Network Node Manager for Windows NT

Network Node Manager (NNM) is the flagship of the HP OpenView suite. NNM for Windows NT is a 32-bit port of the UNIX-based implementation that offers all the capabilities of its UNIX counterpart. NNM for NT is not the same as the NNM in HP OpenView for Windows Professional Suite, which HP targeted for workgroup-size networks.

NNM for NT is a powerful network management tool. When you first run NNM, it uses standard discovery utilities and protocols, such as ping, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), and Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) to discover all the active nodes in your immediate network. With this information, NNM creates a network map to illustrate your network's topology and contents. Screen 1 shows the map NNM discovered in my test environment.

NNM is not limited to your immediate network. You can point NNM at routers or give it specific network ranges, and NNM will discover information about additional networks or network segments. You can then maintain the information about additional networks as part of your main network map, or you can create and save separate maps.

Besides laying out your network, NNM lets you look inside each node. NNM shows you which computers are Web servers, FTP servers, and more. Because NNM uses SNMP as the basis for its management, it can manage a broad array of networking products: routers, bridges, network printers, intelligent hubs, or any device that supports SNMP. NNM can detect nodes that do not support SNMP, but NNM cannot manage them.

Your level of control over a node depends on the capabilities of the SNMP agent on that node and the operating system (if any) the node is running. For example, if you select an NT node, you can run a variety of standard NT tools (e.g., Event Viewer, Registry Editor, Windows NT Diagnostics) on that node to gain more information. This level of information is not available for Windows 95 or other desktop operating systems.

In the Lab with NNM
NNM installed easily on a 133MHz Pentium with 64MB of RAM. HP designed NNM to run as a network management console, so if you want to track or trap network problems, don't run other applications on the console.

NNM replaces the standard NT SNMP agent software with the HP SNMP agent software, which reports more information to the NNM console than the standard NT SNMP agent software; so, also consider implementing HP's agent on your NT workstations. NNM works with other vendors' SNMP agents, but you will get more information if you use HP's agent.

Watching NNM go through the discovery process was scary. If you've ever played with hacker tools, you know where hackers get some of their ideas. NNM dutifully probes your network, using discovery tools to locate each system on it. Because NNM uses standard open protocols, nothing is fishy about its discovery methodology. Currently, NNM can detect both TCP/IP and IPX systems, but not NetBEUI-only systems.

After NNM discovers all the nodes in your network, it monitors them for changes. For example, if someone turns off a computer, NNM sees that node drop out of the network and changes the color of that computer on the map from green to red, signaling a problem. NNM supports various alert capabilities, so it can also notify you by email.

Most networks consist of multiple segments, and NNM lets you view your network from different perspectives. A high-level view represents your main network segments, or you can look at specific nodes on specific segments. NNM propagates any problem in a network segment up to the high-level view, and you can easily navigate from the high-level view to the detailed view.