Am I missing something with this application

[gjames-smu]

I just setup SSH logins from iMC. It requires adding java security exceptions and site rules. Then you have to accept warnings everytime you ssh to an hp switch whith. After all of this java nonsense iMC opens a putty session.

Why would anyone use this and not just open a putty session directly.

I am also surprised that the whole system seems patched togther from various sources, programming language and interfaces. I can see HTML5, java, windows APIs, linux, open source scripting, opensource DB/SQL and SNMP components. Who knows what else is in this application. I am losing confidence and doubt this mashup is secure. Back to procurve manager I guess and use this for updating switch software only. HP forces you to upgrade to a worse product that you had running.

[LindsayHill]

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@gjames-smu wrote:

I just setup SSH logins from iMC. It requires adding java security exceptions and site rules. Then you have to accept warnings everytime you ssh to an hp switch whith. After all of this java nonsense iMC opens a putty session.

Why would anyone use this and not just open a putty session directly.

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Ignoring the other stuff for now, how do you propose they should open a PuTTY SSH session from a web page? Serious question, how do you implement this? How do you tell a browser to run an external piece of software on your machine?

[gjames-smu]

Thats my point it is calling an open source putty client using java. If it were a true enterprise solution it would have its own ssh terminal built in. I have no idea how to write applications.

I am not a programmer nor do I wish to become one. This software expects its end users to write their own scripts, create complex snmp oid formulae to add custom snmp calls. I am a network administrator. I dont have the time or ability to make this software work as advertised. I thought I bought a finished product.  For example just trying to add a custom snmp call:

". Enter the MIB node to be monitored and the calculation algorithm in the Index Formula field," and Enter the type of the index in the Index type field in the format of [index1[0|2]:NAME:TYPE:LENGTH].

How can a program such as PRTG be so easy to use and configure yet this requires a programmer?

From reading some of the posts in this forum it appears I am not alone. Read the thread on doing a dot upgrade from 7.1 to 7.2. A clean install and recreate everything you spent time configuring. There are a lot of other posts I can identify with as well.

Maybey version 8 will be better.

[LindsayHill]

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@gjames-smu wrote:

Thats my point it is calling an open source putty client using java. If it were a true enterprise solution it would have its own ssh terminal built in. I have no idea how to write applications.

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Er - it does have an SSH proxy if you'd prefer to use the built-in one. But how does writing their own SSH client make it a "true enterprise solution" ? If that was all they did, people would complain because it's not the same as PuTTY, which they use every day.

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@gjames-smu wrote:

I am also surprised that the whole system seems patched togther from various sources, programming language and interfaces. I can see HTML5, java, windows APIs, linux, open source scripting, opensource DB/SQL and SNMP components. Who knows what else is in this application. I am losing confidence and doubt this mashup is secure.

...

I have no idea how to write applications.

Clearly. What makes you think that it would be better for them to write one single complete binary application that does everything? You do realise that EVERY application of meaningful size is made up of multiple components, right? Why re-invent the wheel? Why write your own database? And different tools/applications/languages apply in different areas - e.g. HTML5 is a presentation layer. It's not a data storage system.

[NeilR]

I also came from ProCurve Manager. I really liked PCM- it was a fairly tight and functional gui based management system and so was a bit put off by my initial exposure to iMC, and annoyed to find PCM discontinued.

But I set up a parallel system and within a couple of months had almost all of my same functionality replicated in iMC. Fortunately the procurve stuff is well supported.. My setup includes not only switch management but full 802.1x and MAC port and WIfi authentication, assigning VLANs and other access related configurations based on user identity.

Since then in the year and a half I've been running in production, i don't miss PCM at all - iMc does so much more than PCM ever did. And across a wider scope of devices and vendors - even the vmWare functionality is pretty decent. The topology stuff is really nice. Yes its a bit rough in spots and yes the documentation can be a bit vague.

Its extensible. As a lapsed coder, I can bend the existing bits in most cases to work my oddball stuff without much effort. As an alarm, snmp and sflow aggregator its great for troubleshooting and provides some useful reporting. While other more specific tools can do some better drill down, I do almost all of my broad level managment in imc.

Could it be better? Yes. HP should do more to support and evolve this tool - but whether to spend resources on adding more functionality, unifying the existing functionality, fixing the bugs or just prettying it up is a tough call. I lean towards more bug fixing, but unifying/rationalizing some of the odd UI discrepencies between the various modules wouldn't hurt as it can be a bit confusing to navigate.

I agree the ssh solution is clunky and pcm did it better. You can specify something other than putty. I found it did a better job with a telnet client - its seamless with the default MS client. So the workaround for me was to use the management vlan and restrict access to that vlan to just the consoles and use telnet instead. Not everyone wants to do that.

Don't work for HP and I own a multivendor portfolio - just my experience so far. At the time HP made the PCM to Imc transition fairly affordable so I went there, and have been reasonably satisfied. Hope you find something that works for you.

[gjames-smu]

I usually stay away from this forum but if anyone wants to know kitty is a nice ssh handler.

http://www.9bis.net/kitty/?page=SSH%20Handler&zone=en

It wont work with IMC but it does work from other web based solutions.