Unicenter

“Prior Proper Planning Prevents Pretty Poor Performance”

Remember the rule of seven P’s. Implementation of CA Unicenter is not about executing the ‘setup.exe’ clicking ‘Next’ and ‘Finish’ buttons. It is more about planning, understanding your current environments and estimating rightly the evolution of your Infrastructure in the future. Understanding your present and future requirements correctly plays a key role in designing the right architecture for CA Unicenter NSM.  The more you plan in the start; the easier your life becomes during the deployment. My earlier post CA Unicenter NSM R11.x: Design Considerations provides a brief insight on understanding the present scenario to design a fruitful solution. The most important of all the steps is to understand the need that is driving the implementation of CA Unicenter NSM. Understanding the business needs for deploying the solution plays a vital role. So, quantify the business benefits from the use of CA Unicenter NSM; this will help you measure the effectiveness of the deployed solution.

I consider a successful deployment a one where the key business drivers are rightly addressed by the solution. To plan the Solution Architecture Design properly you should have a clear understanding of the current organizational structure, processes or any other benefits the organization is looking from the solution. You also have to plan well for the growth prospects for the organization for future. Once the current operational structure and processes are documented ensure that you create metrics that prove the business value of the solution. These metrics will help you to prove the business benefits the solution provides to your enterprise.

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together “

While designing the CA Unicenter NSM Infrastructure we have to keep in mind that no design exists in seclusion. The network elements and other operational factors can create influencing situation for you during the deployment. To achieve totality for your Solution Design you must

1. Ensure you create a check list of the platform is supported by the Unicenter NSM Infrastructure (both server and client side)
2. Ensure you create a list of where the CA Unicenter NSM components (Worldview ,DSM,MDB and Enterprise Management ) will be placed
3. Ensure you do the sizing correctly based on the number of managed objects for Unicenter NSM components
4. Ensure that you have correct understanding of the existing network infrastructure. Things are very different in live network than test lab.
5. Ensure your design includes scalability options, fail over and metrics for a successful deployment
6. Ensure create a list of ‘Who Gets What’  in terms of access to User Interfaces
7. Ensure you create a check list of how the management will happen on day-to-day basis , the health checkup of the NSM ,roles and responsibilities of the team members who will manage the NSM Infrastructure ,database maintenance & backup tasks etc
8. Last but not the least stick to the ‘Best practices’ while designing the CA Unicenter NSM Infrastructure

Once you have your planning and design done correctly, It just becomes a matter of clicking the setup.exe, next and finish buttons. 

I will be posting soon the questionnaire which will be helpful for you in data and requirements collection phase for planning and designing.