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NSMC 4.0 by Bob Kelly |
Network Services Management Console (NSMC) is an enterprise systems management system that features deployment, inventory, license and baseline management features with no client software required on managed systems. It even helps you manage your baseline by alerting you to new software that may appear on the network.
As usual, I will begin with product installation and then cover some of the major features (the console, asset management, software deployment) and will then wrap up with some other features and a closing summary.
Installation
The installation of NSMC provides
a simple "Standard" and "Custom" option. While the "Custom"
option is labeled as being for advanced users, I recommend choosing this option
to get a better of idea of what it is
you are installing. It would be helpful to see a "Console only", "w/Services",
and "w/Services and Database" in a more user-friendly manner, but if you choose
"Standard" you get it all.
For clarification- the installation consists of three key elements:
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The NSMC Console – this is the management interface provided to perform all supported management tasks.
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Services – There are services for each of the modules that make up NSMC (scheduler, distribution and monitoring). Each can be installed on multiple systems for scalability.
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Database – The database is used to store information collected by NSMC and if you are installing the console or services on a separate system, you must configure specify the location and credentials for the central database.
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NSMC 4.0 by Bob Kelly |
It is important to plan your rollout of NSMC- choosing
"Standard" to select all
the components on your initial installation, and then choosing to install
consoles (and/or services) individually on other machines depending upon your
environment. When installing on additional systems, choose "Custom" and you will
see the NSMC console is the only item pre-selected (no services, or databases).
Client Installation
Client installation? None here; NSMC does not require a client service to be installed on managed systems. This is an excellent benefit to NSMC in that you have no client software to deploy, or manage.
NSMC uses WMI to remotely collect information and manage specified systems. While no client software is necessary, the dependency on WMI does require that you have it installed on those systems to be managed. For Windows 2000 and later systems, WMI is included as part of the Windows distribution and nothing more is required. The documentation provides details on the installation and configuration of WMI for Windows 95/98/NT SP6, including access control, DCOM and WMI permissions.
One of the first steps following
installation is to discover systems to be managed (see image at right). You may select any available
domains to be scanned and using the Options menu can even specify IP ranges to
enumerate. As you would expect, you may also create machine groups to more
easily manage large numbers of systems.
Now what can we do with these managed systems? Naturally a system as robust as this cannot be covered from top to bottom in a simple review, but as usual I will attempt to highlight what I see as the key features of NSMC and those elements that may set it apart from the competition. Before we begin, it is worth noting that the non-evasive nature of NSMC helps enable inventorying, distributions, and monitoring functions to easily traverse corporate firewalls, VPNs, and WAN connections.
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NSMC 4.0 by Bob Kelly |
The NSMC Console
NSMC
is a framework in that there are optional solutions that may be included. The
NSMC console provides the interface to all of these solutions. To begin with,
the NSMC looks quite good. Its rich graphics and slide out windowed interface
are a pleasant change from the routinely complex consoles that are commonplace
when it comes to enterprise management systems (such as the limiting MMC
interface).
The console provides a single common user interface for the administrator made
possible by the INSYSTEK Object Broker (IOB). The IOB marshals communication
between each of the installed modules passing events such as drag-and-drop
between modules.
NSMC includes all of the available modules from INSYSTEK including: the NSMC
Console, Asset Management, Software Distribution, and Performance and
Availability Monitoring modules.
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NSMC 4.0 by Bob Kelly |
Asset Management
NSMC automatically discovers devices on the network
(in specified domains) and audits them for full
hardware and software information. Taking full advantage of WMI via remote
queries, it is easy to underestimate just how robust
WMI data can be, until you view the NSMC data and see in many cases information such as software and hardware serial
numbers and product keys are recorded.
For license compliance, you may select software to track and then specify the
number of license you have in your organization. Compliance data is utilized in
the provided Compliance and Tracking Reports. In keeping with the very nature of
NSMC, this feature is a non-intrusive implementation (no enforcement of
licensing is provided.)
You
may set a baseline for any data collected by NSMC- not just software
installation. When viewing items that do not match the established baseline
values, they appear in red when browsing the various inventory classes. These baseline values are set by choosing
"Set Baseline" for a
particular machine to specify its current configuration as the desired baseline.
