Leveraging Lessons Learned With Other Map Builders

In a large company there will be a need for multiple management stations to ensure high availability of the NNM platform. To achieve full redundancy, each management station takes advantage of the same collection stations. There is every reason to locate management stations in physically independent locations, so they may be managed by different map builders. Yet the maps should look the same if the collection stations are to be useful backups for each other.

To keep the management station maps consistent, the map builders obviously need to agree who will modify the map any given day, so the others can import it without losing local map changes. The map customization file is in plain ASCII text format, but it may be over a megabyte in size, so it should be compressed before e-mailing it. Another way to share the file is to simply FTP it (UNIX way) or share the folder (Windows way) among the NNM systems. A third way to share map customization files is to install a web server on the NNM system and provide a simple web interface to the map customization directory.

Cooperating map builders should share their best practices to minimize the amount of time they spend with their Internet submaps. For example, if one map builder is also a developer skilled at writing OpenView applications with the developer toolkit, and if she wrote a handy utility for aligning columns and rows of map icons, she should share it with her peers.