Child's Play

Different Monitors

In the new window, first select the Type of monitoring you want to perform. For example, you can monitor the Event Viewer on Windows servers. Next, you need to click on the other tabs of the Monitor dialog to add data such as the login credentials for the server. In this way, you can create multiple monitors that each check the event viewer for specific messages and output warnings accordingly, or even send notifications or trigger other actions.

After you have created a monitor, you can start and terminate it via the context menu. At any time, you can change the settings and add actions. Total Network Monitor supports a huge set of protocols and actions [2] (Figure 3). In this way, you can also query websites, Outlook Web App, intranet sites, and SharePoint libraries.

Figure 3: Monitoring various protocols and areas of servers.

Monitoring System Performance

In addition to system service failures and errors, you can create objects that let you monitor a server's performance. For this to happen, choose the new System performance monitor in the WINDOWS probes section, then use the Probe tab to define the values you want to monitor in terms of system performance parameters, such as CPU, memory, processes, and registered users.

You can also specify multiple monitors and configure a server to report a green status below a certain threshold and a red status at a different threshold. The TNM design puts virtually no limits on what you can do here. Many monitors and related actions require authentication. The Authorization tab handles this process.

Firewalls

When a monitor or an action cannot connect to the server, the failure is often attributable to the firewall settings. To allow this kind of monitoring on Windows, you need to run wf.msc and create appropriate rules or change the defaults in Windows Control Panel. More specifically, you need to allow remote administrative access. On the computer on which you have installed TNM, start the wmimgmt.msc console and try to connect to the target computer.