Administrator’s Guide Servers Alive 4.1 Woodstone® bvba i Contents Chapter 1 Quick Start Guide 1 Installation....................................................................................................................................................2 Getting Started in the Main Window............................................................................................................6 Technical Support.......................................................................................................................................11 What’s New?...............................................................................................................................................12 Chapter 2 File Menu 17 Setup Dialog Box (Main Window).............................................................................................................18 Alerts...............................................................................................................................................19 Logging............................................................................................................................................53 Output..............................................................................................................................................72 General............................................................................................................................................91 Built-in Servers..............................................................................................................................102 Check Settings...............................................................................................................................113 Chapter 3 Edit Menu 117 Find...........................................................................................................................................................118 New Entry.................................................................................................................................................119 General..........................................................................................................................................120 Check.............................................................................................................................................122 Alert...............................................................................................................................................158 Output............................................................................................................................................195 Schedule.........................................................................................................................................197 New Entry Based On . . ...........................................................................................................................198 Import Hosts.............................................................................................................................................199 Entry.........................................................................................................................................................200 Delete........................................................................................................................................................201 Delete All..................................................................................................................................................201 Global Change (Replace)..........................................................................................................................202 Changes Wizard........................................................................................................................................203 What..............................................................................................................................................204 Select Entries.................................................................................................................................206 People.......................................................................................................................................................207 Person............................................................................................................................................208 SMTP.............................................................................................................................................210 Pager..............................................................................................................................................212 ICQ................................................................................................................................................214 MSN..............................................................................................................................................216 On Call...........................................................................................................................................218 AIM...............................................................................................................................................220 Teams........................................................................................................................................................222 People and Teams Example......................................................................................................................224 Protocols...................................................................................................................................................227 TCP................................................................................................................................................228 UDP...............................................................................................................................................231 DNS Query....................................................................................................................................235 Radius............................................................................................................................................237 ii Contents Chapter 4 Register, View, and Help Menus 239 Register Menu...........................................................................................................................................239 View Menu...............................................................................................................................................240 Help Menu................................................................................................................................................240 Chapter 5 External Checks: Error Level 241 Chapter 6 External Check Samples: COM-based Checks 243 COM ODBC (ODBC Query Addon)........................................................................................................245 Remote DF COM (*NIX Diskspace Check).............................................................................................246 Remote PS COM (*NIX Process Check)..................................................................................................248 FileSize Check..........................................................................................................................................250 Notes Check (NotesDB Check)................................................................................................................252 SMTP2POP3 COM (Mailflow