Conclusion

Faced with a frequently occurring situation PATROL administrators need to find a monitoring solution for applications/devices/technologies not covered by their regular tools, they have to make a choice between three solutions:

▪	Use BMC Performance Manager for Servers (logs, processes) – it is the least expensive solution but is rather poor when monitoring a custom application and in terms of features offered.

▪	Use Monitoring Studio KM for PATROL – it has a license cost overhead but allows great flexibility with ease-of-use and rapid deployment

▪	Develop a custom KM – this is the most flexible solution but it can be so expensive and heavy on resource consumption that often a compromise has to be made on the number of features and capabilities offered.

The picture below recapitulates the comparison of each solution from both a feature and costs point of view.

MonitoringComparison

It appears, there are only two cases where it is not recommended to purchase, install and use Monitoring Studio KM for PATROL to setup the monitoring of a custom application or an IT component for which there is no KM that already exists:

1. The organization has only applications that produce fairly simple log files. The monitoring of all past, current and future applications can be done with log files analysis and process monitoring.

2. An application has complicated monitoring needs not covered by Monitoring Studio and the organization is ready to invest enough time and expertise in order to create the “perfect” customized monitoring solution.

As a matter of fact, most organizations that have tried the Monitoring Studio KM are now phasing out their existing custom KMs with Monitoring Studio because they realize that the cost of Monitoring Studio is even less than just the cost of the maintenance of the custom KMs. According to current users, BMC Performance Manager Monitoring Studio turns out be an ideal way to maximize the monitoring coverage of custom applications.

Credits

This study has been completed with the valuable contribution of current Monitoring Studio customers, BMC Software consultants, and Sentry Software developers. For more information, please contact your BMC Software consultant or Sentry Software at sales@sentrysoftware.net.

Conclusion