RSP still sucks... but not big time anymore

The blog entry were I was saying that RSP sucks has created some attention, both in and out of the comments area. An update is in order. First of all, I won't censor this entry; it represents my initial feeling about RSP, a software bundle which made me waste lots of time, and whatever I think of it has not changed.

On the upside, following my rant on the ITRC forums (which was deleted quickly), some people at HP Canada noticed and they've put me in contact with colleagues in Colorado who were glad to listen my comments, and they promised to address some of the issues. Some of my concerns were: no support for VMs; no cookbook for HP-UX admins, lack of feedback from SWM, etc. I also had a quick talk with Brian Cox in Mannheim a few weeks later and he was aware of the problems HP-UX shops are facing with ISEE going away as some of them don't want to install Windows. Personally I don't care, but I would have rather run this on HP-UX if I could; I'm no Windows admin and feel more at home on Unix systems.

I've been running RSP as the only notification mechanism for a few Proliant(ESX) and Integrity(HP-UX) servers for over a month now, and it seems to work. All the events are sent to HP, and closed. I've also been able to have my C7000 blade chassis monitored too, although I couldn't find any documentation for this. I just set up the CMS as the trap destination, crossed my fingers, and test traps generate RSP events.

I evaluate that installing, debugging (and trying to understand) SIM and all the components that replace ISEE have taken me over 20 hours. That's a lot of work. So when a component will break in the future, I expect a phone call or e-mail from HP Support. If I don't get anything, I won't be in a good mood. I have many EVAs of different generations that will be migrated sometime in early 2009. They require more preventive maintenance, so this will be the real test.

In the mean time I'm asking all the support personnel to take a walk in their data center (we have 6) once in a while, looking for red lights. I thought these days were over, but RSP is a stack of multiple monitoring software solutions, and I haven't had proof yet that it can be trusted.

O.