Script or Program Monitor is an advanced IPHost’s monitor. It is used to run an external program or script and interpret its return code and printed output as data to check and raise alert when necessary. Since it is possible to run almost any type of program available to Windows users, this kind of monitor is a universal tool to provide data when built-in monitors cannot be used.
The external program may be any Windows executable (command-line; using GUI applications isn’t recommended unless they can run and terminate in unattended (batch) mode. Since IPHost Network Monitor expects known return code and printed output values, such a program (script) usually can be created by a sysadmin to get data otherwise unavailable through built-in tools. As in all the cases, the lack of monitoring, as well as incorrect usage of such a monitor may result in unexpected service failure, data loss etc., depending on what was to be monitored. IPHost Network Monitor offers an efficient means to run programs and/or scripts and analyze their output – manual monitoring is in most cases difficult.
Creation of Program or Script Monitor is a simple process. Locate program executable or script file to run. Provide required command-line parameters (if any), do not forget to quote parameters values if necessary. Specify whether it’s a program (executed as is) or script (executed with Windows Scripting Engine). Specify whether it’s a standard program or Nagios plugin. Finally, provide, if required, credentials (domain name, user and password) to run the program as (default is to use credentials IPHost Network Monitor uses to run). Optionally, a value can be used to divide the result, if necessary.
If a program executes as expected, it should return zero as return code and print an integer to the standard output. The printed value is used to calculate performance state. In case of an error, program returns non-zero return value and prints error message.
Using Program or Script Monitor means all the other built-in monitors types can’t be used for some reason. Since running external programs can be inefficient and lead to undesired consequences such as memory leaks, other monitors types should be considered if possible, such as WMI monitor. Developers can use Program or Script Monitor to check whether the development process (building a program) has passed as expected (e.g. known files of expected size etc are created). System administrators can check Smart monitors values in this way. It is recommended to contact IPHost Network Monitors developers and propose a monitor type missing in the distributed version.
Since Program or Script Monitor can be a time- and other resources-consuming monitor type, it is strongly recommended to run simpler monitors first, if they can determine whether it’s necessary to run the program – e.g., File monitor or WMI monitor. Consider setting those lighter monitors as dependencies.
Description of other features:
| Monitoring Features | Here you can find the list of monitor types supported in IPHost Network Monitor and brief description of their parameters. |
| Application Templates | Here you can find the list of application templates supported in IPHost Network Monitor and their short description. |
| Network Discovery | Helps you to create a basis of your monitoring configuration and automates the task of detection network hosts and network services. |
| Alerting Features | Here you can find the list of alert 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. |
Related Topics:
S.M.A.R.T. disk monitoring
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