No Stone UnturnedAVTECH PageR Enterprise 4.4.2 Monitors the Enterprise
Sandra Kay Miller - Processor - Vol.28 Issue 36
Network monitoring can be a monumental chore, especially in distributed environments with a heterogeneous infrastructure. In the advent of physical security and environmental controls routinely deployed as IP-connected solutions, administrators have even more devices and traffic on their networks to manage.
Based in Rhode Island, AVTECH Software is a private company that has been providing hardware and software solutions for monitoring and managing computer systems, servers, networks, and data center environments since 1988.
Its latest release of its flagship software, PageR Enterprise, offers numerous enhancements. "As the market changes, we are continually adding new features to keep up with what our customers need," says Michael Sigourney, senior product specialist at AVTECH.
Of all the new enhancements, Sigourney says the two hottest improvements in the 4.4.2 version are the ability to monitor serial and loopback interfaces as well as physical network interfaces through the Bandwidth Monitored Object feature and the improvements to the Win32 Process Monitored Object that allows administrators to compare the list of running processes to an approved list, thus generating an alarm if an unapproved process starts.
A big part of any monitoring product is its ability to generate alerts when something goes wrong. Many of the modifications made to PageR Enterprise focus on alerting and logging.
Compatible with just about everything from big-name products to shareware, PageR Enterprise has added to the email notification option a link to the Web browser interface for the monitored object generating an alarm.
Just as important as being notified when an alarm is triggered is PageR’s ability to also notify when an alarm goes away, including customized text for Alarm Cleared messages.
This can be a powerful time-saver when it comes to monitoring remote devices and locations. This version will also save users’ time by enabling the testing of only monitored objects that have changed since the last configuration without having to perform a complete scan.
Other noteworthy improvements to PageR Enterprise include the option to make a backup of the configuration before new changes are saved and the ability to change the names of SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) MIB (management information base) objects. The UDP (User Data Protocol) issue caused by recent Windows Service Packs has also been rectified in this release.
Unlike other popular monitoring solutions such as HP OpenView, CA Unicenter, and IBM Tivoli, PageR Enterprise doesn’t use rules or agents. Another big advantage over megavendor products is that instead of taking months to deploy, AVTECH's OS-agnostic software is a single installation taking only a few hours to install and configure.
"Our goal is to make IT management easier for the people who do it," says Sigourney.
AVTECH Software, Inc.