Netcool

nco_sql is the command line utility provided with Netcool Omnibus to interact with the Object Server. In addition to the interactive use, this utility is often used in scripts to automate actions, etc. however it can be cumbersome to use in scripts. The alternatives such as using freetds and perl can be difficult to setup as they often require going thru install, compile, etc.

rapidnco is an (apache licensed) open source tool that mimics the functionality of nco_sql utility. Put it another way, rapidnco is a rather simple wrapper to use the built-in groovy SQL capabilities from the command line. 

It is very easy to install (just unzip),  does not require Netcool client to be installed, has no dependencies other than  Java Runtime. Hope you find it useful.  

Rivermuse (core) is an open source event management platform that has been gathering a lot of attention primarily since it has been founded by the original founders of Micromuse and promises an open source alternative to Netcool.

We've just released in the RapidOSS plugin for Rivermuse. This first version of the plugin provides seamless bi-directional integration between RapidOSS and Rivermuse, bringing alerts from Rivermuse into RapidOSS and forwarding user actions from RapidOSS to Rivermuse.
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When you ask a vendor whether their product can do X, what are the chances for the answer to be no? Truth is, if there is any shape or form product can possible do X, regardless of how difficult and painful it may be to do so, the answer would be yes. Hence it is no surprise that people are highly skeptical of any statement made by the vendors.

As a versatile and open solution, RapidOSS is designed to be customizable and extensible to be able to solve wide range of problems.  read more »

In the previous post, I had discussed why and how we had build a web based UI specifically for iPhone and hinted that this means Netcool users now can work with Netcool from their iPhones. In this post, I'll go further into what this means and how it works.

- RapidOSS is already integrated with Netcool:  read more »

Handling of the planned/unplanned maintenance of IT infrastructure is an essential event management activity, yet it seems to be an after thought in most tools.  The accuracy of the information presented to users is essential. Users need to know what it truly a problem that requires immediate action and what is not.  read more »

In my conversations with potential customers and in documentation, I often state that RapidOSS makes it easy to work with external systems. Since "easy" is a relative concept, without some concrete examples this may not mean much to folks who don't have first hand experience working with RapidOSS.

Integration with external systems very often require in-depth understanding of the APIs provided by the external systems. Even when the external system provides standard APIs (SOAP, database etc.) it is not easy to master the variations from the standards, and figure out the structure of the data, how to use it.

In RapidOSS, we use a simple data structure consistently for all external systems. If the data is a single object (record, line, etc.) it is represented as name value pairs, referred to as “Map”. For example, if we want to represent employee information, we could use the following structure:

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In a previous post, I discussed different management systems integration types: data layer integration, functional integration, event integration and presentation layer integration.

Problem:
You have number of different management tools for different management disciplines (fault mgmt, configuration & change mgmt, service desk, etc.), and technologies (Unix, Windows, LAN, WAN, Applications, etc.). Yet services you provide span multiple technologies and platforms, and you need to provide information to internal/external customers about the services they use. We'll consider can think about the scenario described in this post to understand what type of information you may need to provide to your users.  read more »

When learning about new products, I often find myself trying to understand what problem the product is trying to solve and often without much success. It is crucial for vendors to express this clearly, yet it's not so easy. We sometimes get lost talking the jargon, the features, etc. and forget about the fundamental question. What is this product good for?

So I remind myself not to loose track of where we (iFountain) have started. RapidOSS is a direct result of number of problems we have run into repeatedly in the field. It's our attempt to have a repeatable solution to common problems that are typically solved as ad-hoc custom projects or by forcing product to perform “unnatural acts”.

So in this series of posts. I'll discuss the problems we have encountered in the field. The problems we are trying to solve with RapidOSS.

Problem: The client is broken  read more »

IT infrastructure needs to be managed holistically. Its a given. How do we do that? It's been a painful
journey.

First there was the “frameworks” (Tivoli/CA). The idea of building all management tools on a common
framework so that they would all be integrated, have common user interface, etc. was very appealing. But the execution did not match the promise.

A single framework to manage the entire IT infrastructure turned up to be a pipe dream. Too costly, too difficult and too painful to buy, implement, and maintain. After spending hundreds (millions?) of thousands of dollars, many IT organizations abandoned the framework projects or significantly scaled them down. Most people who worked on framework implementation projects can still feel the bad taste left in their mouth.  read more »

OK I admit that only a few people would use the words "IT management" and "cool" at the same sentence, but here I go! You can now work with your managements systems from your IM client. The latest release of RapidInformer now supports AOL IM, Google Talk, Jabber and IBM Sametime. You no longer have to be glued to the glass to stay informed or have a console running to interact with your management systems. Via the bidirectional IM interface, notification come to where you are and you can execute commands directly from your IM client or email. "ESM via IM" so to speak.

Let's review what this thing can do:

Notifications: Notifications can be send via email, SMS, instant messaging, or any system that has an API or command line interface. Not much new here other than Sametime support, moving right along.  read more »