IPHost Network Monitor 2.1.2848

IPHost Network Monitor 2.1.2859 is a tool for monitoring your network and server. This tool allows you monitoring of internet/intranet websites and applications, mail servers, database servers and other resources inside and outside your network. Performance and other counters on Windows computers can be monitored via WMI, on UNIX/Linux systems via SNMP. Supported protocols are HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, ODBC, PING, and others. SNMP browser is included.

You can also use any Nagios plugin to monitor what you need with IPHost Network Monitor. Administrator tools provided.

Now most of businesses have to rely on their networks and servers to enable business-critical applications and everyday tasks of providing communication and moving data. Downtimes or performance degradations of these systems can seriously impact the business so continuous network and service monitoring software should be a vital part of your information system.

With automatic network discovery IPHost Network Monitor helps you to create a basis of your monitoring configuration. Discovery detects network hosts and identifies TCP services on them. IPHost Monitor can discover hosts and TCP services using ICMP PING, HTTP(S), FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, Telnet, plus you can select additional custom ports to check. Monitors for databases, disc space, processor usage and others you can add manually. Default monitoring and alerting settings let you start monitoring with minimum changes. Regular rediscoveries help you in equipment relocation/presence tracking

Easy to follow three-page wizard helps you to specify network discovery parameters. You can start the wizard by clicking Discover Network button on program toolbar or from File > Discover Network menu.

On the first page of the wizard you can adjust IP range that will be used during discovery. IPHost Monitor determines subnet mask of your network automatically.

On the second page you can select types of services that should be detected during discovery. Current version of IPHost Network Monitor supports discovery of hosts and TCP services using the following protocols: ICMP PING, TCP, UDP, HTTP(S), FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, Telnet, also you can provide list of custom ports to be used in discovery.

“Scan for other monitors only if host responds to PING” checkbox is selected by default to speed up the discovery. But if in you network there are hosts that don’t respond to PING and you want these hosts to be discovered you should deselect this checkbox.

If you want to set IPHost Monitor to start polling discovered monitors immediately after discovery you should select the “Activate discovered monitors” checkbox. Otherwise, discovered monitors remain in Discovered state and you have to start them manually.

The last page lets you set rediscovery schedule. You can set IPHost Monitor to do rediscovery every several hours or to scan network at a specified time on selected weekdays. You can also change rediscovery schedule parameters from Tool > Setting menu, Rediscovery tab.

After completing the wizard please click Scan button. You can review discovered monitors and their properties during network discovery. 

IPHost Network Monitor will help you to:

• Find and fix performance bottlenecks and downtimes.
• Reduce costs by making hardware purchasing decisions based on actual performance of current systems.
• Reduce costs by saving time of system administrators.
• Increase profits by avoiding big losses caused by late warnings about problems.

Supported Monitoring Methods

• SNMP v1/v2/v3
•   WMI - CPU load, available memory, traffic in/out, custom WMI script
•   Web sites and services monitoring - HTTP/HTTPS GET and POST requests including response validation, FTP
•   Database servers - Oracle and ODBC
•   Mail - SMTP including actual sending of e-mail, POP3, IMAP
•   File size
•   Disc space
•   Windows service availability
•   Basic connectivity checks - PING, TCP connect, UDP datagram send/receive
•   Run script or program, including Nagios plugins

 Alerts and actions:

•   Send e-mail
•  Send SMS (short message)
•  Execute program (for automatic problem resolving)
•  Show pop-up message
•  Send Jabber message
•  Send ICQ message
•  Send AOL IM message

Major Features:

1. Monitoring features: IPHost Network Monitor provides constant monitoring of your network's services and resources that are critically important for your company. Unlike many monitoring tools IPHost Network Monitor checks not only the availability of a resource but also its operability and performance characteristics. The base element in IPHost Network Monitor is a monitor; it is checking the availability of a service on a remote computer and requesting the value of a certain parameter. The monitor has parameters that determine:

•  what and how should be checked (monitoring parameters),
• the levels of acceptable and problem values of the checking results (defining the conditions of the monitor’s change of state),
• actions to be performed when problems appear (action profile),
• additional parameters such as a link to the basic report on the monitor, dependence on the availability of another monitor, and comments.

 2. Adjustable Actions and Notifications: IPHost Network Monitor supports different methods of automatic reaction to undesirable changes on the resources and systems being monitored. The actions are tied to the monitors and are activated when a monitor transition to one of the undesirable states occurs and to the restoration of the resource performance after problem elimination.

One of the chief tasks of the monitoring system is execution of actions as the monitoring system’s reaction to the appearance of deviations in the operation of resources being watched (origination of problems). Prompt and informative notification of a problem helps to substantially reduce the downtime of important resources, which as a result decreases the loss of user work time and improves the effectiveness of administrator work.

The basic variant of IPHost Network Monitor’s reaction to problem states is sending a message with information on the problem; e-mail notifications, sending a message to another computer, and displaying a message in the dialogue window are supported. Methods of reaction based on program start provide additional possibilities. With the help of such actions one can implement any method of reacting to a problem state: ranging from starting/stopping of a service on a remote machine to rebooting.

 In IPHost Network Monitor all actions are gathered in one common list of actions. All actions are available for work with any monitor. An action has a name, type, and parameters. The types of actions are:

• Sending an e-mail to persons concerned. In the message template variables may be used, such as $MonitorName, $CurrentState, etc., which allows for instance using one template for any changes of state.
• A pop-up message. It is a standard window with a message if Windows UI is running at the moment of action activation, or a balloon connected to the application icon in the system tray with the same message.
• Net Send. It is a similar standard window with a message, a standard dialogue with a message on a remote machine.
• Starting a program. Starting an executable file or executing the code of a script in a language supported by Windows Scripting Host. The path to the file and arguments should be specified.
  

In the immediate future additional types of actions, such as sending an SMS message using various methods of delivery ranging from e-mail to a GSM modem and sending messages to the users of the messengers ICQ, Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger will appear in IPHost Network Monitor.

The full list of actions is available for viewing and editing. You can invoke the form with the list of actions by selecting the menu Tools > Settings (or by pressing the Settings button on the toolbar) then by selecting the bookmark Actions in the open window. It is important that changes in an action affect each action profile that uses the action.

 3. Reporting

IPHost Network Monitor provides a set of group and detailed reports and graphs as well as logs. The reports give you information necessary to trace the trends in resource utilization and plan upgrades, besides, the reports and logs provide the possibility to trace the results over a certain period of time; also, the reports may be used as a basis of accounting for the results of the administrators’ work.

In IPHost Network Monitor there are two variants of accessing reports on monitoring:

• Reports in Windows interface: The Windows UI allows access to detailed reports for each monitor and to summary reports for groups and categories. A reporting period can be any number of days and hours until now. The default report period is 24 hours (one day) until now. To adjust the report period for the Windows UI please select the Tools > Settings menu or click the Settings button on the toolbar, then select the Reporting tab and set the desired number of days and hours.
• Web-interface:  Apart from the main Windows UI, IPHost Network Monitor also has a Web UI to access additional types/forms of reports for any period of time. The Web UI provides you with online access to all reports and graphs for any time period. The Web UI consists of three panels: the contents of the left panel completely duplicates the panel Tree Views, the upper panel serves to select the type of report and period, the remaining space is reserved to display a report itself. Similar to what is implemented in the Windows UI, in the Web UI when pressing on a report reference the corresponding report is loaded and in the left panel the focus is shifted to an element corresponding to it.

4. User Interface: Windows and Web Interfaces

The IPHost client GUI displays all monitoring configuration controls, monitoring results and logs on one screen. This design is intended to save your time. Typically when you change the settings you expect to see the effect of your change in monitoring results, and when you see a problem in monitoring results you may want to adjust the monitoring settings or actions.

The GUI uses a flexible visualization approach: it offers a number of dockable windows that you can arrange as you wish; it also has a standard Windows menu, toolbar and status bar.
Default Windows GUI layout
There is an 'Internet pager-like' layout where only the Tree View pane is visible and you open the Reports window when you see some bad state change.

Windows GUI includes four panes:

• Tree View,
• Property Editor,
• Report View,
• Log View.
  

Client GUI creates icon in the system tray; even when you close the GUI main window, the icon remains present and you can double click it to reopen the client GUI. When a monitoring service is running, the icon displays the worst state of monitors in your system; when the monitoring service is stopped, the icon is grayed. By placing the mouse pointer over the tray icon you can get a state summary tooltip for your system.

Tray tooltip: When the client GUI runs in the system tray, important system events such as monitoring service start and stop are signaled with tray balloons. If you set up a Pop-up window action for some monitors, it also shows a balloon in the tray.

