Today, network and computer technology have become an integral part of any business. A downtime in network can affect your business economically. To ensure complete uptime for your network, you need a reliable network monitoring tool. IPCheck Server Monitor is one such software.

IPCheck Server Monitor is an easy-to use and cost-effective Windows-based server monitoring software. It detects network and website failures early by monitoring critical network resources. It is based on Paessler’s reliable IPCheck technology.

It offers many useful features. It is composed of a couple of basic parts:

1.One windows services for the actual monitoring.

Another for offering a web based administration interface.

You can of-course modify the configuration settings using IPCHECK CONTROL PANEL.

After you setup IPCheck Server Monitor, you can access the monitoring features by using a windows client program or by using web interface.

Each monitoring task in the server is represented as a “Sensor” and each monitored server supports multiple sensors. A sensor is supposed to trigger a check at a specified time interval and it will sent an email to the user managing the sensors, whenever a condition is not satisfied. Graphs and reports can also be obtained for each sensor.

All the servers that are monitored can be organized into groups, like DNS servers, mail servers etc. It makes our job much easier. Grouping the servers also has other advantages. For example, you don’t need to set the timeout values for each server in the group. If you want, you can choose any server from a group and configure it individually.

INSTALLATION

There are no specific software requirements to install IPCheck on a computer. It can be installed on all Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 operating systems.

You can download the software at http://www.paessler.com/ipcheck/download

The IPCHECK software is installed with its own integrated webserver and SQL database (Firebird SQL Server). The close integration of webserver, database, and monitoring application provides easy installation and management of the software.

While running installation wizard you need to specify database user login details and administrator login details. The administrator can create additional user accounts, if he wish to do so.

FEATURES OF IPCHECK

1. 1. Choice of interface

· An interface that you can access using a web browser (IE6/Firefox)

· A client software that runs on Windows

. A mobile user interface that runs on PocketPCs.

. All 3 of the above can be used simultaneously too.

1. 1. Reporting and Trend Analysis

IPCheck Server Monitor tracks the servers response times.It then records the results of all monitoring requests into its built-in database.Uptime/downtime reports and trend analysis can later be done based on this data.

1. 1. Multi User Management

IPCheck Server Monitor is a credential-based system. It can be run for just one single user or in multi user mode.Each user can create his own groups of servers and sensors.

1. 1. Multi Location Monitoring Using Remote Probes

By default monitoring requests are send from the machine you have installed ipcheck initially. It is called local probe. To achieve multi location monitoring we can install remote probes on other machines. For creating a remote probe you have to install ipcheck probe service on the remote machine.

1. 1. Sensor Alert Notification and Messaging

Each sensor is shown with a color depicting its current state, e.g. DOWN, UP, PAUSED, or OK. List of events discovered by IPCheck Server Monitor can be seen in the recent messages box.

One of the main feature of this tool is the ability to notify the user(s) of sensor alerts in multiple ways. A notification will be emailed to the administrator, whenever a service is down.

Additionally, messages can be send via SMS/Pager, network broadcast, or ICQ. We can also configure it to play a sound file, request a HTTP URL, or execute an external program or batch file.

There is an additional option to be notified using popup windows, sounds, and even text-to-speech with Windows GUI.

1. 1. Ability to create custom sensors

It supports more number of sensors than any other monitoring systems.

Ipcheck allows you to create custom sensors. It can be set up as a exe or dll file and it should be placed in the “custom” sub folder of the installation folder of IPCheck Server Monitor. Every time selected sensor is run, corresponding dll or exe is run. This feature allow us the flexibility to monitor virtually every thing as we needs.

1. 1. Ability to filter sensors

Ipcheck windows GUI allows to filter sensors to display one of our interest. For that tags are used. A tag is a term used as a means of classification with a sensor. If you have a large number of sensors, Tags will help you in a great way.

Implementation Using Windows GUI

If you want to use windows GUI, you must first install ipcheck windows client software. You can download it from IPcheck server monitor website.

After installing you can access it by All Programs | IPCheck Server Monitor | IPCheck Server Monitor Windows GUI. In the login prompt that will be presented you have to specify:

—-> IP address or the DNS name of the server where the server software of IPCheck Server Monitor is running on.

Note: If you do not use standard web-port , you have to add port number also.

—-> user login details.

In Windows GUI you can edit the Groups, Servers, and Sensors by right clicking the item to access the context menu. You can Edit,Pause, and Delete an item through this context menu.

Also In File-> options you can set method of notification, refresh interval etc.

Conclusion

IPCheck Server Monitor is a complete monitoring solution for your network. It is complex yet a cost-effective software. Ease of use and setup are two of its main features.

About the author:

Hari Vishnu has been working with Bobcares for 10 months. He has expertise both in Windows and Linux administration. At present he is concentrating more on Windows server administration.