Tango/04 Upgrades its Systems Management Tool

by Dan Burger

Sometimes you'd swear the odd couple is really IT infrastructure and business goals. The misalignment of these enterprise requisites must be the work of the devil. Bringing them into alignment is why there are systems management strategies and tools such as Tango/04 Computing Group's VISUAL Message Center, which was designed to cope with the increasingly complex workloads that result from the union of business and IT.

Among the monitoring duties of VISUAL Message Center are system and application messages; performance metrics; critical job and process status; security and system integrity, including auditing; user-error tracking; and the status of such items as communication lines, interfaces, and printers.

The VISUAL Message Center is not new, but a recent round of enhancements has improved its capability to monitor systems and networks. Its usefulness comes into play as it automates operations and responds to events, either by regulating the event automatically or by notifying an IT department manager of performance issues, security breaches, or application problems that could impact the operating health of iSeries, Windows, and Linux servers, as well as TCP/IP services.

The most apparent improvement is the user interface. With this latest release, users now get multiple business views from one console. By displaying multiple business views on a single console, VISUAL Message Center can graphically channel system events according to their business relevance, rather than just the technical considerations.

For example, a user can consolidate all events relevant to an accounting application to one accounting business view, which displays the operating health of the accounting application. Similarly, printer-related messages can be consolidated to a printer business view. It also becomes possible to consolidate events relevant to a certain production plant, or even a system partition.

Multiple business views, a feature Tango/04 refers to as Enterprise View, looks like a window with a customizable background on which icons can be positioned to create a real-time global representation of the status of systems. The icons change color according to their status and act as direct shortcuts for drilling down to critical events. The background can include diagrams such as a geographical map or an office plan. Color icons provide display at-a-glance status of events, and alarms can be configured to respond to specified events.

To minimize the impact of unforeseen errors, actions can be triggered or withheld by a message system, which also allows actions to be chained together, allowing a degree of "operator intelligence" to be programmed into the product. For instance, a proactive systems-check feature automatically initiates pre-selected actions when specified messages are not received. A real-life example might be if the usual completion of overnight batch processes notification is not received. In this case, a contingency action would be implemented according to a preconceived plan.

According to Tango/04, VISUAL Message Center is capable of handling hundreds of thousands of messages per hour.

In addition to managing AS/400, iSeries, and Windows servers, VISUAL Message Center also manages networked services such as POP3, FTP, SMTP, and HTTP servers.

The VISUAL Message Center suite is made up of various integrated product modules, divided into two categories: agents and consoles. Agents run on individual iSeries or Windows servers and monitor specific technology activity areas such as system messages, performance data, and TCP/IP services.

The iSeries Server Agent collects and manages batch messages from any iSeries message queue. It monitors job activity and status, job queues, devices, and the history log. There is also an iSeries Interactive Agent that collects and manages all interactive iSeries user-error messages; an iSeries Performance Agent that collects and manages critical performance parameters from iSeries servers; an iSeries Security Agent that detects and audits possible threats to system and data integrity; and an iSeries Support Agent that provides a remote problem-diagnosis tool for operators.

The Windows Server Agent collects and manages application, system, and security events from any Windows server (NT, 2000, or XP). The TCP/IP Services Agent monitors availability and performance of any networked TCP/IP service, and includes a graphical Java console.

The agents deliver information to connected management consoles. The consoles centralize the collection and management of information from multiple agents on multiple servers. The central graphical console automates common tasks such as message replies and command actions. It can provide alerts via two-way cell phone, e-mail, audio, and video.

Current VISUAL Message Center customers will receive a free upgrade to the new console, and one free NT agent. Additional agents and the console can be purchased individually. The full package (including all agents except the Windows Agent) is tier-priced starting at $5,600. The Windows Agent is licensed separately based on number of processors, starting at $295.

Sales and support of VISUAL Message Center in the United States and Canada are handled by SoftLanding Systems.

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