Keep watch over the activities of multiple servers and multiple systems
Do you have to manage multiple servers and
multiple operating systems? If so, ViewPoint from Datametrics Systems might be
just what you need. Windows NT comes with a nice pair of monitoring
tools--Performance Monitor and Disk Monitor--but ViewPoint extends their
capabilities. ViewPoint collects and displays more performance data than other
performance monitors. Its features, such as programmable AutoAnalyze,
AutoCorrelate, AutoCorrelate filters, AutoInvestigate, AutoReporting, Alerting,
and extensive graphing capability, offer flexible and easy-to-use performance
reporting and management technology.
ViewPoint can monitor, identify, and analyze the activity of 30 operating
systems from one location. ViewPoint identifies performance problems with
operating systems, with applications such as Microsoft SQL Server or Exchange
Server, with memory and hard disk access, with a network, and more. You can set
up ViewPoint to automatically alert you to a specific problem, such as a full
hard disk, via an alphanumeric pager, email, or a custom alert mechanism.
ViewPoint consists of two components: the host software that collects data
on the monitored system, and the client software that displays and analyzes the
performance data on a PC. I reviewed ViewPoint 1.1 for NT host monitoring
software. (The latest version, ViewPoint 1.2 for NT, runs on Intel and Alpha
platforms and supports NT 3.51 and 4.0.)
ViewPoint is simple to set up and use. You create an administrative account
for the monitoring software and manually install the software on each host
system that you want to monitor. Finally, you install the reporting and analyst
software on your workstation, and the fun begins.
The ViewPoint client is loaded with features. You can generate automatic
reports or graphs that print on a predefined schedule. As Screen 1 shows, you
can use many graphing formats: line, area, stacked, bar, scatter, pie, meter,
gauge, high/low, histogram, statistics, and correlation. For example, you can
use a line graph or high/low graph to show the history of CPU utilization; you
might prefer a gauge or a bar chart to show hard disk capacity. You can set up
alerts for any threshold violations that you want to monitor, (e.g., CPU
utilization exceeding 90 percent) and then compile a log of the alerts. With the
AutoAnalyze function, you can set up programmable scripts, or expressions (or
use the included expressions) to create reports. The AutoCorrelate function lets
you compare the behavior of a given variable with the behavior of every other
variable in the same trace file or across all other open trace files over a
specific period. The AutoCorrelate filter lets you remove extraneous data from
your trace file and focus on the data that is important to you. AutoInvestigate
lets you determine when a given variable deviates the most from other instances
of the variable.
Using the client software, I monitored the CPU, disk, I/O, and memory usage
of some servers in the Windows NT Magazine Lab. I set up ViewPoint to
send an alert if any hard disks on the monitored systems were more than 90
percent full. This alert was useful because one hard disk filled up and I
resolved the situation before it became a problem. ViewPoint also let me know
that a server was running out of memory for a short time during the day.
ViewPoint is a full-featured monitoring and reporting package. ViewPoint
lets you monitor several NT servers or multiple servers running different
operating systems.
End of Article
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