Notification

Many competitive solutions provide no SNMP reporting or only in network SNMP reporting. This defeats the entire purpose of OBM (Out of Band Management). The OutPost products delivers monitoring and reporting in both in and out of band so the devices are always monitored and available for access. The ENS provides optional SNMP reporting and in addition provides heart beat monitoring. The ENS monitors carrier to tell you if the box is connected and if the power is present or has been interrupted. If someone accidentally bumps or pulls the plug on a device you know instantly with an ENS. If a console cable on a device is pulled when connected and monitored by a competitors box you never know it.

Most do not even mention emailing or paging. The ENS allows email notification with “Hot Links,” paging and even SNPP paging. The ENS also has customizable event triggers not found in other product. This allows customized actions to specific devices and error messages. The ENS can see an Error such as “Link Down” and reboot that router automatically without human intervention and start additional processes including paging and emailing someone or cold starting another device. They assumes the network is always operational and must wait for someone in the NOC (only) to try and manually respond to an SNMP trap.

You cannot exclusively rely upon the network and SNMP for notification as they do. If the network fails how will you be notified? How will you know what happened? How will you keep the other processes running? Single point of failure seems to be a reoccurring theme for the them. If you can find one that integrates the management (KVM, console access and power strips) they rely on a single box or point of failure. If that one NT box goes down and you lose access and visibility to that one off site box, then you lose access and visibility to all your networks and all your devices. The ENS and the OPS Command Center are completely distributed. This means that you may have almost an unlimited number of computers functioning as your NOC, complete with access and display. In addition, The ENS units are self-aware and you will see if there is a problem with one of the ENS units on the OPS Command Center display.