Glossary

The following terms and abbreviations are used in this help file, monitoring client, Web interface, and IPHost Network Monitor online content. The terms are ordered alphabetically.

Term	Explanation
Alert	A command or sequence to be executed by the monitoring system. Alerts are linked with monitors using alerting rules which define system behavior on resource state changes or events. Alerts themselves are not associated with state changes and/or events. An example of an alert is sending an e-mail message to Administrator. There is a global list of named alerts on the Alerts page of the Global Settings dialog.
Alerting Rule	A set of alerts linked to monitor state transitions or events that trigger each alert. Alerts are performed when a corresponding monitor state change takes place or monitor triggers an event. An example of an alerting rule using two alerts is: sending an e-mail message to administrator for state changes to Performance Problem and Extended Down and showing a popup message for all state changes. You can combine as many alerts as you wish in an alerting rule. Alerting rules define the monitoring system's reaction to monitor state changes and events. The framework is flexible: in the Global Settings dialog there is a list of global alerting rules that you can assign to monitors; there are also local alerting rules for hosts and monitor types that may be inherited by monitors and finally, a custom alerting rule may be assigned to each monitor.
Host	A device that has an IP address assigned. Hosts may have resources that may require monitoring.
Host Group	A group of hosts of the same kind. For instance, the Servers group contains all server hosts configured for monitoring. You indicate a host group when manually adding a host to the monitoring system configuration. On network discovery, hosts are placed in either Servers or Desktops and Notebooks groups. To change the host group later you can use the Host Group combo on the Property Editor page for the host.
Logs	Diagnostic messages produced by system components. A monitoring client and monitoring service write log messages to the database; you can access them from the monitoring client using the Log View pane. There are system messages and monitor-specific messages. The Apache Web server providing the system's Web interface writes standard access.log and error.log files to the logs subdirectory of IPHost Network Monitor directory in common application data directory such as C:\ProgramData\IPHost Network Monitor\logs on Windows Vista or Windows 7. A monitoring service writes the iphost.log file to the same directory. Logs files are backed up and restarted from scratch on monitoring service startup when they exceed 1Mb in size.
Monitor	A logical unit of the system that is monitoring some resource. A monitor accesses a resource on a particular host in accordance with monitoring settings such as Polling Interval, Port Number and so on. A monitor also has settings that specify how to distinguish resource states and what alerts are to be performed on state changes or events.
Monitor Type	A group of monitors for the same kind of resource. For instance, the POP3 monitor type logically groups all POP3 monitors.
Monitor Category	A group of monitor types for the same target area. For instance, the Mail monitor category logically groups SMTP, POP3, and IMAP monitor types.
Monitoring	A process of periodic checking for resource availability and performance.
Monitoring Client	This component is a Windows GUI application available from the Program Files menu and through the Desktop icon. It is used to browse and change the monitoring system configuration and to view reports, graphs, and logs. It is described here.
Monitoring Service	This component is a Windows service performing network discovery, continuous monitoring of network resources, delivery of notifications, execution of alerts, logging, and monitoring data collection. It is described here.
Network Discovery	An automated search for hosts and particular resources on them. It can be started either manually or on schedule (periodic rediscovery) as explained here.
Poll	A single check of some resource. Polls are performed by monitors at certain intervals; you can also make a poll manually from the monitoring client.
Reports	HTML pages generated by the reporting module on the Apache Web server. You can access summary reports for the default reporting period (usually 24 hours) from the monitoring client. You can access Summary, Problems and Trends reports for any period from the Web interface. In addition, you can receive Daily, Weekly and Monthly Summary, Problems and Trends reports over e-mail as explained here.
Resource	An entity that should be monitored. Typical resources are services provided by hosts (HTTP, SMTP, Database servers, etc.), files, directories, physical hardware components (CPU, memory, network cards), and so on.
Settings	Parameters that specify monitoring system behavior. Global settings accessible through the Global Settings dialog apply to the system as a whole. Individual settings for monitors, hosts and monitor groups are available in the Property Editor pane. Monitors have a number of settings that specify their behavior. Hosts, monitor types, and other monitor groups also have settings that may be used as templates for monitor settings, as comments for Web reports, etc.
State	A property of a monitor calculated on the basis of monitoring results and configuration settings. A monitor may be active or inactive; active monitors are polled periodically and may be in one of the following states: OK, Performance Warning, Performance Problem, Down, Extended Down, Unknown. Inactive monitors may be Stopped, Stopped by Dependency, be on Maintenance or Discovered. The states are described here. Note that the terms monitor state and resource state are synonyms and may be used interchangeably across the documentation.
State Change or State Transition	An event that takes place when the state of a monitor changes in the course of monitoring. The most important state changes are shown below: Down: switch to a Down state from any other state Extended Down: switch to an Extended Down state from Down Performance Warning: switch to a Performance Warning state from any other state except for Performance Problem Performance Problem: switch to a Performance Problem state from any other state OK: recovery from one of the 'bad' states (Down, Extended Down, Performance Warning, and Performance Problem) back to OK. You can assign alerts to any of the five state changes above; for instance you can get the system to send an e-mail message to Administrator. No state change will take place if resource monitoring has been canceled while in a certain state and then resumed (either manually or due to Maintenance or by Dependency) because the previous 'active' state of the resource is remembered.
Event	Some monitors can trigger an event even if its state doesn't change. For example, the SNMP Generic Trap monitor listening for the single trap is always in OK state but triggers an event once it gets the trap. You can assign alerts to the event the same way as for state changes; for instance you can get the system to send an e-mail message to Administrator.
Web Interface	This component is represented by an URL available from the Program Files menu; the Apache Web server provides access to this URL. The Web interface enables you to view reports and graphs showing the current system state or monitoring results for any other period of time from any Internet browser enabled device including mobile devices. It is described here.