- In this Issue -

Gold Support - 24x7x365 ELM 5.5 Product Demonstration Schedule The "ELM 411" - Performance Data: Show Active - Show All TNT Software Holiday Schedule Not Strictly Business

Check out the new ELM Tutorial "Create Exclude Filters On-The-Fly"

Try us out today.
Free, Full-Featured
30-Day Trial!

Did you know that TNT Software offers ELM Training?

Click here for details.

Contact Us: TNT Software, Inc. 2001 Main Street Vancouver, WA 98660 Phone: 360-546-0878 Toll Free: 877-546-0878 Email TNT Software

Election Day 2008
Don't forget to vote today!

Gold Support - 24x7x365 Did you know that TNT Software offers technical support services 24 x 7 x 365? Through our Gold Support plan, customers and select business partners have around the clock access to our expert support engineers for those unforeseen circumstances. Support services include, but are not limited to, online support, phone and email support during business hours, and 24x7 pager support for Gold Support customers.		Contact your TNT Software Account Manager today for more information!

ELM 5.5 Product Demonstration Schedule

November 13, 2008 - Live Overview and Demonstration of ELM Enterprise Manager 5.5!

Would you like to know more about the system monitoring and event log management capabilities the new ELM 5.5 can provide your organization? Would you and/or your team like to "kick the tires" and take a look under the hood before deploying ELM? Then you're in luck! TNT Software will be giving a live demonstration of ELM Enterprise Manager on November 13.

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
  • Deploying Agents - Virtual and Service Agents for agentless or real-time monitoring
  • Setting up Monitor Items - Collectors, Alarms and Monitors
  • Creating Agent Categories - apply common monitoring templates across groups of servers
• Notifications
  • Filters - the "criteria" for all notifications
  • Notification Methods - Email, Scripts, Pager, Desktop ELM Advisor and more
  • Rules - the "connector" between Filters and Notifications
• Results
  • Alerts - open and closed status (Agent color coding: Red, Yellow)
  • Event Views - default and customization options: include filters and custom date and time range settings

Demonstration Details
What: ELM Enterprise Manager 5.5 Live Overview and Demonstration
When: Thursday, November 13, 2008, 8:30am PST / 9:30am MST / 10:30am CST / 11:30am EST
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=102509682&RG=1&UID=0 

The "ELM 411" - Performance Data: Show Active - Show All

Regularly collecting performance data allows you to baseline systems, perform capacity planning, see bottlenecks and immediately recognize unusual resource demands. ELM includes a built-in feature for collecting performance data from Windows systems and stores it in a database. Without using local resources on the systems being monitored, ELM can aggregate and chart the data through ELM Editor and ELM Publisher Reporting engines. This is a powerful yet easy way to proactively manage system resources.

In the ELM Console, the Results container has a Performance Data sub-container with nodes for all the configured performance objects and counters. You can have Performance Collectors that contain different groups of counters, or a single Performance Collector that contains all of the counters you want to collect. In previous versions of ELM you could see all performance objects listed here whether they were were active (contained data) or not. Depending on the size of your environment and the scope of performance monitoring you are doing, this can be overwhelming with potentially dozens of performance objects listed, some containing no data.

With the release of ELM 5.5, Performance Collectors without collected performance counter data can now be optionally displayed or hidden. By default, ELM 5.5 shows only Active Performance Data - those performance counters with collected data. So if you have been adding Performance Counter Definitions and are wondering why the performance object groups are not showing up in the Performance Data container, they may actually be there, but are not displaying because they have no collected data yet.

To view all assigned performance counters, simply right-click the Performance Data container and select Show All in the context menu.

This will expand the Performance Data sub-container and show all performance objects the ELM Server knows about. This "library" of counters can then be assigned to collect data with either a Performance Collector Monitor Item or watch levels with a Performance Alarm Monitor Item.

When showing all, ELM will now specify if a performance object does not have data by tagging the end of the container name with [No data]. This is a very helpful quick point of reference so that you can update collection intervals and schedule reports accordingly based on the performance data you want to trend over time.

Performance monitoring is available in both ELM Enterprise Manager and ELM Performance Manager.

We hope that you found this ELM 411 tip useful and 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!

TNT Software Holiday Schedule

As we approach the holiday season we all will enjoy some time away from work. Below you will find the holiday closure schedule for TNT Software.

Date	Holiday
November 27-28	Thanksgiving
December 24-25	Christmas
December 31 - Closing at Noon	New Year's Eve
January 1, 2009	New Year's Day

 

Not Strictly Business

Top 10 Reasons You Should NOT Monitor Your Systems and Network Devices

1. You enjoy the selection of late night dining choices the vending machines have to offer when you regularly work late.
2. Some people prefer to avoid problems with auditors; you on the other hand view them as an opportunity to practice your conflict resolution skills.
3. It feels good to know you’re helping the CIO get his daily exercise when he comes across the building to yell about a problem you should have already known about and resolved.
4. You prefer on-the-job training and real world experiences when it comes to dealing with security issues.
5. When a critical system goes down you get a real thrill from calling out “time me!” and making a sprint for the server room.
6. Although you’re not a database admin, writing new queries to mine log data for compliance reports is always new and exciting compared to your daily routine.
7. Being proactive in managing systems sounds too fancy and probably belongs under someone else’s job title that gets paid more than you.
8. Discovering issues before they become big problems is too spooky for you – like being able to predict and alter the future or something.
9. You view your home as more of a personal storage area or “pit stop” as your family has started to call it, and would rather spend all your time at work.
10. In the 13 different jobs you’ve had in the last 4 years you’ve never had to monitor systems or network devices before so why start now?

Sign up to receive our monthly email newsletter here.