This is a major update release of the product. It can be installed on top of an existing pre-4.0 version and the monitoring system configuration will be converted to the new format. However, we’ve made a few essential changes so please read the below overview and be prepared to use the new framework.

User Interface

We’ve changed both the Monitoring Client (Windows Interface) and the Web Interface with two main points in mind:

• providing a clearer view of the system configuration and current system state (better naming, more consistent color scheme and icons, and so on);
• seamlessly blending it with the look & feel concept of the latest generations of Microsoft Windows.

Particular attention has been given to the Windows 8 OS family and support for high DPI displays. Now the main window of the Monitoring Client has a predefined layout with two areas:

• the tree area that contains monitors organized in the Main view and the other tree views;
• the Parameters/Results pane containing the report and parameters of a selected tree item.

Now you can set configuration for each object on three tabs: Main parameters, State conditions, and Alerting. The Main view contains a tree that defines inheritance hierarchy for most parameters to minimize duplication of settings.

Alerting

It is especially important to understand how alerts are produced now. While all the basic ways of alerting (sending an e-mail or an IM message, playing a sound file, running a script, etc.) are still available, the way they are configured has changed:

• settings that define when monitors enter problem states (Down and Warning) are defined on the State conditions tab and may be inherited;
• settings that define what alerts should be used when monitors enter the problem states are specified on the Alerting tab and may be inherited, or global named Alerting Rules may be used;
• each alerting rule defines alerts to be issued when a problem takes place, when it persists for some time (an escalation alert), and when it is over;
• each such alert is a compound entity that consists of one or more simple alerts, and each of these simple alerts has a schedule attached.

For example, you can define an alerting rule for a host that instructs IPHost Network Monitor to issue two alerts when some resource enters the Down state: send an e-mail (scheduled for business hours) and send an SMS (for days off and evenings). Then you can define an escalation alert that does the same in 30 minutes, but this time the CEO address is added to the recipients list.

Web Transaction Monitor

The Internet Explorer based web transaction engine has been tested with the latest browser releases and web transaction recorder stability has been improved. The following changes have been implemented as well:

• Support is added for recording of Ajax POST requests that are often used to perform authentication. This support works when Internet Explorer 10 or newer is in use.
• The web transaction recorder will now use the same browser compatibility mode settings as those for standalone IE to ensure the same behavior of web pages as in a standalone browser.

Third party libraries

We’ve made an upgrade of all third party components of the product including the Firebird database server, Apache web browser, Qt toolkit, and a number of libraries providing specific protocol support. Even the development environment was upgraded to use the latest C++ compiler and Windows SDK.

Installation

When upgrading from a previous release (3.5 build 8152 or earlier), a backup copy of the monitoring system configuration in old format is preserved. So you can restore it in case you uninstall the 4.0 version. Thus, you always have the option to get back to the old version, so we encourage you to try the new release and provide your feedback.