ipMonitor® includes a comprehensive suite of Monitors that are used to watch system resources, applications, infrastructure equipment, servers and essential services around-the-clock:
- Quality Assurance Monitors perform result analysis testing for critical applications such as SQL servers, commerce solutions and dynamic web applications.
- SNMP polling and Trap Monitors provide industry standard methods for monitoring devices such as routers, switches and load balancers.
- Windows® NT/2000/XP/2003 Monitors test key aspects of Windows operating systems.
- Resource Monitors test finite system resources and alert before consumption becomes critical.
- Uptime Monitors test availability of popular TCP/IP protocol based application-layer protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, SNMP, etc.
A Monitor is a background process that continuously tests a target resource on timed intervals. Testing methods depend on the capabilities of the Monitor, and the Test Parameters you enter during Monitor configuration.
Flexible timing parameters provide the ability to intensify or lessen testing during each of a Monitor's four operational States. Each time a Monitor test fails, the sequential failure count is incremented and checked against the configured Number of failures allowed before Alerting takes place. A successful test at any point resets the sequential failure count to zero.
When a Monitor reaches its maximum number of test failures, it will trigger an Alert causing the following series of events to take place:
- Each Profile is scanned to see if the Monitor belongs to it.
- If so, Alert parameters and Schedules are checked for Alerts within the profile.
- Any active Alerts are executed.
Monitors have five operational States, as well as a disabled State.
| Monitor State | Color | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Up + Listening | Green | The server / device is responding as expected or ipMonitor is listening for inbound SNMP Traps. |
| Uninitialized | Dark Gray | The Monitor has not yet been initialized. No testing has occurred. |
| Warn | Amber | Indicates an unexpected result. Testing is in progress, but no Alerts have been triggered. |
| Down | Bright Red | Alerts are being sent. A Monitor will progress from a Fail state to a Lost state when the maximum number of Alerts has been processed. |
| Lost | Dark Red | The monitored resource continues to be in an error state. All configured Alerts have been sent. |
| Suspended + Maintenance | Light Gray | The Monitor is disabled or in Maintenance mode. |
You can view the State of a Monitor using any of the following options:
- Access Live Reports within the Admin Dashboard. Monitors are sorted and color-coded based on their State.
- Access the Monitors List within the Configuration interface by clicking the Monitors menu option. The Monitor State is displayed under the Status heading.
- Access the Edit Monitor screen by clicking on the Monitor Name from the Monitors List. The Monitor Status is displayed at the top of the screen.
DNS Names:
As a general rule, conservative use of DNS names is recommended for TCP/IP based Monitors. Service level responsiveness can be timed more accurately by removing the DNS lookup from the equation. Monitor response must be completed within a specified number of seconds. This includes the time taken to perform a DNS lookup.
Some exceptions apply for Monitors that require access to the Windows files system, and HTTP-based Monitors. These are noted in the Help pages for individual Monitors.
If your network uses a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server to dynamically assign IP addresses, enter an IP address only if it is "reserved", otherwise enter a Domain Name. If a Monitor is configured to use an IP address, and that IP address was to be dynamically assigned to another resource, the Monitor would no longer be able to successfully monitor the target resource.
If you assign a DNS Name to a Monitor, timing parameters may be affected by the additional time required to perform the DNS lookup. Although ipMonitor's default timing parameters for testing should allow for the time it takes to perform the DNS lookup, timing is a variable you need to consider when aggressive testing times are used.
Dependencies:
In cases where many monitored resources depend on one or more critical resources to function, Groups can be created and assigned Monitor Dependencies. This effectively prevents redundant Alerts from triggering for each Member Monitor in the Group when only a single Alert for a Dependency Monitor would suffice.
Maintenance Schedules:
Maintenance Schedules allow you to temporarily suspend monitoring for individual Monitors or Groups of Monitors during planned maintenance periods.
Mass Edits:
When ipMonitor installations range into hundreds or thousands of Monitors, manually changing common configuration settings can be time consuming. The Mass Edit feature makes it easy to quickly apply large-scale changes to configuration fields across any number of Monitors using a rule-based system.
For information on other features and concepts related to those discussed in this article, refer to the following ipMonitor resources:
< Back
Last Updated: March 30, 2007 | What did you think of this topic?