It is far better to find and fix troubles proactively than to discover
failures after your help desk is flooded with customer calls. But monitoring
the health of every device and service in your network through independent
methods—trawling through *NIX syslogs and NT event logs, listening
for SNMP traps—can be labor-intensive, plagued by information overload.
What you really want is a reliable, tech-savvy watchdog who keeps a vigilant
eye on your entire network, quietly chasing away easily-fixed problems
and barking only when your attention is truly needed.
Here, in the second of our entry-level NMS
series, we take a look at MediaHouse
ipMonitor v6. ipMonitor is a relatively inexpensive ($695) watchdog
that runs on Windows NT4 SP5 or Windows 2000. ipMonitor can monitor small
ISP networks and midsize ISP POPs for device or service failures, with
automated alerting, recovery, and reports that detail actual and projected
service levels.
Getting Started With ipMonitor
If you have a PC that runs NT, it can probably support ipMonitor. At minimum,
you'll need a Pentium II 233 with 8 MB of disk space. Naturally, the more
resources you monitor and the longer you keep historical data (maximum
one year), the greater your requirements will be. We evaluated ipMonitor
on a P500 and easily ran about 200 five minute interval monitors spanning
resources in three subnetworks.
When ipMonitor is first installed,
a seven-step dialog prompts for basic information: disk location,
serial number, IP address and port for ipMonitor's browser-based GUI,
and at least one admin account/password for GUI access. The installer
also determines which features can be accessed though the GUI without
a password (by default, status and logging only). When done, the installer
launches the ipMonitor service and a "Getting Started" guide (right)
that offers a solid introduction to ipMonitor concepts.
t
The only less-than-intuitive
part of installation concerns use of ipMonitor to control NT services
(left). By default, ipMonitor is able to control local NT services.
But ipMonitor can also monitor, start, and stop remote NT services
when configured to run under an account with suitable permissions
on all systems. For security, controls can be constrained to requests
from selected IP addresses. We misconfigured these parameters at first,
causing bogus SERVICE failures and broken links in the GUI. But these
problems were easily remedied once we understood the implications
of these parameters. If you plan to monitor remote NT services, specify
a non-default account during installation, and include your own loopback
address if you restrict NT control.
The ipMonitor GUI can be launched from the Start Menu or any browser.
This cleanly-designed, forms-based interface is convenient for remote
status monitoring. Rudimentary access control is provided by password
authentication and limiting local IP address(es) on which the GUI runs.
But we'd rather constrain remote IP addresses for all GUI access (not
just NT control) and use SSL to protect management traffic from prying
eyes. For these reasons, security-conscious ISPs may prefer to limit the
GUI to local (loopback IP) access.
Initial Configuration
When you first run ipMonitor,
a "ToDo List" (see, right) enumerates configuration tasks.
As you visit each configuration page, a task is crossed off the list.
We found this unique approach helpful and non-intrusive. Configurations
can be exported/imported for simple backup/restore.
The first order of business
is to configure Site Settings (left): these include addresses
for outgoing email and ICQ notifications, an alternate DNS address,
SNMP community string (default public), the IP address used to listen
for SNMP traps (default none), and various GUI tuning parameters.
Based on this, you might guess that ipMonitor is based on SNMP—but
you'd be wrong. SNMP is just one of 25 Internet protocols used by
ipMonitor, and forms the basis for just a handful the 40+ built-in
monitor types.
Planet
