Reduce time required to deploy monitoring setups by reducing the variety of tools
While monitoring different types of operating systems, it is essential to reduce the number of tools used to a logical and reasonable minimum. Under “tools”, we understand all kinds of APIs, software packages and technologies used to perform monitoring tasks. For example, the same or similar tasks of monitoring system resources can be solved by using SNMP, WMI, and various scripting languages such as PowerShell, Python and VBScript. While IPNetwork Monitor does its best to provide a single platform for using many different tools, it can significantly reduce the time and effort required if a smaller tool set is chosen.
That is especially true in case of large or quickly growing monitoring setups. Apart from creating a monitor, one should also maintain it: as software is updated and changed, existing monitors may require significant overhaul to continue working as expected. Let’s offer some examples of unifying technologies and tools under different environments.
PowerShell
Evolving far beyond a simple command-line shell, PowerShell became a de facto standard for Windows administration and task automation. While older tools such as VBScript can still solve some of the same tasks, modern PowerShell remains the actively developed option for automation work.
PowerShell is no longer limited to Windows. Current versions are available for Windows, Linux and macOS, which makes it much easier to standardize administrative and monitoring scripts across mixed environments.
Although the actual classes can vary, the overall language structure and approach remains the same across platforms. By switching management tasks to PowerShell, one can use a more uniform monitoring approach over many types of hosts. The same idea also applies to custom monitors and alerting actions in IPNetwork Monitor, where a smaller and more consistent scripting stack is usually easier to maintain over time.
POSIX environment
Windows and Unix-like environments historically required different tools and approaches for many of the same tasks. One long-standing option is Cygwin, which provides a large collection of GNU and POSIX-style tools for Windows. It remains useful when you want familiar Unix-like command-line tooling on Windows without introducing a full virtual machine.
When Cygwin is installed, typical Unix-like, such as Linux-type environment becomes available, and many a script running under POSIX environment can be easily adapted to Windows, or even run unchanged. The only problem is maintaining Cygwin itself: as software gets developers, bugs and security flaws are found, it becomes a viable task to keep everything up-to-date. Although Cygwin update is mostly automated, it still requires human intervention.
A different approach to the same problem is Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), available on modern Windows releases. It allows running a Linux environment on Windows without a separate virtual machine or dual boot setup. In current environments, WSL 2 is typically the preferred option.
By using WSL, it’s possible to run many Linux-oriented monitoring tools on Windows hosts with minimal changes. Since WSL and the underlying Linux distribution can both be updated regularly, keeping such tooling current is often simpler than maintaining multiple parallel environments.
Conclusion
Do you need our assistance in utilizing the mentioned tools and technologies (PowerShell, Cygwin, WSL) with IPNetwork Monitor? Feel free to contact us.