Enterprise Network Monitoring
Modern businesses manage numerous resources and rely on complex, robust IT infrastructures with a multitude of interacting services. To maintain a live enterprise network, its infrastructure must be dependable and accessible 24/7. A shared characteristic of enterprise IT departments is the intricate nature of their intranets. These networks deliver a wide array of services, primarily for internal use. Security and stability are paramount. Any potential issues should not only be identified promptly but also anticipated and prevented. Beyond structural complexity, enterprise intranets host numerous interdependent services. A single service failure can cripple the entire intranet. Monitoring is therefore essential; for medium to large companies, manual monitoring is inefficient. IPNetwork Monitor offers turnkey solutions for this challenge. Its diverse monitor types and dependency tracking capabilities make it ideal for providing timely alerts about potential or actual problems. The more complex the intranet and the more interconnected its services, the faster and more dependable alerting mechanisms must be. Ideally, alerts should be instantaneous. Critical services are typically designed with redundancy and fail-safes to withstand various factors that could disrupt operations. To ensure redundancy and eliminate single points of failure, all vital components require continuous supervision. Alerts should utilize multiple delivery channels. For instance, relying solely on email alerts renders the monitoring system useless during network or mail server outages. To maintain high security, monitoring agents are recommended. To avoid opening inbound firewall ports, agents can be configured to periodically connect to an external monitoring client, preserving network security. Different enterprise network types require different monitor types. A standard set of monitors might include: PING (ICMP echo) monitor: This simple monitor is a programmatic version of the ping command, used to verify host availability. While not very informative on its own, the PING monitor serves as a valuable prerequisite and dependency monitor, offering early warnings of performance degradation (e.g., increased response times). This can conserve resources by preventing more demanding monitors from running on unresponsive network devices. TCP monitor: This monitor checks connectivity to any port utilizing TCP connections. It’s an enhanced PING monitor, providing more reliable service presence verification. Web Transaction Monitor: This powerful monitor simulates user interactions with websites, including page navigation, data entry, and form submissions. For web interfaces, the Web Transaction Monitor effectively checks for specific content, ensuring expected functionality. SMTP monitor: This monitor confirms the availability of an SMTP (outgoing mail) server. It can test both insecure/STARTTLS and secure SMTP connections, perform authentication, and optionally send a test message for verification. Database monitors (ODBC, MySQL, MSSQL, etc.): These monitors connect to database servers and execute SQL queries. They offer versatile checking capabilities when data is primarily stored in databases. For example, they can test webmail client logins or verify database schema integrity. Note that this set of monitor types is an example; other monitors may be more suitable in specific situations. Remember that basic monitors (PING, TCP/UDP) can and should act as dependency monitors to optimize resource utilization and provide early problem detection. [interfaces_screenshot]IPNetwork Monitor 1.0 build 141 of March 11, 2024. File size: 112MB