Windows Server Monitoring and Event Log Management Solutions
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January Curiosity Poll Results - Windows 7 February Curiosity Poll - Web Searches |
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February 2 is Groundhog Day!
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Contact Us: Phone: 360-546-0878 |
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January Curiosity Poll Results - Windows 7
A year ago we asked if you had tried the Windows 7 beta that had just hit the Net. Now a year later we were curious once again: Are you running Windows 7 on desktops in your operation?
And as of the publishing of this newsletter here's what you had to say:
Not surprisingly, Windows 7 is definitely working its way into the business world. Look out XP, you have a new little brother in the cubicle next door.
February Curiosity Poll - Web Searches
How low will you go; on a search results pages that is... TNT Software, as do many other companies, spends a fair amount of resources to maintain a strong on-line presence. So that got us thinking - "how far into search results will you go before you give up and modify or try a new search phrase?" When you are researching a problem or a potential solution (product, service, etc) -
The "ELM 411" - How Low Can Ya Go
Sorry guys - we're not talking about the limbo contest at last weekend's wedding reception. Although you may be the reigning champion with knees of steel and gravity defying moves, we're going to stay focused on how ELM can make your life easier at work. This month we'll take a look at using Performance Alarms* to watch disk free space.
So how low can you go on disk space before it's time to take action? Well let's just say you don't want to find out the hard way. Typically the scenario is something like email getting clogged up on an Exchange server, a Web Server going down, or data that can't be written to your Database Server - all causing serious problems regardless of your business environment and making for some unhappy end users.
* Available in both ELM Enterprise Manager and ELM Performance Manager.
So let's put ELM to work to make sure you don't have to deal with any of these unpleasantries. A great feature that is sometimes overlooked is the ability to setup a Performance Alarm to monitor disk free space on your servers. Internally at TNT Software our IT staff uses this alarm on every production server we have.
To start, you'll want to create a new monitor item, using the wizard built in to the console, and select the Performance Alarm from the drop down list.
Next we'll specify the Object and Counter(s) to monitor.
If the counter you want is not available in the drop-down list, you can opt to Add a counter to the "library" from another machine. Clicking the Add button will bring you to a dialogue that will allow you to specify a computer or browse your network.
Now we'll select which counter to monitor- in this case we'll use % Free Space. You can also specify which Instances and drives for the monitor to include.
Our next step is to specify the values or threshold. A good starting point for monitoring free disk space is about 5%. Figure if you have a 100GB drive, having at least 5GB left to work with is a fairly safe factor (depending on how quickly you respond of course).
Now we'll specify what we want to take place once the threshold has been met. ELM can do a combination of different Actions including creating a New Alert Entry, creating an Event Log Message, performing a Net Send (popup) to specified computer, and/or run a Command Script. The message text can include several variables and be customized as well.
The next step is to test the new Monitor Item - this is optional.
Continuing on we'll select the Agent Categories we want this Performance Alarm assigned to. Since we're interested in monitoring the disk space on all of our servers we'll select the 'Windows -- Servers' category to include them all.
And finally we'll establish the schedule for monitoring disk free space. The default interval for monitoring performance alarms is 10 seconds, however in our case here we're going to go perform a check every 30 minutes around the clock.
So that's it. Now you are monitoring the Free Disk Space every 30 minutes on your servers and can be notified when one of them crosses into the danger zone.
We hope that you found this article informative and wish you continued success with your ELM deployment!
NOTE: All ELM 411 articles are written based on ELM Version 5.5 and instructions may not be accurate for previous ELM Versions. If you would like assistance upgrading to ELM 5.5 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!
So what's more popular in the news - the 2010 State of the Union Address or the release of the Apple iPad?
Interesting results from a search on Google Trends:
Search queries for "State of the Union Address"
Search queries for "Apple iPad"
What do these scales mean? Click here...
Pretty interesting - that's all i can say... Web popularity of politics vs. new gadgets.