Check).....................................................................................................254 FileFirstLine Check..................................................................................................................................257 Index 259 1 Quick Start Guide Chapter 1 Welcome to Servers Alive, the award winning monitoring tool from Woodstone bvba. Servers Alive is designed to monitor many different types of servers and services from a central location and report their status. Servers Alive supports many generalized tests applicable to servers of all types, along with specialized tests for certain types of services. When Servers Alive detects that a server or service has become unavailable, Servers Alive can report this condition in a variety of ways. The software can even take care of the problem without any human interaction. Servers Alive is used all over the world by companies in all types of businesses, from computer to legal, military to government. The companies rely on the software to monitor their mission critical servers. Servers Alive is a compact and inexpensive tool, but it packs a lot of punch. It has a feature set that compares favorably with the most popular monitoring packages available, but sells for a fraction of the cost. You can register the product and then you can check up to 1000 entries with the Standard edition and up to 5000 with the Enterprise edition. We’re sure you’ll enjoy your experience with Servers Alive. As such, we offer the product free to those who only wish to monitor ten or less servers or services. We’re confident you’ll see the incredible worth you can get out of this amazing product! In This Chapter Installation.........................................................................2 Getting Started in the Main Window.................................6 Technical Support..............................................................11 What’s New?......................................................................12 2 Installation Servers Alive has the following requirements for installation: 1 Microsoft® Windows® 2000 (Professional or Server edition), NT® (Workstation or Server edition), ME, 98, XP, and 2003. 2 Network Interface Card 3 TCP/IP 4 Telephony service Quick Start Guide 3 For more information about these requirements, see the online Help for Windows. You can purchase two different editions of Servers Alive: Standard and Enterprise. Standard Enterprise Entries 1000 5000 Logging to ODBC- No Yes compliant database Alert schedules No Yes On-call schedules No Yes RRD Tools No Yes Before Installing Servers Alive Please note that you must be an administrative user on the computer before you can install Servers Alive. Also note that, on Windows 2000 or newer, you must have the telephony service running or the CPU goes to 100% utilization. Make sure that Windows has been updated to include the most recent patches provided by Microsoft®. This ensures the best possible compatibility. If you plan to use Servers Alive to check Oracle® or Microsoft SQL® databases, you must install the corresponding client software provided by the database manufacturer, as Servers Alive uses the client to perform its checks. If you check any Novell®-specific servers, you must install the Client for Novell Networks provided by Novell. The Novell client provided by Microsoft is not sufficient for the Netware® checks. 4 Servers Alive Administrator’s Guide Downloading Servers Alive Servers Alive is obtained primarily through an Internet download: www.woodstone.nu/salive (http://www.woodstone.nu/salive). You can find the download link on that page, or you can choose from any of the worldwide mirrors. Woodstone bvba can ship a CD to you when you purchase the full version of the software. Only one version of the software exists, regardless of whether you use it for ten or less entries or whether you have purchased a full license. Installing Servers Alive Make a backup of your Servers Alive installation file (.exe). Woodstone is not responsible for backups of this file. Once you have downloaded the software package and saved it to a convenient location, launch the installation program. Note that you cannot install Servers Alive through a Terminal Server session, and, when running Servers Alive as a service through Terminal Server, you cannot see the tray icon. The installation program asks you for a location where it can install the software, which you can set to any location you want. The install program extracts all program files to the location you specify and creates entries for Servers Alive on your Start Menu under the heading Alive. Quick Start Guide 5 Servers Alive can be run as a service if the computer for installation is running Windows NT, 2000, XP, or 2003. The Setup process detects your operating system and the service automatically installed. For Servers Alive to start automatically when you turn on your computer, you must go to the Services control panel and set the service called Servers Alive to automatic startup. Extending Servers Alive When Servers Alive is installed, it also installs a few companion applications that you can use to extend the functionality of Servers Alive. A subdirectory called External includes sample external check applications that you can use. Woodstone bvba creates and maintains the applications that are included in the external directory, but there are other applications, made by other authors, provided free, that you can download from the Woodstone bvba web site. There are also applications in the main Servers Alive directory that you can use to create your own external checks. For more information, see External Checks (on page 241). Configuring Servers Alive Before adding any monitored entries to Servers Alive, you need to configure its various options and features. Servers Alive has many powerful features that you can use to tweak the monitoring process. You should configure these before adding any entries, as you cannot use most of the alerting or monitoring features without globally configuring them first. The first thing to do is enter your registration code if you purchased the product. You can do this by selecting the Register menu option from the Main window. This menu option is visible only in the unregistered product. Woodstone bvba sends an email with the required name, company, and registration Code when you purchase the software. If you have purchased the product, but do not have a registration code, please send an email to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]). Next, you can click the Setup button on the Main window. You can configure how Servers Alive monitors and alerts you by setting various options in the tree. 6 Servers Alive Administrator’s Guide Getting Started in the Main Window The Main window includes a listing of all entries that have been created. Each row in the entry list displays an entry item. The entry list shows the last detected condition, and, when a check cycle is in progress, displays the item that is currently being checked. You can use the Main window to control the check cycle, work with dependencies, and make global changes to all entries. To get additional information about a dialog box or command, select the menu command and press F1on the keyboard. Or, you can open a dialog box and press F1. Moving, Displaying, Hiding Columns The Main window displays the following columns: ƒ Host ID Column ƒ Last Checktime Column ƒ Roundtrip Column ƒ Response Column ƒ Status Column ƒ Pretty Name Column ƒ Host Name Column ƒ Check Description Column You can customize your own view of the item entries by doing one of the following: ƒ Click the column heading to re-sort the list. If you resort, this affects the order in which Servers Alive checks the entries; but the software tracks the correct checking order for the dependencies.