OpenNMS Platform
Get the Network to Work™
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Network Management is hard. While there are a number of solutions available to address management issues, very few of them can scale to handle the needs of large enterprises and carriers. For years they have been suffering with expensive commercial applications that take a long time to deploy, mainly due to the need to fit a company’s business practices to the way the tool works.
OpenNMS was created as a solution.
Started in 1999, the project has a proven track record of success. While remaining 100% open source, OpenNMS has won a number of awards against products from companies like IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Novell.
There are four main functional areas of OpenNMS:
Provisioning
We have one client with nearly 70,000 devices being managed by OpenNMS. While often overlooked, the ability to add, change and remove devices from the management platform becomes incredibly important on a network of this size. OpenNMS can automatically discover the network, gather information from external sources (such as a company database) or a combination of the two. This allows for a fine grain control over device management with results in fewer false positives.
Event Management
OpenNMS is event driven. Events can be received, modified, assigned a severity, reduced (in the case of duplicate events) and can cause notification actions, such as sending an e-mail or SMS, or running a corrective script, to be performed. Numerous event sources can be used, from SNMP traps to Syslog messages to TL/1 logs, and of course it is extremely easy to add custom events. OpenNMS can serve as the central repository for all information available from devices on the network.
Service Monitoring
If it is reachable over the network, OpenNMS can monitor its performance. From simple “pings” and port checks up to complex monitors for web sites, mail services and mobile telephony communication, OpenNMS comes with a number of monitors to insure that those services are both active and responsive. In an age where a slow web page can result in a quick loss of revenue, a solid service monitoring solution can pay for itself in no time.
Performance Measurement
OpenNMS has the ability to collect time-series data from a number of protocols: HTTP, SNMP, JMX and even WMI. This data can be stored, graphed, as well as measured for thresholds. Not only does it provide the basic high/low thresholding, OpenNMS can also trigger alerts on complex thresholds (involving more than one value) as well as relative and absolute changes in collected values. Whether measuring CPU utilization or the price of an eBay auction, OpenNMS can do it.
This is, by far, not an exhaustive list of OpenNMS functionality and features, as more are added almost every day. For example, provisioning also includes the ability to interact with configuration management tools such as RANCID, and the notification system can connect to most popular trouble ticketing systems.
With its power and flexibility, OpenNMS is ready to meet the most demanding management needs.
What Our Clients Say
Towerstream 4G Wireless ISP Gets the Network to Work – With Extra Wins in Asset Management and Customer Service.We are an ISP. Our network is what we actually sell, and that’s why we must have top performance from our network management system. We didn’t get top performance with our old system, but we do with OpenNMS. - Michael Micheletti, Manager of Engineering, TowerstreamRead More
The Pennsylvania State Milton S. Hershey Medical CenterIn six hours, we had OpenNMS running with all the functionality that it had taken us three years to develop with Openview NNM. This was a rude but happy awakening. - Dale Meyerhoffer, Senior Network Analyst, Hershey Medical CenterRead More
City of Grapevine, TexasI was the only IT person at the office, but with OpenNMS, it was easy to keep track of everything on the network, including our snow and ice-covered traffic light system. If there had been a problem, OpenNMS would have let me know. - John Jennery, City of Grapevine, TexasRead More