Jonathan, I have deployed both products, and personally like NetIQ a heck of a lot better.
Essentially both products can perform the same levels of monitoring and reporting, however MOM requires a LOT more legwork to get the same result. The NetIQ interface as you said is more logical and easier to navigate, and it seems a lot more thought has been given to providing a clean interface for administrators. Setting up alerts etc for MOM for say a single server is MUCH more tedious than for NetIQ. MOM's grouping of monitoring into a hierarchal structure based on attributes creates more confusion IMHO. We have required some scripting to create custom attributes on servers just to enable some groups to be created (by pulling back these custom attributes), not necessary on NetIQ as it allow arbitrary grouping of servers (MOM does allow this as well, but its not as intuitive). With NetIQ a simple drag/drop of a task or monitoring job onto the device in question is much easier and allows more targeted monitoring to occur. Currently with MOM if I really want to perform specific monitoring of a server, I jump into perfmon and set up custom monitoring, rather than try and make MOM do it. Arbitrary grouping / monitoring of different core servers in a different way is where MOM really falls down IMHO. With NetIQ, I can simply change the monitored jobs on each specific server, changing thresholds for each one, and even disabling some jobs if I feel like. Attempting to do this with MOM is an exercise in frustration, since most settings are based on the monitoring groups which are attached to a group of servers based on a specific attribute (registry setting, name etc), not the server itself. For example, we have 6 exchange servers. If I want to monitor the gateway server differently, or set different thresholds (eg I'm not concerned if the outgoing SMTP queue length on the gateway gets about 50, but on a mailbox server I am), this is MUCH more difficult on MOM than it should be. Currently, I set the threshold lower for all exchange servers, and simply ignore the ones from the gateway where they are under *my* determined threshold. Not pretty, and makes it more difficult for me to set up paging / sms interfaces for our after-hours support team, as they get a lot of unnecessary alerts. The scripting interface for both products is pretty-much on par. I am quite disappointed with the requirement to add-on packs for MOM to effectively monitor NT v4.0 servers, as this should be a core feature of the system (yes, I do realise MS want me to upgrade to 2k, 2003, but it isn't going to happen soon). Add-on packs for both products are neither here nor there, as you require packs for application-specific monitoring of most applications (like Exchange, SQL), however NetIQ currently has wider choice for non-Microsoft applications (IBM, Oracle etc), and wider OS support. The NetIQ reporting / graphing is miles ahead of MOM, however with MOM you always can use Excel to provide customised reporting and graphing. In MOM's defence it is essentially a v1 product (even though it is based on other well-known product *grin*), so I am expecting big things from MOM 2004. MOM SP1 is addressing a number of my gripes above, so after I apply it I'll see how much things have improved. Glenn ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Beeler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Exchange Discussions" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 6:22 AM Subject: NETIQ vs. MOM > Recently, we've been evaluating NETIQ's AppManager for monitoring our > Exchange environment, including Exchange 2000, 5.5, Antigen, Blackberry, > and IBM Director (hardware management). It would also monitor Windows ad > AD. > > At the same time, we are also evaluating MOM to monitor the same stuff, > however, if we want it to monitor these third party items(, Blackberry, > and IBM Director), we will have to purchase the plug-ins from NETIQ. > > So far, I really like NETIQ. It is easy to use, seems very accurate and > is logically organized with more features and monitors right out of the > box that I like. > > My impression of MOM is not so good. It seems that a lot of customization > is required to make it work properly. I think that it would monitor > things effectively, however, I think the implementation time, due to the > increased level of customization involved, would be much greater, and > ultimately make me less happy. > > I would appreciate anyone's thoughts/experiences with either or both of > these products since there is quite a debate going on within my company. > > Thanks > > _________________________________________________________________ > List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
