On Aug 15, 2007, at 12:49 PM, Mohomed Elamin El Rashid wrote:

> I was wondering what IT people using to monitor production server.  
> I appreciated if you send me some tips about software or tools that  
> can monitor servers and capable of sending email. I have over 50  
> server.
> Please, send email to [log in to unmask]

We have used quite a few tools for this over the years at the  
Computer Lab/ACNS:

* Big Brother http://bb4.com/ but I haven't touched it quite a few years

* Big Sister http://bigsister.graeff.com/ which I haven't seen in a  
long time either.

* NetSaint which became Nagios http://www.nagios.org/ this one was  
nice but the UI was clunky.  I liked the plugin architecture

* What's Up? http://ipswitch.com/products/whatsup/index.asp which is  
currently used by ACNS operations.  I don't have a lot of familiarity  
with it, but if you need to run on Windows (for the server itself),  
it might be a reasonable option.

I guess my favorite was Nagios (which will make some on this list  
gasp) but it really did all the things we needed it to do, it just  
made you feel like you needed to wash your hands after you got done  
messing with the Admin interface.

./mk

-- 
Matt Kolb  <[log in to unmask]>
Academic Computing & Network Services
Michigan State University