Re: [SA-list] Future Product Feature

[Jason Passow]

A lot of that can be accomplished using the enterprise version (or the standard with special code) by logging everything to a database.   You can log the check results to a database.  Then create a query against that database to report on Customer X's equipment only and show the down time percentages, a 30 day log of all activity.  The only thing you would have to do manually is to add what happens when it goes down and who gets the alerts.   In this sense  it would be nice to have a more open host file.   At this point (and I will certainly admit my ignorance here), there is no easy way to extract the data you need.  There are other people on the list who have more knowledge of the host file structure and could probably help you pull the information your require.   This is unsupported by Woodstone but I think if you ask nicely and privately Dirk would maybe even help you.   I currently am using the standard version and a custom program to log all of the results to a database.  I then publish web pages showing me graphs of the last 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, and I think 1 year results.  It also shows me the last thirty days of down conditions and how long the check was down. After researching many products in the monitoring field.  SA is unmatched for price, quality, capabilities, and service.  I do not think you will find a product (even if you are willing to spend many thousands of dollars) that will monitor everything SA can monitor with the flexibility SA has and the reporting you require.  Your best bet is to find a way to get what you want out of SA.  I think it can all be accomplished all be it with a little work and development on your part.   Michael D. Shook wrote: The issue could be summed up quickly.   Mike's boss said, "Give me a single report that has all of the equipment that impacts Customer X, what happens when we see it go down, who gets the alerts. Oh, and be sure to include the down time percentages, because we get charged for that. And also include a 30 day log of all activity that we saw on the checks. And don't forget to include ALL equipment that touches their data or impacts their equipment."   Mike replied, "Well, I can give you some of that, but this product doesn't allow for that level of data reporting. It's doesn't use standard SQL databases to hold it's configuration, so I can't write custom reports aginst for the checks themselves or the alerting process."   Mike's Boss, "Well, we need to find a product that will do what I need, so that I can show Customer X just how we are meeting the contractual obligations that we agreed to."   Mike :-( Michael D. Shook Technical Analyst [EMAIL PROTECTED] 863 668 4477 (work) 863 860 4070 (cell) 863 665 1261 (fax) www.saddlecrk.com   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 2:35 AM To: salive@woodstone.nu Subject: RE: [SA-list] Future Product Feature I tend to agree with most of the other responses I've seen on this. Multi-threading I'd kill for, but having a separate db doesn't really float my boat. I grant you it would be nice to be able to do things (e.g. mass change type stuff) directly in the db via some sort of hack, and occasionally I curse mildly about having to stop the checks to delete something. Having all the counters reset to zero when you restart the service is annoying too. But all that comes way down my list of priorities compared to multi-threading, plus the stuff that's already part of the product (such as low maintenance, low purchase cost, low spec requirements) which may be lost if it goes too far down an "enterprise" route. Maybe I'm missing your point Michael - you may be seeing something missing that I'm not (for example I'm not sure what the problem is with the existing teams/on-call stuff). To be absolutely fair, it would be wrong to see SA as a £200 solution (at least for us). We've invested fairly heavily in time to configure it, set up HTML pages, paging systems etc. Having said that I don't think a "big" system would be much different in that respect. Ian Ian K Gray OEL IS - European Infrastructure Support Tel: +44 1236 502661 Mob: +44 7881 518854 "Michael D. Shook" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 17/05/2005 17:35 Please respond to salive@woodstone.nu To <salive@woodstone.nu> cc Subject RE: [SA-list] Future Product Feature OK, I can't resist...   How many people would be willing to part with serious $$$ to have a version of SA that has NO (ZERO, NONE) of it's configuration or check data stored locally, but rather all stored in a SQL database (MSSQL, MySQL, etc....) with the checks read from the database every cycle? This would allow seperating the check processing from the check setup, giving people the option of changing without stopping.   I know my company would be willing to spend $$$ if we could have a truly Enterprise level version. We're having to look at competitors products because of the more advanced reporting of the checks, teams, on-call, alerting that are not available in SA v5. Also, the lack of ability to have the configuration on a highly available SQL Server is starting to be more and more of an issue.   Michael D. Shook Technical Analyst [EMAIL PROTECTED] 863 668 4477 (work) 863 860 4070 (cell) 863 665 1261 (fax) www.saddlecrk.com From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Dirk Bulinckx Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 9:07 AM To: salive@woodstone.nu Subject: RE: [SA-list] Future Product Feature Well that's just an almost complete rewrite :-(   Dirk. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Vogl, Tom Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 3:30 PM To: salive@woodstone.nu Subject: [SA-list] Future Product Feature Dirk, We have had lots of discussion about SA here, and overall we love the product.  If we could ask for only one feature in future releases it would be this: The separation of the SA check engine from the interface.  This way the engine could be started as a service and never touched while remote connections via Terminal Server, Citrix or whatever could load the interface for adds/changes to the config. The interface could be compiled or web; based-doesn't matter.  But the current remote access issues make running in service mode challenging to work with SA in a "dark" or remote computer room.       Ie:  Remote connect to machine.  Stop SA Service.  Start new desktop copy.  Make Changes.  Save file.  Exit local copy.  Start SA service. -Tom -- Jason Passow Mississippi Welders Supply [EMAIL PROTECTED] ph: (507) 454-5231 fax: (507) 454-8104 To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive