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Introduction
ProductivityNets ActiveManage changes the balance of power between you and your servers. Network administrators are managing both more servers and a more diverse set of servers these days. The consolidation and downsizing occurring in many companies means more servers for each network administrator to manage. The low cost of servers has also led to their increasing numbers for both workgroup and enterprise applications. These servers come in many forms. Although Windows has remained very popular, most companies have more than one operating system given the influx of Linux and the continued dominance of Solaris for back-end databases and high-end applications. Its not uncommon for applications to use multi-tiered architectures with user interface, business logic, and database components split among Windows and Unix systems. Servers enter your company innocently enough, one by one, but quickly become in total, an unmanageable headache. ActiveManage, a simple and powerful tool, puts you firmly back in charge of the Windows, Linux, and Solaris system in your company. The visibility and control provided by ActiveManage leads to confidence in your systems and your companys confidence in you. ProductivityNet is passionate about the tools necessary to help you in this pursuit. ActiveManage supports the administration of Windows, Linux, and Solaris servers from a single unified Web, PalmOS, or PocketPC interface through a single administration point, the ActiveManage Host. The engineers at ProductivityNet have designed a tool with a thoughtful interface that demystifies complex operating systems so you can handle routine tasks easily and focus on the root cause of problems when they arise. Any server or other device put under ActiveManage control will be under your full and active control anytime, anywhere. Compare ActiveManage to the alternative of using a muddled set of underpowered tools that come with Windows, Solaris, and Linux tools meant for single-server, single operating systems administration from the console or a management workstation. Network administrators must master a slew of different tools to manage Windows and a completely different set for Linux or Solaris. ActiveManage harvests the capabilities of the most important tools, adds additional powerful features such as alerts and automated alert responses, and presents it all to you in a simple Web or wireless device interface.
Figure 1: ActiveManage unifies and simplifies the active administration of Windows, Linux, and Solaris servers.
Over time, ActiveManage will allow you to stabilize and continually improve the performance of all the systems in the company. Imagine a single ActiveManage Host with connections out to each server on your network where you can actively control each of these servers and they can actively communicate with you by using alerts. Anything you need to do add a new user or group, start or stop a Windows service or Unix process, run a command on your servers is available to you on your browser or wireless device. You can manage servers in different locations from wherever you are. Problems can be solved today and prevented tomorrow.
ActiveManage makes systems administration more productive and satisfying because the tool was designed to solve the real problems that occur in your network. Its a powerful and comprehensive tool with a simple, accessible interface. Saves time Enables time savings in accomplishing common day-to-day system administration tasks, anytime, anywhere over the web or using wireless devices. Minimizes downtime Provides alerts to developing problems, and automated responses/fixes to system anomalies, thus proactively managing critical systems in the organization. Improves system quality Comprehensively manages servers, desktops and routers including Microsoft Windows, Linux and Sun Solaris operating systems. Simple to deploy Fast to deploy and configure clients, host and agents with secure and encrypted access to the native interface of the systems. The tool will change the way you administer your systems and enable some powerful solution scenarios well discuss. With ActiveManage, a network administrator can support the critical needs of the business and readily maintain an increasingly dynamic environment while improving the quality of service to the enterprise. A simple ActiveManage agent on each managed server brings that server under full control. In fact, the entire ActiveManage product suite can be installed in just a few hours. Contrast this with more expensive solutions that often take weeks or months to deploy and still dont provide the critical benefits of ActiveManage. While ActiveManage is not complex, it is the most powerful tool available to actively control the servers on your network.
ble to an accountant using only Excel or a creative designer using only the Microsoft Windows Paint program. You can get by but you will be forever limited by these mediocre tools. ActiveManage lets you both monitor and control multiple Windows, Linux, and Solaris servers without many of the typical hassles.
ActiveManage in a Nutshell
ActiveManage provides many benefits for the network administrator with one, two, a dozen or even a hundred servers to manage. ActiveManage excels both in managing servers on the local network and in managing remote servers across town or across country. The architecture and Web interface also fit nicely into help desks and even enable external consultants to effectively manage a companys servers. The ActiveManage Host functions as the hub between Web and wireless clients and managed servers running the Microsoft Windows, Linux or Solaris operating systems. ActiveManage agents are also available for Windows desktops. ActiveManage agents for additional platforms will be released periodically. Lets explore each of the critical factors of ActiveManage systems administration:
Active Control
Active Control means that a network administrator can perform a complete set of tasks to effectively administer all servers. Problems tend to decrease over time as the network administrator falls into the pattern of discover, solve, and improve. ActiveManage raises visibility into the servers through helpful views and flexible alerts giving access to the root cause of problems. The ActiveManage Web and wireless interfaces provides access to powerful hooks into the Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems to fix most problems when they occur. The ActiveManage Active Responder helps permanently control problems by allowing the network administrator to add automatic responses to many known conditions. Many other products and certainly the management tools included with Microsoft Windows, Linux and Solaris only handle a subset of these tasks and dont help network administrators uncover the root cause of problems. These products keep network administrators in a perpetual state of reacting to problems. ActiveManage begins a state of continual improvement.
