CA Updates Management Product Lines

By P J Connolly

October 7, 2008 —  “Damn the collapsing economy, full speed ahead!” appears to be the motto at Computer Associates, which rolled out a slew of updates to a number of its management tools.

First in line is Data Center Automation Manager r11.2, which uses a rules-based policy engine to automate core IT processes, such as application and systems discovery; configuration change and detection management; server performance and utilization monitoring; server and application provisioning (for virtual as well as physical systems); and self-service resource scheduling.

An update to CA Network Management includes IPv6 support and a reworking of the eHealth Network Performance Manager (NPM) and the Spectrum Network Fault Manager (NFM). These changes are aimed at decreasing mean time-to-repair while increasing mean time-before-failure.

CA eHealth NPM r6.1 includes new traffic monitoring and reporting features, such as an embedded NetFlow connector, and the choice of predefined or customized reports, with analysis down to the half-minute scope.

Spectrum NFM r9.0 offers a new way to self-certify network devices in the Network Configuration Manager Extension Toolkit and a new event information integration module that can access data in a wider range of sources than before, said CA.

The Insight Database Performance Manager also got some attention, adding new integrations with CA Wily Introscope, eHealth NPM and Spectrum NPM. These integrations provide dashboards and views across a range of database platforms including IBM DB2, Oracle, SQL Server and Sybase from both database-focused and network-focused perspectives.

Software Change Manager r12, formerly Harvest Change Manager, now works with IPv6 and complies with the FIPS 140-2 encryption standard. It offers a new Eclipse-based developer workbench for use in both agile and traditional software development methodologies, reworked refactoring features, and work area synchronization.

The company’s Information Governance Suite is being overhauled with updates to both Records Manager and Message Manager, as well as a new discovery and retention management module that federates with other content repositories. The suite is still in beta and is expected to be available by year’s end.

Also announced was the latest version of CA Wily Application Performance Manager, which consists of Introscope r8 and Customer Experience Manager r4.2. Introscope is said by CA to be more scalable than before and offers a new transaction tracer for troubleshooting live production systems, as well as other tools for monitoring SOA infrastructure.

Finally, a new version of NSM (formerly Unicenter Network and Systems Management) adds the ability to work in IPv6 environments in both native and dual-stack modes. It also offers enterprise-level views of Active Directory topologies and other new features for managing the Microsoft-centric directory service.



Related Search Term(s): automation, change management, databases, networking, CA

Share this link: http://www.sysmannews.com/link/32946