Opsware Rolls Out Version 6 of System Tools

Published: June 29, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

System management and provisioning software tool provider Opsware has launched Opsware System 6, the latest incarnation of its eponymous tools.

Opsware already announced Network Automation 6, a network configuration and compliance auditing tool in May. This tool is used to manage 350 different kinds of routers, firewalls, load balancers, switches, and other network devices. In July, the company will launch Server Automation System 6, which provisions bare-metal Windows, Unix, and Linux machines and deals with patch management.

With the most recent announcements, Opsware is fleshing out the Opsware Network, which is an online subscription service that brings together all of the security and compliance alerts from the operating system, middleware, and other programs that the Opsware tools can manage. Having done that, Opsware turns these alerts into Opsware policies--basically, scripts that invoke action--which means system administrators can automate a lot of the things they are dealing with through the network. Some of this functionality had previewed with the NAS product, but now it is available in the full NAS and SAS parts of the Opsware System 6.

The Opsware Network is priced based on the licensing fee that customers pay for their licenses to Opsware tools, and it works out to an annual fee equal to 8 percent of the license. That fee will vary depending on how much iron customers have under control of the Opsware software. Server Automation System 6 costs $1,200 per server, and Network Automation System costs $20,000 for every 100 devices it controls on the network.

The updated software also includes Opsware Visual Application Manager, a graphical user interface that can discover and map servers, software, and network devices running on the network and show their interdependencies. This software essentially reads NAS and SAS agent information and puts the information into a graphical form that can be more easily absorbed by system administrators.