In the Works at TNT Software

2008 has proven to be a busy year so far at TNT Software and we're very excited to give you just a glimpse of what is in the works. We've been hard at work taking the suggestions from both clients and prospects, gauging industry trends and forecasts, and adding improvements to our award winning ELM products. So what exactly are we up to? We can't give you all the details just quite yet, but here's a little peek at the team's project list:

64-bit Performance Data Collection

Windows Vista Capable Components

Hot Standby Disaster Recovery Solution

On-Line Product Training and Tutorials

Expanded Knowledge Base Articles

Keep an eye out for future newsletter updates and announcements on these exciting developments!

February 12 Product Demonstration

Enterprise Manager 5.0 Exclusions - Get What You Need Without the Noise

Too much noise? Need to know what's really going on that requires your attention? Tuesday, February 12 we're going to highlight a number of tips and tricks to optimize Event Views to see "meaningful" event data while eliminating the "noise" that is often found in Windows event logs. This one hour product presentation of ELM Enterprise Manager will demonstrate the extremely useful but somewhat hidden features for easily excluding events from being written to the ELM database as well as quieting the "noise" in your Event Views and more.

We will cover how to exclude:

Event Filters - Views & Notifications

Events - Collection

Services & Processes

As well as:

How to exclude from the ELM Database using Views

How to exclude from the ELM Database using Pruning

Demonstration Details
What: ELM Enterprise Manager 5.0 Exclusions - Get What You Need Without the Noise
When: Tuesday, February 12, 2008, 8:00 am, PST
Where: WebEx On-line Presentation
Duration: 1 hour

How do I attend?

Register by using this link: https://tntsoftware.webex.com/tntsoftware/j.php?ED=96370102&RG=1&UID=0 Â

-Or-

Request a formal meeting invitation by emailing: sales@tntsoftware.com
The subject line should read: ELM 5.0 Exclusions Demonstration Invite 2/12

ELM 3.1 Sunset Reminder

We'd like to remind you that in November 2007, TNT Software announced that the sunset date for all ELM 3.1 products has been set. Enhancements and upgrades have provided our users great value and most have already migrated to either ELM 4.0 or ELM 5.0. As a result, the termination of commercial and technical support of all three ELM 3.1 products (ELM Enterprise Manager 3.1, ELM Log Manager 3.1, ELM Performance Manager 3.1) will be effective July 1, 2008 in accordance with our product lifecycle policy. The upgrade license is available free of charge for all users with current Premier Support.

Tell Us What You Think - Win a $20 Starbucks Card

That's right, we'd like to hear from you. One of our primary initiatives for 2008 is to expand our customer communication channels. To begin making strides in that direction we've put together a brief survey to generate some feedback on our products and the services that support them and you.

Make sure to visit http://www.tntsoftware.com/februarysurvey before the end of business on Friday, February 15, 2008, and take our brief on-line survey. Once submitted you'll be entered for a chance to win one of several $20 Starbucks gift cards!

We look forward to hearing from you and good luck in the drawing!

The "ELM 411" - Dissecting the Relationship Between Monitoring & Agent Category Assignment and Hierarchy Considerations

ELM provides excellent flexibility and power for monitoring the systems in your environment. But before you dive in too deep it is a good idea to take a step back and understand the use of Agent Categories when assigning monitor items and the default hierarchy that exists. This will help you to plan for your deployment or fine tune your existing configuration. Letâ€™s start from the top.

ELM provides a global or universal category called All Agents. This is the one Agent Category within the product that you cannot modify. Within this Category you will see a list of all the Agents currently deployed throughout your environment. You can setup a monitoring template here to monitor across all of your Agents but keep in mind settings within this category are global or universal, so whatever monitoring you configure will be applied to all of your existing Agents as well as any new Agents you create in the future. A good example of monitor items that could be universally applied is the Ping Monitor, or TCP Port Monitor. This status based monitoring is generic enough it supports being applied universally across Agents running on either systems or devices.

Below All Agents you will see that right "out-of-the-box" ELM provides a number of default Categories to group your Agents quickly. These Categories include:

General - Network Device Monitoring

General - SNMP Monitoring

General - Web Monitoring

MS - DNS Server Systems

MS - Exchange Server Systems

MS - IIS Server Systems

MS - MSMQ Server Systems

MS - SQL Server Systems

Windows - Domain Controllers

Windows - Servers

Windows - Workstations

You can assign Agents to these specific categories to perform focused monitoring functions across groups of servers. For example, you may want to monitor your Domain Controllers differently than your Windows Servers. ELM also allows you to create your own custom Categories and easy-to-use wizards walk you through customizing your own Agent groupings.

A common question when working with Categories is: "Can I assign monitoring to just one server?" The answer is "Yes" ELM supports granular monitoring assignments allowing you to assign a single Monitor Item to a single Agent. Using the Monitor Items folder beneath an Agent allows you to assign monitoring to a single system. This is helpful if you are looking at specific issues such as performance or events that are only relevant to that specific server. Best practice would be to ignore categories and assign monitor items to just one server as opposed to a category or to All Agents.

Each system or Agent can be assigned to more than one category as you deem appropriate and no category has higher priority or trumps the others. But remember, the All Agents category will supersede all other categories and only universal or global settings should be applied at this level. For more information on Agent Categories, we encourage you to view the ELM On-Line Help Guide. Here you'll find more detailed information about Category Assignment and Agent Assignment.

Thank you for your interest and we wish you continued success with your ELM deployment. If we can be of service with your ELM setup or configuration in any way we welcome your call!

NOTE: All ELM 411 articles are written based on Version 5.0 and instructions may not be accurate for previous ELM Versions. If you would like assistance upgrading to Version 5.0 so you can use these tips - please contact support@tntsoftware.com.

Share your own ELM tips!
Have a tip or trick with our ELM products you'd like to share with our newsletter subscribers? Send your ideas and any applicable screen shots to info@tntsoftware.com with "ELM 411" in the subject line. We'll take a look and if usable you'll see it published here in the ELM 411 section of upcoming newsletters!

Not Strictly Business

Did you know?
The year 2008 is a leap year, with 29 days in February. A leap year is a year with one extra day inserted into February making a total of 366 days in the calendar year. This year, the month both starts and ends on a Friday. Between 1904 and 2096, leap years with the same day of the week for each date repeat every 28 years. So, the last time February had 5 Fridays was in 1980 and the next time it will happen again will be 2036.

Why do we need leap years?
Leap years are needed to keep our calendar in alignment with the earth's motion around the sun. Leaving the calendar alone with 365 days consistently would result in an error of approximately .25 days or almost 6 hours every year. After 100 years this calendar would be off by more than 24 days ahead of the seasons. By adding leap years approximately every 4th year, this difference between the calendar and the seasons can be reduced significantly. The longest gap between two leap years is 8 years which happened between 1896 and 1904. The next time will be between 2096 and 2104!

February Funnies
A little girl snuck up behind her dad as he was logging onto the home computer. Suddenly she turned and ran back into the kitchen squealing," I know daddy's password! I know daddy's password!"

"What is it?" her older brother asked eagerly. Proudly she replied, "Asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk!"

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