium 32-2-712-57-80 The Netherlands (Hoofddorp) 31-23-554-1717 Best 1 Product Information 781-663-4599 (or 800-841-2031) The
Netherlands (Nieuwegein) 31-30-608-5500 Boole and Babbage (Herndon, VA) 703-561-3225 (or 800-841-2031) Norway 47-66-81-22-00 Brazil 55-11-822-6000 Singapore 65-338-9400 Denmark 45-44-73-10-00 Spain (Barcelona) 34-93-322-2277 Finland 358-9-430-78-340 Spain (Madrid) 34-91-710-2626 France 33-1-41-12-88-00 Sweden 46-8655-36-12 Germany (Dusseldorf) 49-211-690-7280 Switzerland 41-1-445-9595 Germany (Frankfurt) 49-69-66-40-60 United Kingdom 44-1-276-24622 Germany (Hamburg) 040-236-972-0 Germany (Munich) 49-89-94-55-290
Well there are so many good questions that I’m afraid I will have to
wait until the next newsletter to answer them all. I apologize to anyone
who was hoping for an answer to his or her question in this newsletter.
Please feel free to call. BMC Now 3rd Largest
Supplier of Enterprise Management Software 1998 Stock Performance Responsiveness to Change Market Opportunity Marketing Expertise 36% 3.5 4 4 Human Capital Alliance & Partnerships Prospects for Growth Ratings Total 4 4.5 3.5 23.5 * ratings are on a scale of 0 - 5. Chairman, President, and CEO Max Watson has successfully moved beyond
mainframes to networked computers, a business where sales are growing 40% to 50%
annually. BMC Software has a gross profit margin of 90%, which is better than
Microsoft's gross profit margin, and BMC has plenty of cash to grow even bigger.
It's recent merger with Boole & Babbage makes BMC the third-largest supplier
of computer management software. PATROL 3.3 for Advanced
Enterprise Management and Control BMC Software's PATROL® product is the industry leader for system management
in complex computing environments. PATROL provides simplified, automated
administration for the wide variety of components that make up the distributed
enterprise. The PATROL 3.3 product, the newest version of PATROL, brings greater
control to developers and administrators in the following four important ways:
Remote installation - You can now use a simple, GUI-based installation
procedure to install to multiple machines at several remote locations from a
single, central server, dramatically reducing the overall time to get PATROL up
and running in your environment. It also reduces the time necessary for updating
your environment to the most current versions of PATROL.
Centralized storage, versioning, and deployment - With the help of the
PATROL Knowledge Module Deployment Server (KMDS), you now have a central
configuration repository, giving you better control over customizations and
PATROL KM development in your environment.
Enhanced support for Windows NT - PATROL 3.3 includes enhancements that
leverage native Windows NT services, and functionality to support programming
languages like VisualBasicScript or JavaScript.
Increased security - PATROL 3.3 adds an External Security Interface (ESI)
to enable the customer to implement site-wide use of advanced security
technology, such as Kerberos, and single sign-on. COMMAND/POST Integration Module
for PATROL SX Consultancy The COMMAND/POST Integration Module for PATROL enables an organization to
combine the distributed cross-platform application management capabilities of
PATROL with the powerful centralized event management of COMMAND/POST. The
module delivers a consolidated view of your Systems Management environment
providing measurable application service assurance. PATROL alerts are
instantaneously passed to the COMMAND/POST console to reflect the current state
of your IT environment. The PATROL events are stored in the central COMMAND/POST
database for consolidated reviewing with the comprehensive COMMAND/POST
reporting tools. Requirements: PATROL Agent 3.2 and above COMMAND/POST 3.1 and above Operating System Environment(s) Supported: AIX 4.1, HP-UX 10.20, and Solaris
2.5 and above Product and Ordering Information: http://www.sxc.co.uk or call +44 (01322)
407070 BMC Software Contact: Alan Ranger using Alan_Ranger@bmc.com or phone Alan at
44-1276-419-811. Business Week Rates BMC in top
50 Companies Nanette Byrnes in New York, with William C. Symonds in Boston, Dean
Foust in Atlanta, and bureau reports 1999 Rank 1998 Rank Company Total Return Total Return Sales Growth (1-yr) Sales Growth (3-yr) Profit Growth (1-yr) Profit Growth (3-yr) Net margin Return on Equity 1 1 MS A A A A A A A A 2 2 Dell Computers A A A A A A B A 4 102 Oracle A B A A A A A A 5 8 EMC A A A A A A A A 7 - AOL A A A A A A B B 8 10 Morgan Stanley B A B B A A B A 11 7 Tellabs A A A A A A A A 14 3 Cisco A A A A C A A C 22 - BMC Software B A A A A A A A 23 20 Sun Microsystems A A B B B A B B 28 81 Bell Atlantic A B C A B B B A 35 109 WalMart A A A B B B D B 39 45 Freddie Mac B A A A B B B C 40 4 Intel A A C B D B A A The Business Week Ranks 50 Best Performers. Which corporations in the S&P
500 have the most on the ball? Their rankings offer surprising insights into
some of America's most closely watched companies. SLA-Manage Knowledge Module
Proxima Technologies The Proxima Technology SLA-Manage KM provides a single point of
monitoring and management of service levels to PATROL users. Service level
management capabilities include rule-based correlation of PATROL application
data, web-based reports for the corporate Intranet, and detailed service-level
reporting. Proxima SLA-Manage:
Requirements: PATROL 3.2 and above Operating System Environment(s) Supported: UNIX & Windows
NT Product and Ordering Information:
http://www.proxima-tech.com/ BMC Software's Alliance for
Customer Excellence Program The ACE (Alliance for Customer Excellence) Program's purpose is to highlight
customer successes in order to illustrate how BMC Software products are helping
to improve the availability, performance, integrity and control of data and
applications in production environments. The program is actively recruiting
customers who are willing to volunteer to be reference points for BMC Software.
