HPE IMC 7.3: There is a Standard versus Enterprise comparison?

[parnassus]

Hi all, is a comparison of (Basic) Standard and Enterprise editions available somewhere?

We are in process of purchasing HPE IMC 7.3 Enterprise edition but we don't exactly understand what relevant differences are there between it and the Standard edition to justify Enterprise versus Standard.

The idea is to use the HPE IMC as a central monitoring system for an ArubaOS-based ecosystem of various Switches series (Aruba 5400R zl2, standalone and VSF, various Aruba 2540 and - it's planned, a VSX of two Aruba 8320) plus additional various IBM Power7, 8 and 9 servers (used exclusively for deploying SAP systems generally on AIX and more and more on SuSE 12 Linux in case of S4/HANA) and DELL PowerEdge servers (as VMware vSphere hypervisor and as baremetal servers) also considering that a whole Brocade and IBM SAN FC 16GB switches SAN backend could enter into the picture and being monitored too.

Any opinion?

Which additional optional HPE IMC Modules should be essentials? NTA, APM?

Would such devices ecosystem deserve the HPE IMC Enterprise or would the Standard edition potentially fit the bill too?

We are also considering that Aruba AirWave could enter into the picture side by side with HPE IMC especially because we're planning to move whole Motorola (Zebra) controller based Wireless infrastructure to Aruba.

[ibias1]

Hi,

The difference between imc Standard and imc Enterprise is :

IMC Standard
–Full FCAPS
–Includes 50 device license
–Hierarchical model support
–Includes the eAPI license
–Expandable device support
–Modular

IMC Enterprise
–Full FCAPS
–Includes 50 device license
–Hierarchical model support
–Includes NTA and WSM modules, and eAPIlicense
–Expandable device support
–Modular

If you want use it with Airwave, you must activate Airwave in imc, and imc in Airwave, see the admin Guides.

Be aware, if you want use imc for server, mostly you must add the SNMP Mibs of the server, and server have not the same fuctions as a switch with SNMP, so you didn't see internal of a server hardware.

AMP is for application monitoring; NTA for sFlow Netflow or Netstream analyse.

If you have virtual server working than you can add the VMWare machines in imc without a module, it is including (have a look for device counts, so that you have a license not only for switches, router etc, also for the server.)

Your last question regarding Motorola you must ask an Airwave or Central specialist.

[parnassus]

I've mixed feelings about HPE IMC WSM Modules (at least reading 2016 docs about WSM supported features versus vendors)...especially if a whole Aruba based wireless infrastructure deployment is on the radar...considering that Aruba AirWave looks exactly tailored for that very specific set of devices.

[NeilR]

Yes WSM not very exciting for Aruba wireless, but sort of useful for the MSM and Comware products. 

Mine came with the PCM migration license package. Useful for some stats and reporting but not for fine tuning any configurations.

[parnassus]

Thanks Neil! indeed the fact that IMC Enterprise offers WSM Module pre-enabled with 50 nodes looks really interesting if the Wireless infrastructure is already depolyed with non-Aruba devices like MSM and Comware based APs and Controllers (and more Comware than MSM IMHO reading the HPE IMC WSM E0506 Release Notes Features Support Matrix)...a little bit less if the wireless infrastructure is going to use only fresh new Aruba devices (thus my reference to Aruba AirWave) even if WSM supports Aruba devices. Since, at this point, the presence or the absence of WSM module is not so relevant I don't really know if just the remaining 5 NTA nodes differentiator is worth the more expensive Enterprise edition in comparison to the cheaper Standard edition (even if NTA nodes should be then purchased separately at some cost).

[NeilR]

The NTA 5 node add on was about $1200 US back in 2014