Monitoring Tool with Reliable Alerting

Get Timely Notifications: Make Sure Your Servers Are Alive

IPHost Network Monitor provides various methods of automatic response to monitored resource state changes. Prompt and informative notification on a monitored resource operation failure allows you to substantially reduce the downtime of important resources, which saves the users work time and improves administrator work effectiveness.

There are alerts that send a message with information on the problem using various protocols (e-mail, instant messengers, SMS and others). Also, there are alerts that can start a specified program (local or remote via SSH) or set an SNMP value. Using these alerts you can implement any method to react to a monitor state change: from starting/stopping of a service on a remote machine to rebooting it.

Alerts and Simple Actions

All alerts are listed in one common list of alerts. Any alert can be used with any monitor. Each alert is a set of simple actions (e.g. send e-mail, show pop-up) and time schedules assigned to them, so that each action is executed in the specified time interval only. Currently IPHost Network Monitor provides the following types of simple actions to construct an alert:

  1. Send email. Sending an e-mail to persons concerned. Some variables can be used in the message template, such as $MonitorName, $CurrentState, etc., which allows for instance to use one template for all state changes.
  2. Send SMS via GSM modem or mobile phone attached to a computer running IPHost. The service will send message to mobile phones.
  3. Send SMS over email. Your mobile provider have to support e-mail to SMS service. The SMS (text message) alert will be sent to specified addresses.
  4. Pop-up window. This is a standard balloon connected to the application icon in the system tray with the message about a problem (state change).
  5. Net Send/MSG. It is a similar standard window with a message, a standard dialogue with a message on a local or remote machine.
  6. Execute program. To start an executable file or execute the script code in a language supported by Windows Scripting Host. The path to the file and program/script arguments should be specified. You can specify user account to run the program.
  7. Send Jabber message.
  8. Send ICQ message. You should have ICQ account to use the alert.
  9. Send AOL message. You should have AOL messenger account to use the alert.
  10. Play Sound. You can use any mp3 or wav sound files. Sound will be played if Windows client application are started or Alerts tab in Web interface is open.
  11. Set SNMP value. For example, you can change router configuration with SNMP set command using this SNMP alert.
  12. Execute script over SSH. You can start shell script on a remote computer.
  13. Send HTTP(S) request. The alert sends GET/POST request via HTTP(S) protocol to the server with specified URL. Variables can be used in the GET/POST data.

You can create a named alert using simple actions listed above and time schedules. For example, you can create an alert that contains an e-mail message to notify your system administrators and HTTP(S) request to specified Web server to submit a ticket automatically. This named alert can be used in several alerting rules assigned to various monitors. If, for example, another recipient should be added to the e-mail notification list, you can modify this named alert only, and all the alerting rules that use this alert will be immediately affected.

The full list of named alerts is available to view and edit. To open the form with alert list please select ‘Settings…’ from ‘Tools’ menu (or ‘Settings’ button on the toolbar) then select Alerts tab. It is important to remember that changes in an alert affect each Alerting Rule that uses this alert.

Alerting Rule: Whom and When To Notify

An alerting rule specifies what to do when a monitor changes its state or an event takes place. I.e., each alerting rule is a reusable template that tells the monitoring service how to respond on monitor state changes and events. In order to get a notification on a resource state change an alerting rule should be assigned to the resource monitor. Each new monitor inherits the alerting rule from its parent host by default, hence there is no need to specify a rule for each monitor separately. However, it is possible to set a custom rule for any monitor, host, host group or remote network agent. An Alerting Rule links alerts to monitor state changes.

By default, a monitor uses the Alerting Rule inherited from its parent host.

You can test an alerting rule assigned to a monitor on the special Testing tab: just click the Test button near the Alert description and check if all its simple actions are executed as expected. Make sure you will be promptly notified in case of a real-life problem occurs in your network.

Other features description

 

Monitoring Features Here you can find the list of monitor types supported in IPHost Network Monitor and brief description of their parameters.
Network Discovery Helps you to create a basis of your monitoring configuration and automates the task of detection network hosts and network services.
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.

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