What is IPHost Network Monitor?
IPHost Monitor provides you with a number of monitoring features that allow you to check the state of almost all critical enterprise servers and applications in real time. The tool checks the availability of network resources being monitored and their performance simultaneously. IPHost Monitor automatically searches network servers, workstations and other equipment, and detects network services running on them. Regular network rediscovery allows adding new monitors and tracking equipment relocation/presence in real time.
The list of monitor types available in the current version of IPHost Network Monitor:
| Monitor Types | Goal and Target Applications | Protocols and technologies used to access resources |
|---|---|---|
| Basic connectivity | Checking network connectivity and simple operability (availability) of network services. | PING TCP UDP |
| Performance and availability of various mail servers, for instance Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, Unix-based, and others. | POP3/POP3S IMAP4/IMAP4S SMTP/SMTPS |
|
| Internet | Performance and availability of web sites and web applications (both intranet and Internet), FTP servers, and DNS servers | HTTP(S) FTP DNS |
| Resources – over SNMP and SSH | Checking availability and current state of the following resources: CPU and Memory usage, Disk Space and Process – via SNMP and SSH. SNMP Generic Trap monitor. Custom SNMP monitor. Syslog messages monitor. | SNMP SSH Syslog |
| Resources – Windows/WMI | Checking availability and current state of the following resources: Windows service, Windows Event Log, Disk Space and File (via CIFS), CPU usage via WMI, Memory usage (physical, virtual, pagefile) via WMI, Windows Process via WMI, Disk Space via WMI. Generic WMI Query monitor. | WMI CIFS |
| Databases | Availability and performance characteristics of various database servers. | Generic (ODBC) MSSQL MySQL Oracle |
| Traffic | Incoming, outgoing and total traffic speed, and traffic volume measurement for a specified network interface. | WMI SNMP |
| Custom | Availability and performance data can be collected by external programs or scripts running either locally or on another host. | Custom |
| Virtual Machines | Performance and availability of hypervisors and virtual machines, for Microsoft Hyper-V server and VMware ESXi server version 5.0 and greater. | WMI, HTTPS |
Application and Device Templates
An application and device template allows to create several preconfigured monitors on the selected host at once. A template can be constructed to monitor an application running on the host (for example, MS Exchange Server), or Web service (MS IIS or Apache), generic mail service or specific MTA (for example, Dovecot/Exim4). A template applied to the host can monitor either overall host system health (traffic consumption, CPU, memory and disk space usage), or essential services running on the host (for example, AD domain controller services). The IPHost Network Monitor contains over 150 preconfigured templates and provides tools to create custom ones. Also, there is IPHost Template Community – a useful online resource containing many additional templates and knowledge base articles. Templates are reviewed by IPHost team and you can gain access to approved ones right from the IPHost client. You can also publish your templates and subscribe to digest e-mails.
Adjustable Alerting
If a monitored resource is unavailable or its performance is below a specified level, IPHost Network Monitor produces one of the following alerts:
- sending e-mail message(s) with an issue description to predefined address(es);
- sending netsend/SMS/Jabber messages;
- sending Push notifications to a mobile device;
- showing a pop-up window or a balloon with the message;
- running a user-specified program or a batch file either locally or over SSH;
- performing an HTTP(S) request;
- setting a new value for the SNMP variable;
- playing a sound.
Using the above alerting methods you can define custom alerts. Some examples:
Thus you receive prompt information on the resource failure, and also can get the tool to automatically correct the failed resource problem. IPHost Network Monitor allows you to create flexible alerting configurations based on two failure levels:
- Warning: the resource is available but its response time or the response itself makes it difficult to use the resource. You can configure IPHost to perform different types of checks to trap such non-fatal issues.
- Down: the resource is unavailable: poll ends with a timeout or reports a fatal error. You can add more condition checks to trap other problems that you consider fatal.
State condition checks for both levels are similar so it is more a logical distinction of fatal versus non-fatal errors between them that you should keep in mind when configuring the system.
Monitors can inherit their alerting rules from hosts, host groups and so on, as well as use global named alerting rules. This framework helps to reduce your efforts on defining and changing the alerting settings.
Web-enabled Reporting
A summary report for all the network resources or for a monitor group allows you to locate problem resource(s) immediately. A detailed report for a specific monitor provides you with complete information on all events that occurred during a selected time interval. It helps you to identify the exact problem cause. All reports are generated in HTML form, so you can easily send them to your colleagues or superiors. Each report is also accessible in a browser via a specific URL. The regular daily/weekly/monthly reporting feature allows you to monitor trends and create reports for your manager.
IPHost Network Monitor offers a specialized Web interface for mobile devices optimized for small screen resolution and slow connection speed.
The entire monitoring data is stored in a relational database (Firebird). You can use this information for creating custom reports.
