Duane, welcome to the VM world. Since MSU is leaving the VM production world in the near future, we do not have current versions of any of these products. But we have run VM:Backup VM:Tape VM:schedule and VM:Secure (a predecessor to Top Secret).
Of these, I find that VM:Backup and VM:Secure have been EXTREMELY useful in securing and backing up our systems. VM:Secure uses RACF's hooks to provide excellent system security. VM:Backup palys well with VM:Tape and VM:Secure and has served us well for the past 2 decades as our backup mechanism. All have very VM-friendly, intuitive interfaces. VM:Schedule was used in developing CMS-based applications which needed to go beyond the builtin CMS Batch capabilities. It allows users to schedule "on the fly". Personally for systems tasks, I just use VMUTIL, a Wakeup-based server from the CMS Utilities Feature which should have come with your base VM system. It does not have good interfaces for doing dynamic, command-based scheduling (though those features CAN be added with some programming efforts). If you're not running CMS applications you probably really don't need VM:Schedule IMO. VM:Account was not used at MSU --- we had our own homegrown sys -- but it was used at former job sites of mine. If you are collecting VM accounting records and want to bill back users for VM services it is a decent tool. If not, you don't need it. VM:Operator is similar to the builtin CMS Programable Operator, but with more bells and whistles. Again if you're not a CMS-intensive shop, you can probably suffice with PROP as we have. VM:Spool we have not used, we have rolled our own simple Spool management tools over the yrs. IIRC VM:SPOOL does have a nice feature that lets priv users examine Spool Files from other virtual machines without disturbing them (vi CP TRansfer). There were times I would have found that handy for debugging, but not enough to justify it at MSU. VM:Sort is a hi-powered sort tool ala SyncSort. If you don't do it, you don't need it. These are my opinions only. YMMV. >Is anyone using CA's VM:Manager VM Management Suite or any of its >components? Would someone, please, give me some feed back on this >product? >As far as I can tell, it includes the following components: > >BrightStore VM:Backup >BrightStore VM:Backup HiDro >BrightStore VM:Tape >Unicenter VM:Account >Unicenter VM:Schedule >Unicenter VM:Sort >Unicenter CA-Explore Performance Management for VM >Unicenter VM:Operator for VM >Unicenter VM:Spool >Unicenter VM:Spool V/Seg Plus Feature >eTrust: Director >eTrust: Top Secret Security of VM >CA CIS for VM > > >I do know that CA's Director is their version of IBM's Directory >Maintenance (DirMaint). > >Thanks in advance for your input. > >Best Regards, > >Duane Shields >Delta Dental Plan of Michigan >Systems Administrator >Phone: (517) 347-5843 Fax: (517) 347-5366 >[EMAIL PROTECTED]
