> Does anyone use any 3rd party tool,like OmegaMon, to monitor zlinux? Omegamon XE does a fair job at Linux monitoring, as far as it goes. If you use Omegamon elsewhere, it's an OK addition to have one-console views. It does not do much in terms of deep introspection into what's going on inside the Linux guest. Most of the commercial products omit the ability to coordinate performance and monitoring information for both z/VM and Linux (no commercial advertising necessary from the vendors, please). The older Omegamons aren't really aware of Linux, so you'd need to upgrade to XE if you want it to do Linux. Omegamon/VM certainly doesn't know much about Linux, and hasn't seen any real enhancement in ages.
> Has anyone every tried to implement CA's eTrust ACF2 Security > for zLinux? In the lab, it was rather difficult to get working and had a few areas where we thought it didn't really integrate all that well with the PAM model. Recent conversations with the one customer we have that is using it indicate that some of these areas are getting some attention inside CA, but we found that at this point, a Kerberos-based solution was more effective, more scalable, and easier to manage, especially in shops that had already taken the Windows Active Directory plunge (AD is Kerberos 5 and LDAP with a pretty front end). > Has anyone tried doing volume level backups using FDR or DFSMS? You'll need the FDR Linux agent to get reliable backups due to the way Linux uses RAM-based caching. To get reliable volume level backups, your Linux systems would need to be completely down, and using volume-based backups is very difficult due to the relatively small size of 390 DASD volumes and the necessity to use LVM or MD to get big chunks of disk. Use of FCP SCSI disk to get big chunks of disk also complicates the use of FDR, as z/OS doesn't understand SCSI or FBA disk (and won't for a good long while yet). You should look into Amanda or Bacula (open-source tools) coupled with z/OS NFS as inexpensive alternatives that can be extended to non-zLinux systems easily. They do an excellent job of handling backups of Linux guests, and with a little work, take very good advantage of z/OS-based tape management. > Do companies have a production control area monitoring the > monitor? Or do you page when alerts happen? You should treat it as no different than any other production system. Do what you do with your other platforms. > Reason for questions. We are trying to build a case for the > use of zLinux in our shop. Management wants to be assured > that all the pieces are there before they will go forward. At this point, I'd say it's as complete as any of the other Unix-based solutions in terms of system management and monitoring capabilities. Application availability for ISV software is still coming along, but the tools to manage the environment are there and solid (modulo some remaining foot-dragging for the z/VM piece from IBM and others). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
