- High Scalability

From Wikipedia:

Hyperic HQ is a popular open source IT Operations computer system and network monitoring application software. It auto-discovers all system resources and their metrics, including hardware, operating systems, virtualization, databases, middleware, applications, and services. It watches hosts and services that you specify, alerting you when things go bad and again when they get better. It also provides historical charting and event correlation for faster problem identification.

The Hyperic HQ server is a distributed J2EE application that runs on top of the open source JBoss Application Server. It is written in Java and portable C code and runs on Linux, Windows, Solaris, HP-UX and Mac OS X. Hyperic HQ Portal is a Java and AJAX User Interface that includes:

Inventory/Application Model & host hierarchy

Monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, ICMP, SNMP)

Monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk usage, system logs)

Remote monitoring supported through SSH or SSL encrypted tunnels.

Continuous Auto-Discovery of system resources including hardware, software and services

Track log & configuration data

Remote resource control for corrective actions such as starting and stopping services, vacuum database table, or snapshotting a VM

Ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution

Problem Resource Identification & Root Cause Analysis

Event Correlation

Alerting when service or host problems occur or get resolved via email, pager, Text messaging, RSS

Security/Access Control

Simple plug-in design that allows users to easily develop their own service checks depending on needs, by using the tools of choice (XML, J2EE, Bash, C++, Perl, Ruby, Python, PHP, C#, etc.)

I met Javier Soltero, the CEO of Hyperic at the Velocity Web Performance and Operations dinner. I hit him with my best stuff and he didn't flinch a bit. Javier showed a deep understanding of the issues, a real passion for his product and the space, and the knowing good humor of someone who has been through a few wars and learned a little something along the way. I don' know if that translates to an excellent product, but it would at least make me take a look.