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September 4, 2008
CiscoWorks LMS...Shoot me now.
I am currently sitting in a sub-zero IT room on my 6th hour and 12th CD of a CiscoWorks Lan Management Solution (LMS) 2.6 installation/upgrade. This is the most pathetic, waste-of-time product I've ever worked with...and I haven't even finished the installation.
I will never agree to do a CiscoWorks LMS installation again.
Ever.
At least my fingers are numb so I can chew on them from boredom without feeling anything.
Posted by JC at September 4, 2008 3:04 PM
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Comments
I feel the same way about LMS, although we've paid for it so we have to suck it up.
What would you recommend to replace it?
Posted by: Rob at September 4, 2008 4:12 PM
It could be worse, you could be forced to run OpenView!
I agree it can be a pain, but I've found LMS to be a great product, especially DFM and RME. Between those two and Cacti & Smokeping, I know virtually everything that goes on in my network.
CW2K manages about 550 some elements, and I've got about 220 of those in Cacti for more detailed information.
Posted by: Sean at September 4, 2008 5:55 PM
The only way to live with management applications is to install them on VMware ESX server. That way you can snapshot them, perform the upgrade and....when it doesn't work, roll back and go home.
I really would not consider doing it any other way. My current network management platform is a Dell R900 with four dual core CPU and 64GB ram. One box does all my network management - thats 20 servers.
Loving that.
Posted by: Etherealmind at September 5, 2008 5:25 AM
Ciscoworks is crap. There are a good number of quality open source apps now that are able replacements for Ciscoworks, like NMIS (SNMP monitoring) NEDI (SNMP + configuration management) and ziptie (configuration mgmt). I work for a Cisco partner and heavily discourage my customers from purchasing LMS.
Posted by: Dave West at September 5, 2008 8:54 AM
Dave, thanks for the tip on Ziptie. Looks interesting.
I'm with you guys. CW is crap. It's tedious and painful. We also steer customers away from it when we can.
Pay alternatives include Solarwinds and Plixer.
Of course, there's all kinds of free stuff as mentioned but most of it isn't very pretty.
Posted by: Scott Brooke at September 5, 2008 12:51 PM
I took a course 2 years ago on LMS in NY, had every intention on installing it when I got back. Wound up making major changes to the network which involved going with another ISP, and redesigning my backups... anyway.. I was pretty busy. Now in order for me to pick up where I left off, I think I need another course in LMS (or maybe I just ditch it). Does anyone here have any straight forward installation procedures for 2.6 ?
Posted by: Dave N at September 7, 2008 8:20 PM
LMS works great!
Posted by: Ken Bryk at September 13, 2008 9:02 AM
I've been installing LMS for a few years, and its still like wrestling with a 400 pound gorilla when you want to install it or do anything with it.
Many customers I install it for cannot use it and do not get the return on their investment.
Most people are quite happy with Solarwinds Orion and Catools as they are easy to install, maintain and use.
Posted by: PerlNut at September 16, 2008 3:29 AM
I also had very bad experience while installing LMS2.6. but once it was installed and configured properly, it was like a charm... it makes your day-to-day work easy specially monitoring remote device status....
Posted by: Ahmed at September 16, 2008 5:07 AM