Netcool Overview for newbies

So what is this Netcool thing people are talking about in the office? What does it do? Why is it so great? Why should I care? Read on for an overview of Netcool that will help answer these questions..

Micromuse

Netcool was formerly owned by Micromuse, who was aquired by IBM in February of last year. The Netcool product suite is now under the IBM umbrella of enterprise monitoring tools.

Netcool

Netcool is a term that stands for multiple products, or components, that make up the total Netcool product suite.

Probes

Probes are executables that are designed to collect event data from a specific source, like email or a database, and apply any rule logic defined to the event data before forwarding an alert to the ObjectServer event bus.

Omnibus

Omnibus contains the event console, called an event list, and the event bus called the ObjectServer. Most components, but not all, connect to the ObjectServer to get event data from the bus.

License Server

License Server listens on a port for license validation requests from most Netcool products, otherwise the products will not function. Licensing is strictly controlled in this way.

Security Manager

Security Manager provides integration with LDAP (e.g. Active Directory, OpenLDAP, etc.), NIS, or you can use you ObjectServer for authentication. Security Manager provides authentication for other Netcool products like Impact, Precision, Webtop, and RAD.

GUI Foundation Server

This server provides the web framework for Netcool products like Precision, Webtop and RAD. It provides single-signon authentication by connecting to Security Manager, and routes license requests from these products to the License Server

Precision IP

Precision provides network monitoring in Netcool. Precision will perform network discovery (both layer 2 and 3 for routers and switches) and handles SNMP (supports v3). Precision provides multiple products inside of it, among them Topoviz, which manages the network topology in a mySQL database, and Webtop for web access.

Impact

Impact provides the ability to connect to a data source, like a database, and enrich an exsting event on the bus with additional information, and then publish it back to the bus.

Stay tuned for further details..