MonitorWare Products – Utilization and Deployment

Article created 2005-04-15 by Hamid Ali Raja.

This article is to give you a detailed concept behind MonitorWare line of Products. MonitorWare is a line of products for network monitoring, management and analysis by Adiscon. MonitorWare has been designed with a philosophy that small to large sized enterprises have same critical network security needs and limited resources to purchase security solutions.

To challenge such limited resources Adiscon has come up with MonitorWare line of products that is designed to meet your requirements today and grow with as you grow as an enterprise. MonitorWare provides you intuitive network management and protection backed by expert guidance and support. Let us help you monitor and analyze your network so you can get on with your operations.

MonitorWare Products

MonitorWare line of products basically focus network monitoring with the help of Syslog messages generated by different Windows operating systems and devices like routers, switches etc. We broadly divide our products into four well defined categories to make our products cost effective and task focused, these are mentioned below with brief explanations:

  • MonitorWare Reporter – It forwards Syslog messages to a central Syslog server.
  • MonitorWare Receiver – It receives Syslog messages while acting as a Syslog server.
  • MonitorWare Reporter & Receiver – It acts both as reporter and receiver.
  • MonitorWare Analyzer – It generates reports on consolidated data in the MonitorWare database created by other Adiscon products or third party products (conditions applicable).
  • MonitorWare Monitor – It alarms you when your servers or routers get down.

MonitorWare Products

MonitorWare Reporter

MonitorWare Receiver

MonitorWare Reporter & Receiver

MonitorWare Analyzer

Note: Please follow Comparision of Monilog Report and System Status Report of MonitorWare Console to choose one of the two products.

MonitorWare Monitor

MonitorWare Tools

 

MonitorWare Products Selection & Deployment

To understand, how best you can use MonitorWare Products I consider a scenario and try to design a cost effective solution for you.

Scenario

You are a System Administrator in a small company and you need to have a network monitoring solution for your computer lab comprised of following components:

Workstations: 10
Server: 01

Requirements

You need to forward NT event logs from all machines to your one single machine acting as a Syslog server and want to have reports on the central database.

Solutions

Here you can have multiple solutions. Let us discuss them one by one:

Solution 1

You simply install MonitorWare Agent on all of your machines and MonitorWare Console for reports on one single machine.

You need to configure Syslog server service available in MonitorWare Agent on one of your machines and Event Log Monitor service that is also available in MonitorWare Agent on rest of the machines and configure it to forward NT event logs to a machine that is with Syslog Server service configured. Please note that if you want to monitor the NT event logs of the machine that you have configured as a Syslog server, you also need to configure Event Log Monitor service on that machine.

Merits of this solution:
  • You can have more then one Syslog servers in your network, helps you load balancing your traffic load (if this solution leads to thousands of machines).
  • You also have specialized MonitorWare Agent features.
De-Merits
  • It is not a cost effective solution. It costs you eight times more as compared to the most effective one. View Pricing Info. Please note that in this article we are just talking about products basic editions.
Solution 2

You simply install WinSyslog on one of your machines and configure it as a Syslog server. All other machines should have EventReporter installed and configured to report NT event logs to the Syslog server. Please note that to monitor the event logs of the machine acting as a Syslog server, you also need to install the EventReporter on it.

Last but not the least, you need MonitorWare Console to generate reports on the MonitorWare database populated by EventReporter and created by WinSyslog on one of your machine.

Merits of this solution:
  • It’s the most cost effective and targeted solution as far as your requirements are concerned.
De-Merits
  • Only one machine is acting as a Syslog server results in single point of failure as far as receiving messages are concerned.
Solution 3

You install MonitorWare Agent on one of your machines and configure Syslog server service and Event Log Monitor service on it. Now, this machine is acting like a Syslog server and also reporting it’s on event logs. All other machines should have EventReporter installed and configured to report NT event logs to the Syslog server.

You also need to install MonitorWare Console on one of your machines to generate reports on the MonitorWare database populated by EventReporter and created by MonitorWare Agent.

Merits of this solution:
  • It’s also a cost effective and targeted solution as far as your requirements are concerned.
  • You also enjoy specialized features of MonitorWare Agent.
  • MonitorWare Agent is built in configuration wizard to configure it as a reporting agent or a central agent for MonitorWare Console.
    De-Merits
    • Only one machine is acting as a Syslog server results in single point of failure as far as receiving messages are concerned. Note: This is only one of the scenarios, if you want Adiscon to design a cost effective solution for you, please feel free to contact us via the Customer Service System.
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