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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!botter!wundt!valke
From: valke@wundt.psy.vu.nl (Peter Valkenburg)
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.dcom.lans,eunet.general,comp.protocols.ibm
Subject: Inforequest on administration of network hard/software
Keywords: administration, networks
Message-ID: <520@wundt.psy.vu.nl>
Date: 13 Nov 89 12:32:39 GMT
Reply-To: valke@psy.vu.nl.UUCP (Peter Valkenburg)
Followup-To: comp.databases,comp.dcom.lans,eunet.followup,comp.protocols.ibm
Organization: VU Psychologie, Amsterdam
Lines: 43


	Hello there,

the second author (Dick Kappelhof) of this article is a network-administrator
at the Bankgiro Centrale (BGC), a financial & administrative service center
for dutch banks, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.  This company has a large
amount of multi-vendor (IBM, Unisys, Tandem, etc) network hard- & software for
financial traffic all over the Netherlands.  Recently, a project was set up
to centrally administrate this hard- and software.  Before reinventing the
wheel however, it seemed appropriate to find out if there have been similar
efforts to develop such a system, which is why this article was posted.

Among the goals of the system are the following:
	- providing documentation on hardware, network protocols and the
	  like for network management
	- an overview of the type, physical locations and connectivity of
	  hardware (e.g. speed/quality of lines and their geography)
	- providing an inventory of various communication protocols and
	  an overview of the hardware on which they run
	- presenting the above in an easy to understand way for non-
	  technical people (i.e. in the form of pictures)

The questions are:
	1. Does anyone know of software for managing this kind of data
	   (e.g. in database applications).  The software is probably
	   to run on IBM OS's (OS/2, AS400, System 36, etc).
	2. Is there any existing literature on the subject (perhaps in
	   software engineering)?
	3. Do you know of people that have experience in developing a
	   system that systematically inventorizes and documents 
	   computersystems and networks? (Please mail on how to contact
	   them)

Thanks in advance for any answers to the above questions,

					-------------------------------
				       |Peter Valkenburg	       |
				       |Dick Kappelhof		       |
				       |(mail address: valke@psy.vu.nl)|
					-------------------------------

P.s.: if you know of newsgroups that are more appropriate for this
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