This is a major update release, with multiple interface improvements, new features introduced, and bugs fixed.

New Features

Licensing

The Trial Version

From now on, there’s no separate freeware version of IPHost Network Monitor. When installed, IPHost Network Monitor enters a 30-day trial period, with a 500 active monitor limit (any combination of all monitor types). After the trial period ends, the Trial license is automatically converted to Freeware.

The Freeware version is limited to 50 active monitors; the following limitations are also in effect:

• No Remote Network Agents
• 1 Web Transaction Monitor
• The following monitor types are not allowed:
  • All SNMP monitor types
  • All Resources – Windows/WMI monitor types (including all WMI monitor types, Disk space, Windows service and File monitor types)

The Freeware version never expires.

The Basic 200 license

We have also upgraded Basic 100 license — it is now Basic 200 (up to 200 active monitors). The other limitations are the same as for the Freeware version.

Alerting

Alerting has been redesigned; below are the major changes:

• Simple actions with a name assigned such as «Send mail» can be created. Simple actions can be reused by multiple alerts.
• Alerts can now be composed of a number of simple actions, every one with its optional schedule. Alerts can also be named.
• Alert rules can now be tested (using the Testing tab on the monitors’ Alerting tabs). An alerting rule is executed unconditionally when tested, testing doesn’t alter the monitor state and produces log records that can be used to debug alerts.
• A new type of alert («Send HTTP(S) request») has been added, allowing sending a HTTP(S) GET/POST request on a monitor event.
  The main features of the «Send HTTP(S) request» alert are as follows:
  • Type of request (GET/POST)
  • Proxy settings (HTTP proxy/SOCKS 4/SOCKS 5)
  • HTTP authorization settings
  • User agent settings
  • Response validation (text validation/response code validation)

Spike Filtering Redesigned

Spike filters, up to this version, allowed ignoring a single attempt to enter a problem state (Warning or Down).

The whole concept of spike filters has been changed in this manner:

• Per section spike filters can be set (every event that can cause a switch to a problem state can have its own spike filter). For example: a WMI CPU monitor can change state due to Value bounds or Response timeout. Each of these sections, as per state, can have its own spike filter.
• A common spike filter can be set on the State condition tab: it will be used when none of the section spike filters can be applied (for example, if a host domain name can’t be resolved, or a connection error happens).
• Spike filters can skip more than 1 attempt to change state, this counter is configurable individually per filter.
• A spike polling interval can be set for every spike filter: when a spike filter is engaged, that polling interval (defaults to the monitor’s polling interval) is used.

Bugfixes and Improvements

GUI Client

• Upon monitor creation for a host with a missing A DNS record, the GUI client might hang until the monitoring service was restarted.
• Setting inheritance when adding new state condition sections has been improved. Also, we have added the ability to remove inherited state condition sections from children when removing the parent section.
• When a host was copied, explicitly defined monitor dependency was not updated.
• The SNMP browser shows a non-empty tree if some OIDs had already been loaded before an SNMP error occurred. Earlier the SNMP browser showed just an empty tree view and an error message.
• The new Monitor Wizard now always starts without any monitors selected.
• We have added an option to specify a direct path to the CA certificate (.pem file) when using an SSL connection for a MySQL monitor.
• We have fixed the import function of MIB files (now the IPHost GUI client does not reset the MIB list after restart).
• IPHost SNMP MIB Browser changes are given below:
  • Fixed printing of hexadecimal strings.
  • Fixed printing of SNMP enums and units.
  • Fixed size of the MIB import dialog.
• Certain state conditions sections now show current measurement units (such as percent, Mb) for a selected monitor.
• We have added the ability to temporarily disable Alerting for all monitors in IPHost Network Monitor Client and Web Interface.

Service

• Credentials were not properly updated upon an access password change.
• We have fixed the bug where the GUI client was unexpectedly closed after an upgrade.
• We have added an event timeout State condition section for the SNMP Generic Trap monitor. This section replaces the response timeout section. It contains a configurable Spike filter to control the permissible number of overdue traps.
• The Monitoring Service has been fixed to always send a discovery report email, previously it might fail, when a large amount of monitors was found.
• When switching between monitors in the new Monitor Wizard, the selection was also changed in the monitor Tree View.
• We have fixed the discovery of PING monitors: discovery might find PING monitors for non-existing hosts.
• The SNMP Generic Trap monitor has been changed to allow limiting the accepted trap number per a specified time period.
• IMAP and POP3 monitors now can be discovered even with wrong credentials settings.

Web Interface

• The default Web server configuration has been updated to enhance Web interface security (especially important in cases when the Web interface is accessible to the general public).

Remote Network Agent

• We have added the ability to configure system limits (thread count, CPU load, maximum number of half-open TCP connections and Web Transaction processes) on remote agents. This allows controlling remote computer resources utilized by the monitoring service.