MN506: Analysis of System Management Tools and Emerging Technologies

This report analyzes system management tools used by the healthcare organization Global Cure Mart (GCM). It begins by discussing existing tools like Cacti, Open NMS, and Icinga, detailing their functionalities and features such as graph creation, network discovery, event management, and object-based configuration. The report then highlights the limitations of these tools, including configuration complexities and resource constraints. Subsequently, it explores emerging tools such as Manage Engine, PRTG, and Zabbix, emphasizing their capabilities in server monitoring, network management, and customized monitoring solutions. The report concludes by underscoring the importance of efficient system management tools for organizational activities and suggests the adoption of advanced technologies to address existing challenges and enhance overall system performance. References are provided using the IEEE referencing style.

Running head: System management tools
Analysis of system management tools
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author note

Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................4
Existing system management tools.......................................................................................................4
Cacti tool............................................................................................................................................4
Open NMS tool..................................................................................................................................5
Icinga tool..........................................................................................................................................5
Problems with the existing system........................................................................................................6
Emerging tools for system management...............................................................................................6
Manage Engine..................................................................................................................................6
PRTG..................................................................................................................................................7
Zabbix................................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................7
Reference..............................................................................................................................................8

Executive summary
The process of system management acts as the vital impeding factors for the organization by
improving the risk management and enhancing the customer satisfaction. The process of system
management can be describe as one organizational wide administration of the open source
distributed system. There exist several tools such as, monit, cacti, open NMS, Icinga, and many
others that enhances the system management process. This report will discuss about the system
management of one of the health care organization Global Cure Mart. The particular organization
has some system management tools which are, cacti, open NMS and Icinga. These tools are helpful
in monitoring and managing the network activity as well as managing the security and system of the
organization. However, there exist some potential challenges to these tools, for which the IT
managers are looking for the new emerging tools. This report will provide an analysis of the existing
system management tool. In addition to that the report will suggest some emerging tools such as
Manage engine, Zabbix and PRTG that will enhance its functions.

Introduction
In order to monitor all the activities around the network, and to manage the organizational
work, it is vital for the business to adopt efficient system management tools and techniques. The
process of systems management normally overseen by the existing chief technology officer (CTO)
and the chief information officer (CIO) [1]. System management can be identified as the software
that efficiently manages the enterprise computer system including several activities such as the
customer profile management, version control, job scheduling, backup and recovery, virus
protection, printer spooling, capacity and performance planning and software upgrading and
distribution [2]. Since last two decades, the GCM is providing health care service to the customers.
The System Management technology covers all the facets of the IT administration at GCM. However,
the existing system management tool are not that efficient in carrying out the organizational work
and sometime delivers errors and hinders the organizational operations. This report will discuss the
analysis and comparison of the existing server or system management tools in the Global Cure Mart
(GCM) and will suggest three current emerging technologies for performing system management in
the organization.
Existing system management tools
In order to perform system management, the chosen organization Global Cure Mart uses
several open source system monitoring tools, which are explained below;
Cacti tool
Cacti is identified as one efficient web based open source graphic and network monitoring
tool, which is basically designed as one front end application for the industry standards [3]. Apart
from that, it allows the end user to poll the provided services at a predetermined intervals and make
a graph of the resulting data. The working procedure of this particular software includes the Round-
robin database tool (RRD tool) engine for storing the data and successfully generating the graphics
[4]. In addition to that, it collects the periodical organizational data by the help of the Net-SNMP,
which is one important application designed to implement the simple network management
protocol. The following are the features of the Cacti tool that is used for managing the organizational
system and performing the IT administration are as follows;
 Graph templates and unlimited graph items
 Network discovery
 Graph aggregation
 Providing flexible sources of data

