IBM Netcool Impact Alternatives: Impact without Impact

There are alternatives to purchasing IBM Tivoli Netcool Impact. Many NOCs require only simple automated diagnostics, notifications, and/or escalation processes. The purpose of this document is to explore Impact alternatives for these cases through either:

• Omnibus Automations and Database Fields
• Probe Rules and Database Fields
• Customized Scripts and Database Fields

Several case studies are provided within this document that fully document how this is done:

• Lights Out NOC: Automated notification and escalation.
• XinY: Flagging X Events occurring in Y period of time.
• Parent Child Event Hierarchy: For organizing events.
• Event Audit: What policy/automation/probe touched which events when.
• Impact Replacement: A Impact-like PERL script that emulates Impact behavior. Procedures to emulate policies can be written and embedded in the script to replace Impact functionality.