Levels of referencing may vary depending on the customer's desire and the
company's policies on referencing. BMC Software actively seeks customers who can
speak to members of the press, analyst community or agree to be interviewed for
a written, video, or web-based success story. Just as valuable are customers who
are willing to take phone calls from, or host, prospective BMC customers on site
to discuss specific products and product benefits. If you agree to be a BMC
Software reference, you need only agree to do the types of referencing which
best suite your business practice. Overall benefits to the customer: Rules of the program: If you are interested in being a BMC Software Reference or would like more
information on the ACE Program, please contact Deanna Ulrich-Hope at BMC
Software 713-918-2342 or email Deanna at deanna_ulrich@bmc.com. PATROL Knowledge Module for
Network Applications Key benefit Provides a comprehensive view of how applications perform on the network and
how the network affects application performance. Key features Monitors application traffic and events for an entire segment (including
clients accessing server from different subnets). Displays traffic by
application, client, server, router and subnet. Prerequisites Ethernet 10mbps or 100mbps Windows NT V4.0 server/workstation PATROL V3.2 or higher Overview The PATROL Knowledge Module™ (KM) for Networked Applications product extends
the PATROL product's application management capabilities to the wire by
providing a more detailed view on how applications behave on the network. The
PATROL KM™ provides a comprehensive view of how applications perform on the
network and how the network affects application performance. Installing the
PATROL KM for Networked Applications allows users access to standard PATROL
features such as proactive monitoring, alarms, recovery actions, graphs, and
reports for networked application data. With PATROL and the PATROL KM for
Networked Applications, application managers have an intuitive way to gain
valuable insight into their applications as they appear to the clients.
Application degradation can trigger recovery actions, while reports can target
potential trouble spots before they impact clients. A scaleable solution The PATROL KM for Networked Applications uses a software-only approach. Since
the PATROL KM does not require dedicated hardware, it works equally well in
routed or switched networks. This scaleable architecture enables users to
transition to switched networks without outdating their management software. As
such, the PATROL KM for Networked Applications represents the only available
solution for monitoring mission-critical applications in a switched
environment. Targeted management To focus on top consumers of network resources, while at the same time
minimizing resource requirements, the PATROL KM for Networked Applications
provides targeted filtering management. Through a filtering mechanism, the user
limits data analysis to the most active components, such as the top 10 Internet
application servers and/or the top 50 clients of those servers. Flexible monitoring With the PATROL KM for Networked Applications, you configure the applications
to be monitored. For each monitored application, detailed parameters are tracked
to monitor application performance on the segment where the PATROL KM is
installed. This configuration allows a single PATROL KM to monitor application
traffic and events for an entire segment (including clients accessing servers
from different subnets). Key features of the PATROL KM for Networked
Applications include: Operating modes The PATROL Knowledge Module for Networked Applications has two operating
modes: segment and host. PATROL KM is installed The best operating mode to use depends on what you want to monitor and the
resources available. For example, in a fully switched environment, you would
most likely need the host version running on multiple servers. For a more
traditional environment, where multiple servers and/or clients are on a single
segment, the segment version is the better choice. Or, you may need a
combination of both operating modes for complete coverage. The operating mode is
selected when you configure the PATROL KM. The user interface The PATROL KM for Networked Applications user interface is divided by the
following levels: The collector component of the PATROL KM examines network traffic on its
segment and correlates it according to the above levels. Integration The PATROL KM for Networked Applications integrates seamlessly into the
PATROL Console. Users can analyze and graph different application traffic
metrics by server, client, router, protocol, application and subnet. By combining parameters from other hosts (e.g., UNIX, Windows NT, Oracle, SAP
R/3, Lotus Domino/Notes, Internet servers, and others), users can perform
correlation to diagnose existing or potential application problems. This enables
powerful fault isolation and prediction capabilities. For example, users can
create a multi-line graph window to correlate server CPU utilization, server
memory utilization, client application response time, and application bandwidth
utilization to diagnose response time problems. With the PATROL KM for Networked Applications, you configure the applications
to be monitored. For each monitored application, detailed parameters are tracked
to monitor application performance on the segment where the product is
installed.
The 1999 PATROL Technical Symposium was a great success! In response to
the overwhelming request for access to ALL conference proceedings and
presentations, a CD-ROM is available for free. Features of the CD-ROM include: To request your copy of the 1999 PATROL Technical
Symposium CD-ROM, please call Don Jameson at
800-841-2031. Membership Enrollment
An annual membership fee of $75.00 includes (4) quarterly
meetings, a membership gift, and a lot of education, placement on the
ERPUG mailing list, membership voting rights, and access to any
promotional materials available through the organization. In lieu of
"corporate" memberships, we offer any member the opportunity to send a
substitute to any meeting. We ask only that substitution information be
provided when pre-registering. All members are requested to pre-register
for meetings by emailing the ERPUG President at snmp4u#erols.com or
sending the form, provided below, via US mail. If you have any questions,
please call Brenda Kirkpatrick at (207) 963-2047.
