On Mon, November 10, 2008 13:01, T.J. Yang wrote:
But this bring up another issue/concern of mine(as an Unix admin)twoward
Xymon.
"Not able to pay for Xymon for support service from a company"
This is feedback/comment I got from mangement (of mine).
Trying to understand why, from their perspective and I think I got the
answer as following.
Management want to avoid the lock-in from admin also. They want your
in-depth knowledge of the tool become a serivce that management can get
from other sources, not just in-house admins.
Well, of course you can pay for Xymon support from a company. There are a
couple of specific sources noted in the Wikipedia article, and most any
high-competence Linux hired gun could do a strong job. There are hordes
of them available on a part-time or retainer basis, from contracting firms
that have bench depth. There may not be as many experienced resources as
with Nagios (which I see as the biggest open source functional
competitor), but then Xymon is not nearly as difficult to configure and
support as Nagios.
Now, if you're talking comprehensive vendor software support/maintenance
agreements, then you're pretty much limited to proprietary products like
HP OpenView. And although you then have a vendor on the hook for product
quality and problem resolution, it's hard to get an SLA-based contract
that costs them money for non-performance unless you're a Fortune 500
company buying an enterprise solution.
And even when you've bought the high-end commercial solution and the
ironclad support contract, you're still faced with the strong possibility
that open source results in a higher quality product inherently. As the
man said, "You pays your money and you takes your choice".
Just some ramblings from the bench by a 25-year+ practitioner....