Yet developing such a platform from scratch can prove problematic. Software teams in hardware-specializing companies are often understandably focused on firmware development and are not so much at home with higher level applications. So trying to develop an EMS platform in-house can be slow, costly and ineffective.
The solution is to buy a pre-existing EMS platform and then adjust it to handle the specific types of hardware sold by the vendor. For this plan to work, the chosen solution needs to be flexible enough to adjust to the specific needs of the company.
NetXMS was specifically built to be as modular and extensible as possible. It’s also well-packed with all the features necessary for a modern EMS system. What makes it stand out from the crowd?
The most typical concerns have to do with monitoring highly diversified network environments. Depending on the service contract, MSPs may need to manage just network devices, just servers or workstations alone, or a combination of all of these at the same time. Sometimes, these internally diverse networks are not even directly accessible by the monitoring server. The reasons for this may include security policy or routers with dynamic IP addresses, amongst others. Add to this overlapping address ranges and the requirement for customers to access the monitoring data, and you get a highly demanding standard — one that not all monitoring solutions can live up to.
Wide choice of protocols
Not only does NetXMS feature SNMP — the first choice for most hardware providers — but also MQTT, which is great for managing sensors and other small devices. For industrial applications, NetXMS provides support for Ethernet/IP and MODBUS-TCP. All of these protocols are provided out of the box. The modular structure of NetXMS allows new protocols to be easily added without much change to the system’s core.
Powerful data acquisition functionality
In addition to offering direct access to devices, NetXMS provides a proxy functionality to execute data collection on behalf of a server. It is a must-have for remote networks with connectivity issues as well as for large-scale networks, as proxies can be combined into clusters for high availability and load balancing. Collected data can be processed using complex rules for transformation and threshold checking, the process simplified by the availability of multiple templates.
Flexible event processing
NetXMS provides a common event processing policy where rules for processing events can be set. These rules can range from the very simple to quite complex. NetXMS allows several responses to be set, such as to execute certain commands, write internal scripts or send notifications via email, SMS, Telegram, MS Teams and many other channels. Additional channels can be added as needed without making changes to the core system.
Automated network discovery
Provided out of the box, NetXMS’s automated network discovery builds an accurate network topology (including layer 2 and IP) which can also be represented in the form of a network connectivity map.
Complete API
NetXMS makes sure that everything that can be done from GUI can be done via Java API as well. This provides a powerful tool for all kinds of integration with various external systems, as well as for creating custom automation tools. The user interface can be replaced completely, if needed.
On-site or in the cloud
The NetXMS-based EMS platform can be deployed on the premises or as a cloud platform. Cloud-based deployment, combined with proxy functionality, allows hardware vendors to easily implement the “call home” feature in their products.