I set it up on a VM. It took me a week, couple of hours a day, and after a wipe or two because I messed up something...:)
Again, all the actual work is in the initial setup. But once it's done, its done. Jay Dale I.T. Manager, 3GiG Mobile: 713.299.2541 Email: jay.d...@3-gig.com<mailto:kandy.luk...@3-gig.com> Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail, including any attached files, may contain confidential and/or privileged information for the sole use of the intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination or copying of this e-mail and attachments, if any, or the information contained herein, is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient (or authorized to receive information for the intended recipient), please contact the sender by reply e-mail and delete all copies of this message. From: David Lum [mailto:david....@nwea.org] Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 11:54 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Server monitoring solution recommendations? See...something taking a WEEK to set up is too damn long, unless by week you mean a couple hours a day for a week. Host Monitor (www.ks-soft.net<http://www.ks-soft.net>) has a nifty little replication utility where you configure monitoring of one server (takes oh, an hour maybe for first timers to get everything you'd want, although if just want ping/hdd, etc you could go soup-to-nuts in 5 minutes), and then if you have a CSV of your systems you can replicate that setup (say PING, HDD, services, specific event log events, CPU, etc) to 400 servers in about 10 seconds, and it can handle SNMP traps, as I'd guess most good monitoring apps can. I think Whats-Up and other tools are similarly easy (or easier) to set up. We use Groundworks/Nagios here, and I know each time we've changed the person who manages administering it (add/changes tests, etc) they go through extended PITA moments. Hours of learning and retraining aren't free in my book, I put ease-of-use pretty high because it does affect the bottom line. Don't even get me started on TripWire.... Dave From: Jay Dale [mailto:jay.d...@3-gig.com] Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 7:00 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Server monitoring solution recommendations? +1 on Nagios. I'm not a Linux person by any stretch, but there's a ton of references out there that helps with the setup of Nagios, and it's free. It took about a week to get everything the way I wanted it, but it's working good now - email alerts and all, using Exchange 2007. Jay Jay Dale I.T. Manager, 3GiG Mobile: 713.299.2541 Email: jay.d...@3-gig.com<mailto:kandy.luk...@3-gig.com> Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail, including any attached files, may contain confidential and/or privileged information for the sole use of the intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination or copying of this e-mail and attachments, if any, or the information contained herein, is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient (or authorized to receive information for the intended recipient), please contact the sender by reply e-mail and delete all copies of this message. From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:mich...@smithcons.com] Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 8:36 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Server monitoring solution recommendations? If you want "free and easy and does 95%" - look at Polymon. If you want "complete and fairly easy" - OpsMgr is the answer. It rocks. If you want "free and complete" - Nagios is a good answer, but it isn't easy to setup. IMHO. YMMV. Regards, Michael B. Smith Consultant and Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com From: James Rankin [mailto:kz2...@googlemail.com] Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 9:12 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Server monitoring solution recommendations? System Center Operations Manager 2007 is what we use here - it has the capability to monitor ESX hosts and other .nix boxes as well as Windows servers (although getting the Unix stuff into the console is a bit of a fight, as I found out last week). It's only drawback from your point of view is probably the cost, but it does a fantastic job of aggregating everything that would normally come from Dell IT Assistant, Windows event log collectors, Citrix XenApp, VMWare VirtualCenter and just about every application we use, and displaying it all in one nice console on the wall. YMMV On 16 April 2010 14:07, Michael Leone <oozerd...@gmail.com<mailto:oozerd...@gmail.com>> wrote: I'm investigating server monitoring solutions for my enterprise. What I'm interested in is real world experiences and recommendations, not just sales pitches and product sheets that I can get from Google. The way I see it, I need 2 basic functions: I need to be able to monitor various aspects of a server (CPU usage, free disk space, is a service running, does the web service return a web page in a timely manner, is the switch at that site being overloaded, etc - the usual things you'd want to know from a server, I think) and then alert me when certain triggers or thresholds are crossed; and also to provide historical reports, showing trends over time. At a previous job, I used to ServersAlive!, which suited my needs there. But now I am at a place that has over 100 servers and switches, across multiple sites. And so I think I'd need something with more heft, perhaps. We're an HP shop, and I am looking at HP's SIM (Insight Manager) software, but that doesn't seem to monitor all the sorts of functions I want, nor does it seem to present it in a timely manner. I'm also looking at PacketTraps PT 360 tool suite (which is free), and that seems to show me some of what I need, but doesn't seem to have a lot in the way of reporting, nor have I found a way (yet) for it to alert me to configurable settings. I've also downloaded SpiceWorks, on the recommendation of a colleague, but haven't had a chance to investigate it yet. We're a gov't agency, so I don't have a whole lot of money. But I have a need, and at the moment, nothing in place to fill it. Getting an alert email that tells me that my mail server CPU has been up over 80% for more than xx seconds would be a good thing, so I don't have to get phone calls from users, asking why mail is so slow, and that's the first I've heard of it. I'm sure you get the idea. And the boss wants reports over time, for capacity planning and the like. So any recommendations would be welcome, as would anything I've forgotten. We're almost exclusively a Windows shop, but with 10 VMware ESX hosts, a number of MS SQL servers (2000, 2005), and a number of Cisco switches (and a couple Nortel ones scattered here and there). No Exchange (we're a Notes shop). TIA ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ -- "On two occasions...I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