• Tree View: Tree View The Tree View pane provides different views of monitored objects and allows taking a quick glance at the system status. It contains a toolbox with five trees: By Host, By Monitor Type, By Current State, Discovery and Favorites. Each node of a tree carries an icon corresponding to the worst child monitor state within it. Changing the focus in Tree View reloads the contents of all the other dockable client windows on the screen. The most demanded actions are available from the context menu of the Tree View pane that appears when you right-click a selected monitor or group.
• Property Editor: Property Editor Property Editor is used to configure monitoring. It displays all properties of a currently selected object. For monitors the editor displays and allows changing the name, comment, polling frequency and monitor-specific parameters, availability settings such as timeout, performance level settings, and actions to be performed on state changes. For monitor groups, the editor also displays a monitors state summary across the group. Some of the settings in Property Editor have specialized child editors (dialog windows) associated with them. You can start, stop, and poll monitors from the toolbar in Property Editor.
• Report View: Report View Report View displays an HTML report for a currently selected monitor or group. When a monitor is selected, a detailed report including a performance graph and all state changes of this monitor is displayed. The default report period is the last 24 hours and may be changed in the Global Settings dialog (Tools menu). When a monitor group is selected, a summary report for it is shown. You can navigate the reports you have loaded using the Back and Forward buttons on the toolbar in Report View, Refresh a report, and open the IPHost Web interface with this report loaded using the Web UI button. When you navigate the HTML links in a report or use the Back / Forward buttons, not only the Report View content is changed to display data for the new monitor or group but all the other dockable windows are updated too.
• Log View: Log View Log View provides access to log messages stored in the database. You can enable the displaying of either system messages or monitor state change messages or messages of both types in the Log View using its toolbar; it is also possible to adjust a log period (the default period is 24 hours) and to change log record order. The records of state changes and events are filtered in accordance with a currently selected monitor or group; only the messages related to the current selection are shown. Log records for hosts and monitors contain hyperlinks; by clicking on them you select a corresponding object in the Tree View pane and all the other dockable windows.
  

Web Interface Overview

IPHost Network Monitor comes with a Web interface that provides you with access to monitoring reports. The interface is provided by Apache web server, version 1.3.37; its configuration file httpd.conf may be found in the conf subdirectory of your installation directory and you can change it to suit your needs (for instance, you can get Apache to perform client authentication).

The Web interface provides several views of statistical data and allows you to:

• quickly review the current and all previous states of your network resources
• get a list of problems that have been occured over a period of time
• study trends and detect performance degradation early when it appears
• obtain detailed reports that include a useful performance graph and detailed log of resource state changes
  

You can choose different groups of monitors for building a report; you can also choose any desired timeframe as well as one of the several predefined time intervals such as Today or Last week.

IPHost Network Monitor web interface

On the left side of the window there is a Tree View panel. It is separated from the Parameters panel and Report panel by a vertical splitter which you can drag to resize the panels. The Parameters panel is at the top of the window and is separated from the Report panel by a grey non-movable horizontal line.

The Tree View contents match the contents of Tree View in the client application (Windows UI). There is a combo box to select a view (you can select the Hosts, Monitor types, States, Discovery or Favorites tree). Once the selected tree is loaded, you can navigate through it and highlight the necessary monitor or group of resources; your selection becomes prominent in bold type. The report gets generated when you select a tree node and when you press the Generate button on the Parameters panel.

Requirements: Disk space: 30 MB for program files and up to 1GB for monitoring database

Enhancements:

• Monitoring: Nagios plugins support
• Monitoring: New Monitor type - Oracle monitor
• Monitoring: HTTP monitor has now a list of acceptable HTTP response codes
• Alerting and Actions: Support for ICQ and AOL instant messengers alerts
• Alerting and Actions: Support for Jabber alerts (Google Talk and more)
• Automatic Daily Backup of monitoring database
• Precise diagnostics for database errors in client GUI, possibility to restore the database from backup in an unlikely event of database file corruption (such a corruption may take place say on blackout)
• Automatic Database Recovery from backup by monitoring service
• Windows interface: New easier to read look of a Property Editor panel
• Windows interface: Two-step wizard for the File, Directory and SNMP monitors for easier set up
• Windows interface: HTTP monitor has easier to understand URL input control in Property Editor; it avoids making common mistakes such as placing HTTP monitor for some host on another host
• Windows interface: Tree view now shows formatted values for SNMP counters, such as '15:5:12:57.07' for the 'Uptime' variable
• Windows interface: Several performance improvements to ensure good GUI responsiveness even under high load
• Monitoring service: Performance and reliability improvements

 WareSeeker Editor