Data Center, Manage ThyselfData Center, Manage Thyself

Most companies of any size use some sort of systems-management software that helps administrators monitor problems with servers, networks, or databases. The software will send an alert, but most of the time, the administrator has to hustle over to perform tasks such as plugging something into the outlet or reconfiguring a database.

A gaggle of vendors is lining up to beef up such management products. They include Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems. "The desire is to redeploy architecture, not just monitor it," says Meta Group analyst Corey Ferengol. He adds that until recently, the big vendors have only paged administrators. "Now they need to add a tier, such as shifting database resources around to improve performance," he says.

One of the vendors pressuring the big players is MetiLinx Inc., which Monday will unveil iSystem Enterprise 3.0. The upgraded offering has the ability to let administrators avoid their most cumbersome tasks. The Young Turk vendor already lets them establish a management layer between their consoles and the actual servers, which automatically contracts and expands resources based on utilization requirements.

Version 3.0 makes it easier to control groups of servers as one resource, track utilization of capacity by department, and help IT departments with charge-back processes balance work across the databases and the Web with no code changes to either and replicate the database for potential disaster-recovery processes.

The upgrade does one important thing that no other vendor does, Ferengol says. "MetiLinx has a strong understanding of the database, and I don't see anyone else doing that."