 SNMP support
 Device support
 Remote data collection
Open NMS tool
The Open Network Management System, usually known by the name Open NMS is the first
enterprise grade network and system management platform, which was developed under
advantages of the open source model. The main intention behind its designing is to manage a series
of devices from one single server and managing numerous devices by utilizing cluster of servers.
Furthermore, it Open NMS also includes one discovery engine that will helpful in managing and
configuring the network devices automatically without any operator intervention [5]. This particular
tool helps the IT professionals of Global Cure Mart to perform service monitoring service monitoring,
data collection, event management and many other to enhance the system management
operations. The features of this tool are as follows;
 Event driven approach
 Path outage
 Critical service
 Performance management
 Execute and configure several service monitor
 Service management
Icinga tool
Icinga is known as the open-source flexible network and one efficient systems management
solution for those organizations that are thinking to monitor applications and system more
efficiently. This user-friendly platform allows the users to take advantages of the object-based
configuration. In addition to that, this particular software parades every unmatched scalability which
helps it in monitoring the multi-faceted environments. The object-based configuration feature of this
tool helps the user to customize the monitoring code by using REST API [6]. The software parades
unmatched scalability that equips it to monitor multi-faceted, large environments. With the
implication of custom configuration and plugins, this tool handovers reliable database along with
application monitoring facility. As it has the facility of multi thread design, this tool helps the IT
professional of GCM to run multiple checks in seconds. Apart from that, this platform features one
dedicated object-based design in a top to bottom manner. The features of this system management
tools are as follows;

 Rule-based configurations
 REST API
 Alerting
 Security
 Icinga director
 Elastic search
 Performance monitoring and authentication
Problems with the existing system
Though the above discussed three tools for system management has several features that
accelerates the organizational operation of GCM; yet these tools have some issues that might create
issues for the organization in some cases. These are as follows;
 Bing a tedious process, the configuration errors are hard to fix.
 The above configuration need regular maintenance and upgrade always.
 The plugin architecture version might difficult to install with these tools, especially with the
Cacti tool.
 Lack of appropriate resources for maintenance and development adds a limitation to the
open NMS tool.
Emerging tools for system management
The system management tools are the open source distributed computer applications that
are helpful for the organizations in undertaking several activities such as, capacity, storage, system
and user activity monitoring. As discussed above, the chosen organization is facing some potential
challenges in the existing tools, therefore the following emerging tools can be adopted by this
organization to enhance the system management activities.
Manage Engine
Manage Engine is one recent Systems Management which allows the IT professionals to
gather an idea about the underlying infrastructure of the business, for example the back end
systems as well as the critical systems which keep the organization running [7]. In addition to that,
the server monitoring feature present in the tool will allow the IT managers of the organization to
get an access to the disk usage, server load, RAM utilization, processor workloads, and several other
monitoring activities, which are necessary for the systems running.

PRTG
The PRTG is one efficient Network Management application and will become beneficial for
the IT managers of GCM, as it helps them to observe the connectivity issues occurs in the
interconnected systems of the organizational network. Furthermore, in order to visualize the
benefits of the system monitoring activity, bandwidth usage, availability of network resources, and
network resource availability [8]. In addition to that, adoption of this system management tool will
help the IT managers of GCM to check the fault tolerant capacity of the network via a real time
assessments on the network performance and issues.
Zabbix
Zabbix is another system management tool that will provides monitoring solutions to GCM
and other business organizations that have IT based infrastructure [9]. As every industry has its own
set of requirements depending on its business, the way of network monitoring also varies. The
Zabbix tool provides flexible applications for different aspects of the system monitoring and
managing, which in turn provides the organization to have customized solution for the running
operation [10]. Adoption of this tool will provide an opportunity to monitor the network
performance with a close monitoring of the network bandwidth, which will also help the GCM
managers an idea about the network traffic data and statics.
Conclusion
In organizations, having the efficient system management tool can add value to numerous
organizational activities such as, security management, capacity monitoring, network utilization
monitoring and many others. However, having most recent system management tools can cope up
with the changing technologies. This report has provided an overview of the system management
tools that are currently utilized by the Global cure mart. Some issues associated with these tools
have also discussed in this report. Moreover, to overcome these issues some emerging system
management tools such as the manage engine, PRTG and Zabbix are also discussed here.

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