The Magellan DataPath Manager adds support for Linux, provides root-cause analysis, and lets customers manage LANs and WANs.
Most companies have local-area and wide-area networks, and use different products to manage each. CentrePath Inc. on Tuesday will introduce a new version of its network management system that's designed to do both.
CentrePath's Magellan DataPath Manager, real-time event correlation and impact-analysis software, adds support for Linux and provides root-cause analysis to help customers manage network topologies and predict outages before they occur. But the key enhancement is the ability to manage LANs and WANs, says Mike Karp, an analyst at Enterprise Management Associates, an analyst firm.
"There's enormous value in the root-cause analysis from Magellan," says Karp, "Customers can't find the root cause of anything without looking at the whole system." Using Magellan, network administrators "don't get 1,500 trouble tickets per problem [or take] 40 hours to figure out the event," he says. "Magellan tells the IT staff exactly where the problem is." That can produce huge cost savings for an IT staff.
The predictive performance monitoring can take place across multi-vendor, multi-domain, and multi-protocol networks. The Magellan software will move from a host bus adapter on the server through storage-area network switches, fiber channel extension gear, and high-speed WAN devices. The software can monitor and manage gear from networking vendors like Adva, Brocade, Cisco Systems, McData, and Nortel. Newly supported devices include Cisco’s ONS 15454 Multi-service transport platform and Nortel’s Optical 3500 Sonet platform.