Anytime, Anywhere
Network administrators are people. They move around. They go to lunch, go home at night, go to tradeshows, and walk around within a company. They need a systems administration tool that travels with them. Native tools within Microsoft Windows, Linux and Solaris require client installs that require a network administrator to be at his desk or at the server console. Microsoft tools are notoriously bad over slow links or across the Internet. Even secured administration of Linux and Solaris servers requires a computer fitted with a Secure Shell client. ActiveManage lets you move around naturally with full control of and communication with your servers from any wireless device with the ActiveManage client or from a Web browser.
Multi-server
The native tools in Microsoft Windows, Linux and Solaris are designed for single-server administration. Often a network administrator wants to view settings or make changes on multiple servers simultaneously, a task ill-suited for these native tools. For example, companies often use clustering software or server farms to offer high-availability for key applications. These techniques ensure that the application will continue working even if a server fails. When troubleshooting these applications, a network administrator needs to simultaneously view each of the servers in the cluster or farm to diagnose problems. In addition, companies often have similar servers deployed around the company for file, web, or other services. A change to one server usually means the need to change, or at least check, other similar servers. ActiveManage puts all of these servers under a single point of control. With a single login to ActiveManage, multiple servers can be viewed, compared, and configured from one interface. Also, ActiveManage alerts and automated responses display warnings and informational messages for any collection of servers. An effective systems administration tool like ActiveManage will make administering multiple servers much easier.
Multi-platform
The Microsoft Windows platform is very popular within companies but Linux and Solaris often house key applications such as databases, directories, or firewalls. A systems administration solution that does not address these platforms will be incomplete. Ideally, the systems administration tool would treat the common features of an operating system such as adding users, starting and stopping services or processes in a common way. A network administrator would perform the same task in the same way for different systems and have the tool figure out the appropriate implementation for each disparate system. ActiveManage simplifies systems administration across different operating systems so network administrators can focus on the semantics of the problem without worrying about the syntax.
ActiveManage in Action
ActiveManage will not sit in your server room collecting dust. You will use ActiveManage on a daily basis for routine administration such as adding users and groups or stopping and starting Windows services and Unix processes. You will use ActiveManage in troubleshooting to discover and to solve many types of server problems and finally to improve the network and your control of it over time with new alerts and automated responses to recurring issues. All of these activitities will be simplified because you can manage all of your
servers from a unified Web or wireless device interface. Moreover, you will really appreciate the power and flexibility of ActiveManage when trouble hits. Lets look at a probably all-too-familiar scenario.
Friday afternoon
Your SmoothSales order entry system is down. This system takes all Web-based and direct sales orders in your company or at least it did. Why now? As luck would have it, its early Friday afternoon near the end of the quarter and you are at a remote office setting up some new users. Your pager just went off with the frantic message from your vice president in charge of sales.
Before ActiveManage
Before you brought in ActiveManage, the prospects were gloomy. Drop your current work and drive the 45 minutes back to the home office to fix the problem. The people at the remote office need you but you cant be in two places at once. You anxiously think back on all the times you attempted to walk someone through a solution over the phone. Those were frustrating times and rarely worked to your satisfaction. The best answer then was for you, and you alone, to solve the problem. This outage is costing your company money, some serious image problems, and could put a damper on the whole weekend, a weekend you really need to relax and recover from the hard work youve done in conjunction with the companies expansion over the last 3 months. The company comes first but the thought of another weekend in the office is tough to take.
Its starting to become a little clearer. The hard disk warning you received earlier and the consistently high CPU usage lead you to believe the application has run out of resources. You check the services more closely using ActiveManage and see the logging service eating up CPU and RAM. A check of the log file shows that it has grown to a monstrous 10 GB! Its all clear now. The DBA who upgraded Oracle had turned on verbose logging on the Windows server and had turned off the maximum log file size for a weekend of testing. When the systems were cutover to production, these helpful test settings were slow death for the application. It was just a matter of time. This system was eating its own hard disk and RAM resources and had finally died.
ActiveManage can alleviate this problem.A network administrator can create an automated response to manually check and restart Microsoft Exchange server as soon as a problem is diagnosed. ActiveManage includes canned SMTP e-mail alerts than will notify the network administrator when a mail server using SMTP is down. POP3, Web, DNS, FTP and other alerts can be used to keep network administrators informed about the health of key company servers.
Conclusion
Todays network administrator needs a powerful tool for systems administration. No longer are the point solutions offered with operating systems sufficient for the network administrator dealing with a large number of diverse servers. Applications inside companies often have components distributed across different operating systems, and companies themselves are often distributed across large geographic areas. ActiveManage reduces the complexity of systems administration through a well-designed interface with summary and fine-grained control over Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Solaris servers as well as Microsoft Windows desktops. Network administrators can use ActiveManage to discover problems and peculiarities in their networks, solve everyday or one-time problems, and improve the resiliency of the network. Network administrators are no longer chained to their desk as ActiveManage supports both browser and wireless devices such as the Palm or Compaq iPAQ to proactively monitor and respond to any type of problem. Changes can be made to a single server or multiple servers if required. ActiveManage can work on the high-level to solve most problems and gives you the ability to dissect a problem in detail until you find its root cause. ActiveManage changes the balance of power between you and your systems.
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