Selecting a Management Interface

Advantages of Using HP ProCurve Manager or HP ProCurve Manager Plus

PCM and PCM+ enable greater control, uptime, and performance in your network:

■Features and benefits of HP ProCurve Manager:

•Network Status Summary: Upon boot-up, a network status screen displays high-level information on network devices, end nodes, events, and traffic levels. From here, users can research any one of these areas to get more details.

•Alerts and Troubleshooting: An events summary screen displays alerts to the user and categorizes them by severity, making it easier to track where bottlenecks and issues exist in the network. Alerts present detailed information on the problem, even down to the spe­ cific port.

•Automatic Device Discovery: This feature is customized for fast discovery of all HP ProCurve manageable network devices. The user can define which IP subnets to discover.

•Topology and Mapping: This feature automatically creates a map of discovered network devices. Maps are color-coded to reflect device status and can be viewed at multiple levels (physical view, subnet view, or VLAN view).

•Device Management: Many device-focused tasks can be performed directly by the software, or the user can access web-browser and command-line interfaces with the click of a button to manage individ­ ual devices from inside the tool.

■Features and benefits of HP ProCurve Manager Plus:

•All of the Features of HP ProCurve Manager: Refer to the above listing.

•In-Depth Traffic Analysis: An integrated, low-overhead traffic mon­ itor interface shows detailed information on traffic throughout the network. Using enhanced traffic analysis protocols such as Extended RMON and sFlow, users can monitor overall traffic levels, segments with the highest traffic, or even the top users within a network segment.

•Group and Policy Management: Changes in configuration are tracked and logged, and archived configurations can be applied to one or many devices. Configurations can be compared over time or between two devices, with the differences highlighted for users.

•Advanced VLAN Management: A new, easy-to-use VLAN manage­ ment interface allows users to create and assign VLANs across the entire network, without having to access each network device indi­ vidually.

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