Or you may press "Set Baseline All" on a reference machine you wish to compare
all systems against.
Naturally when it comes to hardware and software inventory, reporting is a
significant consideration. NSMC provides several built-in reports as well as a
nice wizard interface for generating additional reports (the last page of which
shows you the SQL query that you have built to drive the report).
NSMC also provide the ability to add devices manually such as printers, phones,
and PDAs, that would not otherwise be picked up by environment scans. You may
also create device templates with the Device Definition Wizard, including
information on the Manufacturer, Make, Model, and Serial Number. There is also a
Description field for any extra information. Once the template has been defined,
a device of that type can be added to the Managed Device list.
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Software Distribution
For those that have embraced Group
Policy for deployment and have taken the steps necessary to migrate all their
deployment packages to MSI files- you’ll be well prepared to take advantage of
NSMC’s deployment features. Yes, packages must be in Windows Installer format
for deployment using NSMC. Need for an MSI formatted deployment package has
always been a glaring shortcoming of Group Policy and it is largely considered
as key driver to move toward a more robust system. INSYSTEK does soften the blow
by providing documentation including helpful documentation such as their paper
on how to go about wrapping a legacy setup.exe into an MSI package using
InstallShield Express.
The "Add Package Wizard" lets you specify an MSI path, command line options, any
dependency files, a name and description. From there, the package is copied to
the package servers you have specified and the package is available for
assignment to one or more managed devices.
For actual package distribution you must have a Package Server and a
Distribution Server. A Package Server holds packages, while a Distribution
Server holds the packages and is the point for distribution to systems. These
two sites can be separate.
When scheduling the package for distribution, there are some great features for
redistribution in the event of failure (see image at right).
Performance and Availability Monitoring
With NSMC’s performance and
availability monitoring features, you can stay ahead of potential network
issues, proactively monitor services and processes. By creating monitoring
policies, you can choose what you want to watch, at what interval and what
values dictate a harmless, warning, minor, critical, or fatal situation. You can
then specify pager, email and audio alerts for each of these thresholds.
This can be a very handy feature, allowing administrators to be notified of low
disk space, excessive paging, or anything else you might associate with
performance monitoring.
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Scalability and Load Balancing
– NSMC provides built-in load balancing and redundancy and boasts an unlimited
scalable architecture. By installing multiple services of the same type in your
environment, and pointing them at the same database using the service options,
queued items specific to that service type will be shared among each installed
service equally. At the same time, if one of the services were to face a failure
of some kind, the queued tasks would continue to execute normally on the other
services of the same type in the environment.
Remote
Shutdowns – This is a feature often overlooked, leaving administrators to
script there own solution to managing shutdowns and restarts. The NSMC
implementation allows you to trigger a remote logoff, restart, shutdown, or
power off a system and optionally force applications to close. (See image at
right.)
RFID Support – The inventory solution includes the ability to store Radio
Frequency Identification data from third party applications built to work with
RFID technology. An Administrator can import data into the NSMC database and the
information will be displayed with the device using the Device Viewer in the
NSMC console.
System Profiles - Profiles allow administrators to configure users of the
console that will have access to the functionality related to scanning, software
distribution, and monitoring, but restricts access to configuring the console
and services.
| It should be noted that during testing some stability issues did come up where unhandled exceptions were presented. In most all cases, I was able to continue use of the application (save that feature) by pressing "Continue". INSYSTEK did assure me that the issues I reported were currently being addressed. |
NSMC provides an excellent set of
features with no client installation required. Most of the value provided by
NSMC comes in the form of valuable reports – not just simple inventory but as
compliance and baseline reporting information.
It is a big deal, so I'll point it out one more time: these features come with
no requirement for a client side agent or service installation- something most
administrators will find as a considerable benefit. While the application
deployment solution comes across as immature in its current release, the asset
management and monitoring features are very well executed.
Installation is quick and will not affect your client systems at all, so I encourage you to install the trial version and see for yourself.
Update (12/8/05): This review was held back by request while the issues identified in this review were addressed. I am told that the issues identified have all been corrected since this review was performed.
Bob Kelly
8/15/2005
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