The Global Settings Dialog

The Global Settings dialog contains several groups of settings for IPHost Network Monitor as a whole. These are administrator e-mail account settings on the E-mail page; access password and default user account on the Credentials page, System settings such as application paths and port numbers, the global lists of reusable Alerts and Alerting Rules, global host Maintenance table, various Monitoring and Reporting settings, Rediscovery parameters, SNMP settings, Admin Tools, and GSM Modems attached to computer.

When you edit the settings, you can press the Apply button to commit the changes without closing the dialog and the Cancel button to undo the changes that haven't been applied yet. The OK button accepts the changes permanently and the client application and/or monitoring service may be restarted in case of changes on the System page in order for the changes to take effect.

The settings on this page are as follows:

• Name (From) - is a text for the From field of all e-mail messages sent by IPHost Network Monitor (regular reports, e-mail alerts, logon failure reports and so on). When configuring monitors or alerts, you can refer to this address as $AdminFrom.

• Email address - is an address to which regular reports and notifications are sent. When configuring monitors or alerts, you can refer to this address as $AdminMail.

• Primary mail server (SMTP) - is an SMTP server name, port number, and optional credentials. You can specify secure connection (TLS/TLS if available, SSL). A default port is assigned for every choice, unless you choose a non-standard port.

• Alternate mail server (SMTP) - is an SMTP server name, port number, and optional credentials. An alternate server is optional; if present, it is used when the primary server fails to send a message. You can specify secure connection (TLS/TLS if available, SSL). A default port is assigned for every choice, unless you choose a non-standard port.

You can change the access password and default user account on this page.

Access password is used

• to protect other passwords in monitoring database (they are stored in encrypted form and master password is used to derive the encryption key)
• to restrict access to client GUI: other windows users will have to enter the password once when they start the client; same user will not be asked to enter the password again until you change it

When you move your existing monitoring database and install the IPHost Network Monitor on another computer you will also be asked to enter the access password once. Make sure to remember it or write it down and store in a secret place.

Default user account is represented by domain or server name, user name and password. You should specify the computer name or just a dot '.' in the Domain field to indicate a non-domain (local) account. Make sure to change the password on the Credentials page when the password for your account changes; otherwise monitors using these credentials will start reporting authentication failures. When configuring monitors or alerts, you can refer to the default user account settings as $AdminDomain, $AdminUser and $AdminPassword.

Note there is Test credentials button; you can use it to make sure the specified credentials are correct.

This tab contains the settings from the nms.ini configuration file stored in the ProgramData folder (it is the "C:\ProgramData\IPHost Network Monitor\" if you have Windows Vista or above "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\IPHost Network Monitor\" if you have Windows 2003, XP or below. You can edit this file directly when neither the monitoring client nor service is running. The settings are not directly editable from the client GUI because doing so would imply restarting the monitoring service and/or client and/or database that is not always possible. Please do not change these settings unless absolutely necessary.

There are three groups of settings on this tab that correspond to the three components of the product:

• Network Monitor Service - is a Host on which the monitoring service runs (read only) and a TCP Port that is used to communicate with the service (3056 by default).

• Database Server - is a Host (read only), Port (3055 by default), the path to the monitoring database file on the host or Firebird alias for it, database user credentials, and the path to the Firebird database server on the target host.

• Web Server - is a Host name and Port to be used to access the Web interface of the system. When you change the port, the conf/httpd.conf Apache configuration file is updated accordingly.

This page groups various monitoring options. It allows fine tuning of the monitoring process.

The Monitoring settings section has the following settings:

• The number of days to store monitoring data and log messages in the database. The default values are 100 days for each setting. You can decrease this number if for instance you don't analyze data over one month old and want to prevent the database from growing too much.

• An indication whether newly created monitors should be set to depend on the PING monitor on the same host if any. This type of dependency allows avoiding false alarms when some host crashes; only alerts for its PING monitor will be executed and other monitors will silently enter the Stopped by Dependency state.

The System limits section has thresholds for a maximum thread count in a thread pool and a maximum CPU load. Starting new tasks such as polling a monitor or sending a report is delayed when the thread count limit or CPU load limit is exceeded. The default values of these settings should suffice in most cases.

Another limitation is a number of so called half-open TCP connections. Since Windows XP2 and later Microsoft has introduced hard limit of 10 half-open TCP connections as explained here. This limitation doesn't affect the Windows OS releases starting from Windows Vista SP2 as stated here; it also doesn't affect server plaforms. In accordance with this OS limitation, IPHost service maintains a pool of TCP connection 'slots'; size of the pool is set by default to 8 for desktop Windows OS, and to 1000 for server platforms.

This page contains a global list of named alerts. The alerts assigned to the state transitions form alerting rules and may be used to define IPHost Network Monitor's reaction to monitor state changes as explained here. You can add New alerts, Edit or Delete them from the list on this page. When you add an alert or edit an existing one, an Alert Editor dialog appears. You define or change the alert name and parameters there.

When you delete an alert, it is removed from all alerting rules which have been using it (alerting rules themselves are not removed).

This page allows creating and editing named alerting rules. You can open an existing rule using the drop down list, or press the Create button to add a new rule and enter its name. You can also Rename and Delete rules. When you delete a global alerting rule, and some monitor has been using this rule, it starts using the rule of its monitor type if it has been defined. If some monitor type or host was using this rule, it gets the 'No alerts' rule setting and the monitors inheriting alerts from this monitor type or host do not react to state changes.

