NCM - So Lonely

I was chatting with my NCM install yesterday and she was distraught because of all the attention all the other modules get.

NCM needs some help. It needs a philosophical overhaul when coming from the thought process that you will be managing thousands of devices.

Here are just a few examples.

Discovery/Import - Could literally not be worse, almost useless for large installs

Inventory - NCM is THIS close to becoming a full fledged inventory tool I think it needs to be pushed the rest of the way

The interface - For the love of all that is holy the interface us klunky and time consuming , again, when you have a lot of devices

Search - it is functional but it to is klunky and a pain

I think NCM sits right now as a tool for 100 or so nodes. I have about 1700 so for me many tasks for me are like getting kicked in the man business.

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MarieB

Hi Donald--

Have you seen the What We Are Working On thread for NCM? Might prove helpful.

I'll mark this for Christine to review.

Thanks for the feedback and Happy Turkey Day.

christineb

Hi Donald - as Marie mentions - we're working on most of these areas now, and those that aren't currently being worked on are on the road map. We absolutely know of what you speak - and we want to get those things addresses as soon as possible. I'll be sure and ping you when we get to RC stage - so you can have a first peek if you'd like.

--Christine

jon0966

I'm beginning to think all this "I'll jot this down as a feature request" is just pillow talk.

christineb

You know, I wish I could say more about our plans and timelines, but we're limited in two major ways:

1. we're a public company and there are lots and lots of rules that come along with that.

2. often plans are still being formulated and we're not entirely sure what all is going to make it into a release. That's why we post the "what we are working on" post for every product. That represents what we're working on and what we hope will make it into the next release, but things can always happen that take us off course, or a feature can take much longer or provide much more complexity than originally expected, so we have to be careful to not promise anything.

Believe me, I love to talk about what we're doing, our vision, and all that good stuff, but the reality is that it's often not allowed or possible. That being said, I'll definitely tell you as much as I possibly can about where we are.

--Christine

KittCarson

Discovery/Import/Creation - Other options are needed - how about the ability to have multiple SNMP strings available attched to machine type for instance. Often routers have different strings and creds than internal switches. Ciscoworks had the same problem.

Also, How about copying a device definition, changing the IP and renaming it?

Let's get more useful tools from the Console available to web users.

dclick

As a former CatTools user gone NCM, the only REAL feature I gained was the web interface.

I will agree with Donald and KittCarson - many things need to be overhauled. one of my biggest issues with the tool is the so slow (go make the coffee while we wait) responsiveness of the server in general - the backend (talking to the devices, pulling configs, etc) is OK, but the front end?

christineb

Hi Dclick - when you say the application is slow - can you give me a little more information? How many devices are you managing and are you referring to the web interface or the server app? This is something support can surely help you optimize. However, if you have a bunch of really intense jobs and are reaching a very high number of devices, performance can be impacted. Let me know what your environment looks like and we can work from there?

--Christine

jon0966

I opened a support case. Worked with support 2 weeks. Moved the NCM database to a more powerful server so that the front end / application was segmented from the database, and that seemed to make NCM faster for queries, but still a 3 minute wait to just get to the summary page. Our ME folks over satellite links have all but given up using NCM.

Donald_Francis

Have you turned off node status?

christineb

Jon - are you referring to the web UI or the server app? I can tell you that we've been doing some work to make both faster - and you'll see those enhancements in the release we're soon to RC and in the next few releases (it's a staged approach). I'll put you on the list for the RC in case you're interested.

--Christine