[nv-l] MLM and other new features on Linux

[James Shanks <jshanks@us.ibm.com>]

Folks, 

With all the recent talk about MLM and Linux, I feel compelled to say that there has been no announcement of  new features ported to Linux fro 7.1.4.  I expect  the features for NetView for Linux 7.1.4 to be exactly the same as in 7.1.3.   

With regard to RDBMS, that issue has hinged for some time on the Framework and RIM.  Without Framework support of Linux, there was no RIM, and without RIM, no NetView.  I think Framework has recently announced Linux support but I am in the dark about RIM.  Not my area of the product.  But I do know this.  If you think that expanding NetView for Linux to include RIM,  APM, MLM, and so on, then you should be calling your marketing rep or Support and opening an enhancement request.      

I cannot say how many users of  MLM there are, but marketing thinks it is not a large percentage of the NetView population, and so the entire issue of going forward with MLM is under review every release.  I'm afraid that if you don't raise your voices and make them aware of what you want, that it may not happen for a long, long time, if at all. 

I think that the real issue is that  while the marketers understand NetView, they don't understand how you are really using MLM.  Unfortunately, you will have to tell them.

Just so you know, MLM on NT is only exists now as a result of earlier user requests, and look what they did with it.  The assumption that was made when MLM for NT was developed was that the major function of MLM was to off-load polling from netmon,  and thus that only someone with a hierarchy of  interconnected network management platforms would want or need MLM, so they developed that "attended MLM" concept you all disparage so much and they missed what you really wanted, smconfig on Windows.  This is the kind of thing that happens when the user community is largely silent about what they really want.  They get what some marketing type or development manager thinks they need rather than what they actually need.

So please open those enhancement requests.  You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

James Shanks
Level 3 Support  for Tivoli NetView for UNIX and Windows
Tivoli Software / IBM Software Group