You can signal alerts basing upon a known state change and time interval; for more details, refer to Alerting Rules section of Alerting and Actions overview page. You can add or delete alerts using the corresponding buttons to the right of alerts list; an alert selection window opens to select an existing global alert or add new one.

You can also select an alert and press the Edit button to open an alert editor form where you can change the alert name and parameters. The same form is available from the Alerts page.

The page has two sections:

• Default reporting period - specifies the period that is used in the client GUI for creating and showing reports (number of days and hours). The default reporting period is one day (24 hours). Using periods less than several hours is not practical since all performance graphs display averages for 10-minute intervals so they will have just a few points when a reporting period is too short.

• Regular reporting settings - indicate which reports (Summary, Problems and Trends) should be sent daily, weekly, and monthly. The daily Summary report cannot be disabled; it proves the normal functioning of the Monitoring service and provides you with up-to-date information on your network every morning. Regular reports are always sent to the Administrator e-mail account ($AdminMail). You can also specify a CC list (comma separated) to send reports on this property page.

• Report Header and Footer - these links will launch Web editor of reports header and footer files. Those files are kept as regular HTML files
  

  C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\IPHost Network Monitor\userdata\header.html
  and
  C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\IPHost Network Monitor\userdata\footer.html
  correspondingly.

  You can also edit those files by clicking on [edit header] and [edit footer] links located on Web version of reporting pages. Also, you can edit those files directly in the directory they are located. You can edit the files to add your company's logo, or whatever relevant information you wish to add to reports.

The following template variables may be used in the header and footrer files:

This page allows specifying a maintenance period for each host. By default, hosts are monitored permanently (no maintenance). You can define a one-time maintenance for the host say when you have to shut it down for a hardware repair. You can also define a periodic maintenance schedule (for instance your backup server may be off each Sunday from 0:00 to 8:00).

There are two different ways of interpreting the maintenance period; they are switched using the checkbox at the bottom of the page:

1. Stop monitoring all resources on the server.

2. Continue monitoring but do not perform alerts.

The second type of maintenance allows you to see whether the host was on maintenance indeed (state log for its monitors will indicate that they have been in a Down state for some time, then recovered back to an Ok state). The state log will also provide information on the maintenance duration. In contrast, if you stop monitoring during maintenance, all resources will enter the inactive Maintenance state for the whole period and will be activated when maintenance ends.

The page allows configuring periodic rediscoveries that should detect new resources that may appear in your network. The settings on this page fully repeat the settings on the Discovery Wizard pages described here.

The page contains a list of SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) MIB files loaded by the client. The files are necessary to display information about SNMP variables supported by target host in SNMP browser. The browser is used to configure SNMP monitors. Default MIB files are located in mibs subdirectory of product installation directory; you can specify additional MIB files and/or unload some of the default files on this page. You can do it directly from the SNMP browser as well.

Here you define commands to start various applications used to manage your hosts: Remote Desktop, Telnet, and SSH clients. You can also specify a custom program to run. For instance, the above example defines a command line to start trace route program. Note that instead of directly specifying tracert as a program name, the example uses cmd.exe with /k switch; this allows for the output window to remain open after the command is complete.

Additionally, you can define a Device Web Interface template on this page. When new hosts are created manually or in course of Network Discovery, device web interface URL for them will be constructed automatically using this string as a pattern.

You access the tools and the device web interface defined on this page using the Admin Tools button on a Property Editor toolbar and the Admin Tools menu item in the context menu of a Tree View as explained here.

Here you define the GSM modems attached to the computer to be used by the SMS over GSM modem alert. There may be two GSM modems configured. The secondary modem is used if sending a message via the primary one fails. Any of the modems may be enabled or disabled at any time if needed.

A GSM modem can be a dedicated modem device with a serial, USB or Bluetooth connection, or a mobile phone that provides GSM modem capabilities. To perform these tasks, a GSM modem must support an "extended AT command set" for sending/receiving SMS messages, as defined in the ETSI GSM 07.05 and 3GPP TS 27.005 specifications.

To use a GSM modem from IPHost Network Monitor you must first install the modem driver on your PC. Usually the modem driver may be found on the CD or disk that came with your mobile phone or on the web site of the mobile phone manufacturer. If you cannot find the modem driver on the web site, you can still use Windows' standard modem driver.

For each GSM modem the following basic settings may be specified:

• Display Name - is the name of the modem.

• COM port - is the serial port used by the modem. You may either select the modem/port combination known by Windows from the drop-down list or enter the COM port manually. Press Ctrl-Enter to add the manually entered port to the list.

  Another option is to detect the present GSM modems automatically by scanning the serial ports one by one. Press the Find GSM modems button. In the dialog displayed you may specify the ports range to scan and start scanning by the Start Scan button. Press Stop Scan to stop scanning. The GSM modems found (if any) will be shown in the list, please select one and press OK to use it either as a primary or a secondary GSM modem:

More options are available in the dialog box opened by the Advanced settings button. One may specify the modem's custom initialization AT sequence; a non-default SMS center address; a baudrate to be used for the modem; whether a software handshake should be used; whether an SMS status report should be requested.

You may send a test SMS message to check that the GSM modem has been configured correctly. To do this press the Send test SMS button. In the dialog displayed you will be able to specify the recipient's phone number and the text of the SMS: