Automating your network-monitoring process

…you can find even more commercial software packages with prices and features to fit the budget of almost any business. Some well suited for small and medium businesses include:

• Servers Alive: Works on Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003, features monitoring of popular services (TCP/UDP, DNS, web services, databases), SNMP support, ability to write custom checks. Standard edition costs $139, free add-ons are available for applications such as MySQL, Lotus Notes/Domino database, SMTP2/POP3 and others: Free evaluation with no time limit.
• Power Admin Server Monitor Pro: includes disk-space monitor, web-page monitor, event-log monitor, ping monitor, log-file monitor, file and directory monitor, mail-server monitor, performance monitor, service monitor, and more. Can send alerts to mail boxes, mobile phones and devices, pagers. Can start applications, start or stop services, reboot the server, and execute scripts. Pro site licence (unlimited use at a site) costs $699 (£368.99), or $299 (£157.84) for five monitored servers.

Some examples of enterprise-level monitoring tools include:

• GFI Network Server Monitor: Monitors important services such as Exchange, IIS, SQL, terminal services as well as Linux servers. Can restart services or reboot the server, or run a script or batch job when a failure is detected and provides alerts via email, pager or SMS. Costs $750 for up to 25 IPs.
• NimBUS: Server monitoring for Windows, Linux, UNIX, Netware and AS400 from a centralised console; supports compliance reporting, notification options, can support up to thousands of servers.
• Tembria Enterprise Edition: Includes 35 core event monitors, graphs and trend data, customisable dashboards and web-based reports. Monitors Windows servers and workstations as well as Linux and network devices (eg, switches). Agentless and easy to use. Costs $995 (£525.35) (base price) for unlimited number of network devices.