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List:       veritas-ha
Subject:    [Veritas-ha] RE: Purchase Agents vs. Create our own agents
From:       Wanke Matthias <Matthias.Wanke () itellium ! com>
Date:       2002-03-12 19:18:19
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Just my two (euro) cent:

We have a mixed extra purchased/self-written agent environment. There are
really two strong arguments against your own developmed agents for standard
applications:
o purchased agents (should be/)are hardened through multiple instances
running at many customer sites (there is always the next IF-clause you will
have to add after you find out about that special condition which made your
own custom agent fail)!
o any decent veritas support will probably not bail out on your custom
agents, but it will take much more time to discover what went wrong! what
are your SLA's with your customer saying about a longer downtime? ;)

If you're the one paying for the licenses or rather the time spent coding:
the cost of a one time license fee + support is easily determined; but what
happens if the coder of your agents leaves for a better job? if he/she is on
holiday on some remote island without telecom - is the the backup admin as
good?

Coding yourself is cheaper, but will it cost less money in the end?
Commitment to standards probably pays out - ok, gotta run and code this
custom Legato Networker agent in my spare time ;o)

Greetings,
Matthias.

From: mike.marcell@pni.com
> To: veritas-ha@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
> Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 16:23:20 -0700
> Subject: [Veritas-ha] Purchase Agents vs. Create our own agents
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Just curious what others have done in this situation.  We're 
> looking at
> purchasing the Sybase and Oracle vcs agents for vcs 2.0.  
> They weren't part
> of the original purchase when we bought the initial vcs product and
> licenses.    We're looking at buying the agents for both 
> Oracle and Sybase,
> partly because of the functionality, but mostly due to the 
> support from
> Veritas.
> 
> We already have scripts in house on many other servers to 
> online/offline
> and monitor these databases, although not in a clustered 
> environment.  With
> some time and effort we can modify these scripts into our own 
> custom agents
> to get things working correctly.  The actual cost of 
> purchasing the agents,
> really isn't that substantial.   Question is do I want to 
> spend the time
> and effort to create and maintain my own agents? And down the 
> road, am I
> going to wish that we would have spent the extra money to get 
> the agents
> and support on them.  My answer may not be the same as those 
> who write the
> checks.   :-)
> 
> I'm just curious what others have done in this situation.  
> Have you written
> your own agents, only to find it causing more of a headache 
> in the long
> run?   Have you found that the agent gave you functionality 
> and monitoring
> that you didn't have without spending many hours coding 
> yourself.   Was it
> purely a supported vs. non-supported, "You're on your own!  
> Good luck!"
> response from Veritas support that prompted the decision?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> =-=-=-=-=
>   Mike Marcell                                      The 
> Arizona Republic
>   mike.marcell@pni.com                  Systems Database Administrator
>   Phone:  (602)  444-4958                  Fax: (602)  444-8010
>   Pager:   (602)  409-6248                  Cell: (602) 568-1893
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> =-=-=-=-=
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
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