Server Monitoring Software

[rogerpatel]

Hi can I please get some advice.

Our company manage's around 80 Clients, each client has around 2/3 HP Proliant servers. We have full remote access to all the servers and act as clients IT Departments.

The servers is a mixture of the following:

Windows 2000 Servers
Windows 2003 Servers
Windows 2003 SBS Server
Windows 2000 SBS Servers
Exchange 2000 & 2003 Servers

All of the Hardware is all HP Proliant Servers.

Currently we use a mixture of software but not too happy with any of them including the HP SIM Manager.

We are trying to find some remote monitoring software that will monitor these Servers and email us/then when problems occur.

We would also like some sort of general email sent to the clients once every day stating the health of the servers etc.(will need to look pritty if you know what i mean)

I have carried out extensive research into field of Monitoring software and totally configured as to which one to try / buy.

Looking for some real live advice on what people actually use and suggest.

Thanks Everyone.

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

Free: Write VBScripts to monitor your resources (Services, Diskspace, etc...) which can be set up to email you when issues happen.

Low/Mid price: IPSENTRY - it's ok, not always acurate. Price is cost effective.

High price: Microsoft's SMS and MOM.

I use a combination of all three. The High price items are reserved for mission critical servers, Low/Mid for low SLA's, VBScript for maintenance and reports.

 

[mrdenny]

There are lots of options for monitoring. I'm not sure about the sending of a daily email part. You'll probably have to write that part your self. Most monitoring solutions use a normal ODBC database to store there data in.

You are several to choose from ranging in price from free to very expensive: Big Borther, IP Sentry, Net IQ, MOM, SMS, Custom written scripts, etc. I've used all of these and they are all lacking something. Most shops use a combination of software as they all do something better that one of the others.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000) / MCTS (SQL 2005) / MCITP Database Administrator (SQL 2005)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[LWComputingMVP]

If you want ease of implementation with MANY features, then you pretty much NEED to spend $$$$$. If you want free but have time to learn the implementation on your own and configure it. Then you have several options:

Free/Complex:
Nagios

http://www.nagios.org/

Big Brother

http://www.bb4.org/

Big Sister

http://www.bigsister.ch/

Not Free - Reasonably cheap (compared to other commercial products) with basic featureset:
Whats Up

http://www.ipswitch.com/products/network-monitoring.asp

(Actually, may be better than basic (and may be more expensive too). I used an older version.

 

[58sniper]

What's Up is pretty nice. I've been using it for years.

On the SBS servers, there are wizards to configure alerts and monitoring with many set out of the box.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt