IPHost Network Monitor provides constant monitoring of your network's services and resources that are critically important for your company. Unlike many monitoring tools IPHost Network Monitor checks not only the availability of a resource but also its operability and performance characteristics.
The base element in IPHost Network Monitor is a monitor; it is checking the availability of a service on a remote computer and requesting the value of a certain parameter. The monitor has parameters that determine:
- how often monitor should be checked (polling interval) and dependency on other monitor,
- monitor definition (what and how should be checked - monitoring parameters),
- actions to be performed when problems appear (action profile),
- two levels of unavailability of monitored server (host), service or application (timeout for Down state and latency for Extended Down state).
- two levels of unacceptable performance of monitored service or application (Performance Warning level and Performance Alert level).
Groups of Monitors
Grouping monitors according to host types and monitor types provides a convenient way of monitors management. For instance, you can create a host group for each location and organize your hosts (servers) accordingly. Also each monitor get default parameters such as polling interval and actions from monitor type.
Available Monitor Types
| SNMP | Standard way of retrieving management information and performance characteristics from Unix/Linux servers, Windows servers, networking and other equipment. 70 common MIBs are provided with the product. |
| PING | Sends a standard PING to the server/device |
| TCP | Checks whether the server accepts connection at the specified port number |
| UDP | UDP datagram send/receive on a specific port |
| SMTP | Checks an SMTP server with optional authentication and sends a test message |
| POP3 | Checks a POP3 server with optional authentication |
| IMAP | Checks an IMAP server with optional authentication |
| HTTP/HTTPS | GET or POST HTTP/HTTPS request with optional content validation |
| Web Transaction Monitor | This tool simulates the steps of activity of a real user of web application or e-commerce site customer. With Web Transaction Monitor you can check web application availability and performance. |
| FTP | Checks an FTP server with optional authentication |
| WMI CPU load | Checks current CPU load on remote computer via WMI |
| WMI Available Memory | Checks current volume of available memory on remote computer via WMI |
| WMI Bytes Received/sec | Checks current inbound throughput on remote computer |
| WMI Bytes Send/sec | Checks current outbound throughput on remote computer |
| WMI Custom (run WMI script) | Runs custom WMI script to check some value on remote computer |
| DISKSPACE | Monitors the free disk space of a local disk drive or a remote network share |
| FILE | Monitors a file on a local disk drive or a network share. It checks if the file exists and the file size is in a given range |
| Windows Service | Monitoring the presence of any Windows service on the local machine or a computer in the network. You can restart the service using the Run program action. |
| ODBC Database | Checks an ODBC data source for availability with optional authentication and SQL expression execution. You can use it to monitor Oracle, MS SQL server and other databases. |
| ODBC Database | Checks an ODBC data source for availability with optional authentication and SQL expression execution. You can use it to monitor various databases, such as MS SQL, DB/2 and others. |
| Oracle Database | Checks an Oracle database for availability with optional authentication and SQL expression execution. |
| MySQL Database | Checks an MySQL database for availability with optional authentication and SQL expression execution. Using of secure connection is also supported that is especially important if you monitor hosted database. |
| CUSTOM | Makes it easy to create your own custom monitors. Scripts and programs are supported. You can use Nagios plugins. |
Polling
Monitors are polled (checked) with a regularity specified by the user. By default, monitors of the group 'Basic connectivity' are checked every 30 seconds, all the rest - every minute. A minimum interval between polls is limited to 15 seconds because more frequent checks are practically useless, besides, they can lead to the performance degradation of the network or network resources, which contradicts with the goal of monitoring.
The result of a check is either a value or an error message. Depending on returned value monitor stays in OK state or turn into one of four problem states:
- Performance Warning
- Performance Alert
- Down
- Extended Down
IPHost Network Monitor reacts to monitor transitions to problem states by performing actions assigned by the user to the corresponding state. The actions are set in Action Profiles.
Dependencies
One can set the dependence of monitor checks on the state of another monitor. This means that the dependent monitor is checked only if the monitor on which it depends is in a state different from Down, Stopped or Stopped by Dependency.
This facility can be of especial use to establish for instance the dependence of monitor checking on the computers on the state of the router through which they are connected to the network. By default, a monitor depends on the monitor PING of its host.
Admin Tools
IPHost Network Monitor is provided with some tools that help you to manage your hosts (servers) and monitors. There are:
- Remote Desktop client
- SSH client
- Telnet client
Description of other features
| Actions Features | Here you can find the list of action types (ways of reaction to the problems happened during monitoring) available in IPHost Network Monitor, and their brief description. |
| Reporting Features | Here you can find the list of report types available in IPHost Network Monitor with brief descriptions. |
|
IPHost Network Monitor interfaces and structure |
Here you can find an overview of IPHost Network Monitor components, Windows and web interfaces. |
