March Promotion - The ELM Upgrade Package!

Buy any ELM Log Manager License and Get a FREE Upgrade to ELM Enterprise Manager!

TNT Software is introducing an upgrade package promotion to finish out the last month of Quarter 1 2009! For a limited time you can get a free upgrade to ELM Enterprise Manager with any purchase of an ELM Log Manager license!

For new clients: This is an excellent opportunity to get our flagship product ELM Enterprise Manager with complete event log management and performance monitoring for the cost of our mid-level event log management product.

For existing clients: Add on to your existing ELM Enterprise Manager license and save big!

Take advantage of this special offer with SAVINGS OF UP TO 40% OFF before time runs out and contact one of TNT Software's Account Managers today!

Offer valid: March 1 - March 31, 2009. All orders must be received by 3/31/09.

Highlights of ELM 5.5.111 Release

On February 12, 2009 TNT Software released a new build of ELM. Highlights of this release include:

ELM Editor reports can now be edited on systems with .NET SP1.

Event Alarm actions can now include interval information.

SNMP Collectors and SNMP Alarms will use saved IP when the Agent name is not resolvable.

Server and Agent views are more reliably saved as MHT files.

Better handling of ELM Server exceptions.

Improved ability to add 64 bit performance counters

ELM Editor reports are rendered more quickly.

Improved reliability with database recovery when using SQL authentication.

Web Page Monitor updated for handling of redirect URLs.

Testing ELM Agent port availability is improved.

Improved performance of the ELM Server process and memory management.

Expanded throughput of Notification Methods.

Be sure to download and update to the latest copy of ELM 5.5.111 today!

Results of Last Month's Windows 7 Poll

In last month's newsletter we asked: Have you downloaded AND installed Windows 7 Beta? And here's what you said:

Interesting...
So even though Microsoft has taken mountains of flack for Windows Vista, there is still great interest in what the next generation "Vista-ish" OS will look like and how it will perform.

After all, we won't be able to run XP forever!

Want to see who voted where?
Click on the link below for a state by state comparison response map.

Windows 7 Quick Poll Results

SQL Server 2000 Curiosity Poll

With two newer versions on the market, we're starting to wonder:
Is anyone still using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 in a production environment?

ELM 5.5 Product Demonstration Schedule

March 10, 2009 - Live Overview and Demonstration of Centralized System Monitoring with ELM Enterprise Manager!

Would you like to know more about the centralized system monitoring and automated event log management capabilities ELM can provide your organization? How about a chance to "kick the tires" and take a look under the hood in a non sales pressure environment before downloading or deploying ELM Enterprise Manager?

You're in luck! TNT Software will be giving another live demonstration of ELM Enterprise Manager via Webex on March 10. This one hour overview presentation will introduce you to the architecture, power, flexibility and efficiency ELM can bring to your IT operations.

Areas we will cover include:

Monitoring
Monitor your servers, workstations and other network devices in real-time. Different monitoring features covered include:

Deploying Agents - Virtual & Service Agents for agentless and agent-based monitoring

Setting up Monitor Items - Collectors, Alarms & Monitors

Creating Agent Categories - Apply common monitoring templates across groups of servers

Notifications
ELM includes a rich, robust Notification Engine that enables you to customize notification and corrective action to suit your organizational needs. We'll cover:

Filters - the "criteria" for all notifications

Notification Methods - Email, Scripting, Pager, Desktop Pop-up, SNMP, Syslog & more

Rules - the "connector" between Filters and Notification Methods

Results
The Results container in the ELM Console contains the results of monitoring and management activities that have been configured. We'll take a look at Alerts and Event Views which provide a mechanism for grouping events into a view that match one or more filters. We'll also visit Performance Collectors; and both the customizable and preconfigured reporting options - ELM Editor and ELM Publisher.

Alerts - Open & Closed Status (Agent color coding: Red, Yellow)

Event Views - Default and customization options: include filters, exclude filters and custom date/time ranges

Reports - ELM Editor (custom reporting engine) and ELM Publisher (preconfigured reporting engine)

Demonstration Details
What: ELM Enterprise Manager 5.5 Live Overview and Demonstration
When: Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 8:30am PST / 9:30am MST / 10:30am CST / 11:30am
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=106533102&RG=1&UID=0Â

The "ELM 411" - Monitoring Windows Registry Keys

The Windows Registry can arguably be referred to as the Central Nervous System for a computer. Stored here is information and settings for all the hardware, operating system software, most non-operating system software, and each user account settings. The registry also provides a window into the operation of the kernel, exposing runtime information such as performance counters and currently active hardware. Careless editing of the registry can cause irreversible damage in some cases which leads us into this month's ELM 411 Topic - using ELM to monitor Windows Registry Keys. This steps covered in this article are somewhat involved and therefore not recommended for the faint of heart.

The WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) Monitor, found in both ELM Enterprise Manager and ELM Performance Manager provides the ability to monitor changes in a registry value. First however, you must create something called a MOF file on each machine you plan to monitor the registry on to "publish the key" so that WMI can read from it.

For this first step in the example, we'll use the registry keys that ELM creates. Our sample MOF file looks like this:

#pragma namespace("\\\\.\\root\\default")

#pragma deleteclass("TNTRegKey", NOFAIL)

[DYNPROPS]
class TNTRegKey
{
[key]string Keyname="";
string ELGenCount;
string ELGenString;
};

[DYNPROPS]
instance of TNTRegKey
{
KeyName="ELGenCnt";
[PropertyContext("local|HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\TNT Software\\ELM Enterprise Manager\\5.5\\Settings|ELGen GenCount"),
Dynamic, Provider("RegPropProv")] ELGenCount;

[PropertyContext("local|HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\TNT Software\\ELM Enterprise Manager\\5.5\\Settings|ELGen InsertionString"),
Dynamic, Provider("RegPropProv")] ELGenString;

};

The sample entries above can be edited in a simple application like Notepad and then saved as something like "myfile.mof".

There are a few things to be aware of here:

First, the registry paths all have double slashes. This is absolutely necessary

Second, the last thing in the path is the name of the actual registry value ELM is monitoring for changes. It is preceded by a pipe ( | ), not by slashes.

Third, the class name can be whatever you would like, you get to define it (in our example we used "TNTRegKey")

Likewise, the KeyName field is user defined as well. In our example it is called "ELGenCnt" This can be named anything you deem appropriate - it is not related to what you are monitoring.

Finally we have the "ELGenCount" and "ELGenString". You can create whatever name you deem appropriate for these values as well. We used abbreviated forms of the actual value name to make more sense in the example and ours is publishing two values in the same key. If you only need to check one value, then only use one [PropertyContext... entry.

Once the script has been modified so that it is structured the way you want, you will have to compile it. A simple way to do this is to open a DOS window to the folder where you've saved the "myfile.mof" file and run this command:

mofcomp myfile.mof

If you get an error it will tell you what line number it is on. If you have everything setup right, it will give you a friendly little message saying that the file was parsed, stored and Done!

Now you can build the WMI Monitor Item in ELM to make use of this. The important thing here is to change the namespace to "root\default" (No quotations). root\cimv2 will not work for registry keys. For the instance above, our query looks like this:

Looking back over the script you can see which pieces get plugged in to that query.

Next in the WMI Monitor Item wizard, select the Agent Category/ies that will be monitored. The default monitoring interval is 60 seconds, however this can be adjusted to less often to reduce server overhead if necessary. Make sure to name the Monitoring Item appropriately when completing the wizard.

The first time the WMI Monitor runs it will write a Warning as it detects that the query results have changed from nonexistent to some value. From that point forward it will write a Warning whenever a value changes.

You are now monitoring for specific changes to the Windows Registry! 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!

Not Strictly Business

20 Petaflop Super Computer on the Horizon
The US Department of Energy has commissioned IBM to build a new super computer that is able to run at 20 petaflops or about 20,000 trillion calculations per second. According to various news sources that is about the equivalent of 2 million laptops.

The new machine, named "Sequoia," is the successor to the Energy Department's current IBM supercomputer "Roadrunner," located at their Los Alamos National Laboratory. Roadrunner is currently the world's fastest supercomputer with a speed of about 1.026 petaflops. Sequoia is expected to be ready in 2011 or 2012.

So lets add some perspective to this. First of all, the speed of a supercomputer is generally measured in FLOPS or FLoating Point Operations Per Second, similar to instructions or calculations per second. This figure is commonly connected with a SI prefix - mega, giga, tera and so on.

A basic calculator performs relatively few FLOPS as each calculation request requires only a single operation. A simple calculator with multiply and divide needs only about 10 FLOPS.

When it comes to highly calculation-intensive problems such as quantum mechanical physics, weather forecasting, molecular modeling, physical simulations (airplanes in wind tunnels simulation of nuclear weapon detonation, nuclear fusion research) a great deal more power is needed. More being something like 96 server racks occupying 3,400 square feet of space with 1.6 petabytes of memory and gobbling up 6 megawatts of power a year - equivalent to the electricity consumption of about 500 average homes. However this is still considered an energy efficient machine!

The table below denotes computer performance by name and FLOPS.

Name FLOPS (Number of calculations per second)

megaflop 10^6 1,000,000

gigaflop 10^9 1,000,000,000

teraflop 10^12 1,000,000,000,000

petaflop 10^15 1,000,000,000,000,000

exaflop 10^18 1,000,000,000,000,000,000

zettaflop 10^21 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

yottaflop 10^24 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

The Sequoia supercomputer will be installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and used for a variety of tasks, including managing America's nuclear arsenal and research tasks. Sequoia will perform simulations of the ageing nuclear weapons to help determine if they are still stable and safe to use and will be used for complex research into areas including the human genome, astronomy and climate change.

Now that's some serious computing power!

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