Comment Hard to say. (Score 1) 34
I write agentless network inventory software for a living.
http://www.bdnacorp.com/index.shtml
That said, my opinions here are not those of my employer. (I'm an engineer - why else would I be reading slashdot non-main-page article?) My opinions also aren't specifically about our product because it does inventory, not monitoring.
It's hard to say agent or agentless. Someone in a previous comment said there is no such thing as "agentless" and mentioned SNMP, WMI, sar, etc. Naturally, there needs to be *something* giving values. However, the moniker "agentless" (usually quoted :P) implies that there will be no 3rd party application installation overhead. If you are working in IT and are the one who would have to roll out an agent, you can understand why the distinction is important. Using the device's own management interface is typically seen as safer than an agent as well, because it was written by that device's OEM, not the management software company.
There are downsides to agentless as well, indeed the polling issues are somewhat true. Some technologies, like SNMP Traps, are capable of notifications for monitoring, but some are not. In the case when a machine only has some kind of shell interface, the only choice is to attempt to use that as periodically as desired.
I also can't break any NDAs, but to those who think that agentless "doesn't scale"
http://www.bdnacorp.com/customers.shtml
http://www.gcn.com/print/24_24/36708-1.html
We work with several of the largest IT installations in the *world*, and we do it with relative ease. However, we're not a monitoring solution - we do inventory. YMMV with monitoring, and with different vendors.
http://www.bdnacorp.com/index.shtml
That said, my opinions here are not those of my employer. (I'm an engineer - why else would I be reading slashdot non-main-page article?) My opinions also aren't specifically about our product because it does inventory, not monitoring.
It's hard to say agent or agentless. Someone in a previous comment said there is no such thing as "agentless" and mentioned SNMP, WMI, sar, etc. Naturally, there needs to be *something* giving values. However, the moniker "agentless" (usually quoted
There are downsides to agentless as well, indeed the polling issues are somewhat true. Some technologies, like SNMP Traps, are capable of notifications for monitoring, but some are not. In the case when a machine only has some kind of shell interface, the only choice is to attempt to use that as periodically as desired.
I also can't break any NDAs, but to those who think that agentless "doesn't scale"
http://www.bdnacorp.com/customers.shtml
http://www.gcn.com/print/24_24/36708-1.html
We work with several of the largest IT installations in the *world*, and we do it with relative ease. However, we're not a monitoring solution - we do inventory. YMMV with monitoring, and with different vendors.
