According to Mike Orr, vice president and general manager of Amdahl's Open Enterprise Systems, the major challenge in administrating the complex distributed configurations emerging in the commercial marketplace today is to accurately assess the capacity of the myriad of servers scattered throughout a business enterprise. "Our new performance management offering, developed to support a variety of platforms and operating systems, provides the key to evaluating the performance of resources throughout the computing operation. With this new offering we're bringing comprehensive performance management features and functionality, typically found only in data center operating environments, to those implementing client-server computing models," noted Orr.
A+View Performance Management Model
Under Amdahl's performance management model, performance data from servers running A+Edition for Solaris, Solaris, SunOS, HP-UX, AIX/6000 or the UTS System will be collected via Amdahl's A+UMA Performance Data Manager. The company's new distributed threshold monitor will review performance data for user-set thresholds. If threshold settings are exceeded, A+OpenWatch can be configured to automatically notify the SunNet Manager or competitive SNMP Managers which can, in turn, notify administrative personnel via email or page. Performance data from an offending server can then be analyzed a graphically displayed by the A+OpenTune Performance Monitor, an X-client, Motif-based measurement application program designed to seamlessly display historical and current data.
Standard Adherence
Amdahl's A+View Performance Management software modules are based on the Universal Measurement Architecture (UMA) standard; an emerging standard for multiplatform performance data collection and management. UMA was developed by the Performance Management Working Group (PMWG), sponsored by the Computer Measurement Group, Inc. (CMG) and under consideration by X/Open. "The only way to consistently measure performance across heterogeneous computing environments emerging in today's business enterprise is to have a common set of metrics from which to evaluate performance. UMA specifications provide this, ensuring that CPU busy means CPU busy, regardless s of the hardware platform," said Charles Hopf, CMG former president and general chair of CMG'95.
"X/Open commends the work of the Performance Management Working Group in developing the Universal Measurement Architecture (UMA) specification, and for their submission of the specification to X/Open for review," said Martin Kirk, Development Manager, X/Open Company Limited. "Presently under review by the X/Open Systems Management Working Group, X/Open is looking forward to the UMA specification 's successful completion of the company review process and its publication a Preliminary Specification. In addition, X/Open congratulates Amdahl on their commitment to standards implementation and support of this specification once adopted as a formal X/Open specification."
Orr noted that Amdahl is also working with key open systems vendors to license its UMA-based technology for use in a variety of applications which require centralized monitoring of performance across distributed systems.
Pricing & Product Availability
A+View Performance Management software products are immediately available from Amdahl . Priced at $3500, a single copy of A+OpenWatch can monitor up to 100 servers running Amdahl's A+UMA Performance Data Manager from a single workstation running Solaris 2.3 or from a platform running UTS 4.1 system. The A+View Performance Management collection is also available as a packaged offering. A+View PerfPack consists of A+OpenWatch, A+OpenTune, 1-4 copies of A+UM and complementary consulting from Amdahl. The package ranges in price from $21,980 to $23,220 depending upon the number of A+UMA copies required.
About Amdahl
Amdahl Open Enterprise Systems (OES) is committed to providing op systems products and technologies for flexible, cost-effective management of computing resources throughout a business enterprise. In addition to the UTS system, OES offerings include the A + family of data-center- quality software and middleware designed to deliver, drive, and support mission-critical applications on large-scale servers. The A+ family incorporates products that facilitate distributed systems management, media storage, security, and interoperability within heterogeneous distributed computing environments .
Amdahl is a major supplier of large-scale mainframe computers, UN systems software and servers, data storage subsystems, data communications products, applications development software, and a variety of educational and consulting services. Amdahl products are sold in more than 30 countries for use in both open systems and IBM- compatible computing environments.