If you’re like most network managers,
you probably spend a lot of time with your network management
tool’s alerting, troubleshooting and escalation workflow
features. After all, you need to know what’s on your
network, what level of monitoring is in place, the current
status and prioritization of alert messages, and who
has ownership of the problem. You would want everything
that needs your immediate attention be presented right
up front, so you can address it quickly and efficiently.
After all, the purpose of a network management tool’s
alerting component is to inform you in real time of
failures and impending issues so that you can remediate
them before they adversely affect business. A well-designed
tool should make alerting effortless, providing information
to you in an easy, intuitive, and actionable way.
WhatsUp
Gold’s new Alert Center functionality can do all this
and more. It provides a single integrated workspace
that consolidates all alerts, notifications and alert
acknowledgements for easy configuration and management.
You can easily alert on performance monitors, passive
monitors and WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor (plug-in required).
It can be configured to include or exclude devices and
groups for any of the threshold, alerts and notifications.
And existing performance, custom and passive monitors
configured in WhatsUp Gold are automatically brought
into Alert Center and can be configured with thresholds.
In fact, Alert Center sets a new bar in alert management
by introducing a level of operational usability not
found anywhere else. And it is included for free in
all WhatsUp Gold versions (Standard, Premium, Distributed
and MSP)!
With WhatsUp Gold Alert Center in place, you can:
- Set up flexible, user configured thresholds
for different performance parameters
- Configure new notification policies based on
device and system criticality
- View reports on all configured monitors, running
notification policies and event logs
- Coordinate alert response via acknowledgements
and multiple levels of escalations
- Monitor and manage the WhatsUp Gold installation
for performance
Key features of the WhatsUp Gold Alert Center include:
Configurable
Thresholds
Alert Center enables network managers to easily configure,
set and modify thresholds for monitored resources. Threshold
settings include defining minimum or maximum accepted
values and the time duration before an alert is triggered.
For example, a systems administrator can configure a
CPU threshold that will alert if a server CPU exceeds
and maintains more than 90% utilization for a period
of 5 minutes or more.
Notification Policies
Network managers can define and implement notification
policies based upon the criticality of a device or system
within Alert Center. Notification policies may include
multiple escalation steps based upon user-specified
intervals. If a problem is not addressed in the specified
timeframe, the next level of notification alerts is
sent out to designated individuals or even Help Desk
systems (for automatic trouble ticket generation) via
email. This ensures that critical problems have the
right management attention and pending issues don’t
fall through the cracks. After a problem has been resolved,
other users can be notified of the resolution and subsequent
steps of a running notification policy are halted.
Alert
Acknowledgements
Alert Acknowledgements in Alert Center allows network
managers to respond to alerts, provide status and acknowledge
ownership of the resolution process. When first responders
acknowledge alerts, it indicates that the specific system
or device is being worked on. No further notifications
are sent unless triggered by the escalation policy.
When the issue is resolved, designated team members
in the escalation path are notified and the device is
again available for future monitoring and alerting.
Notes detailing the actions taken can be added to the
acknowledgement process, providing the operations staff
with quick access to problem resolution data, in the
event a problem reoccurs.
WhatsUp Gold Self Monitoring
In a monitoring environment, the management system
itself can be a singular point of failure. Alert Center
provides detailed visibility into the application health
of the WhatsUp Gold installation itself. By enabling
self-monitoring of the WhatsUp Gold Server and Flow
Monitor health, Alert Center minimizes risk of missing
key infrastructure events due to management system unavailability.
Key reporting areas include performance of the WhatsUp
Gold database (either local or remote), WhatsUp Gold
services and Flow Monitor status. System administrators
can use recommended thresholds delivered out-of-the-box,
or configure new thresholds and notifications as required.
Flow Monitor Thresholds
If Flow Monitor is installed, Alert center enables
setting up of multiple configurable thresholds tracking
the volume of traffic between conversation pairs, failed
connections per host, top senders and receivers, and
specific interfaces over a set time period. Custom monitors
with configurable thresholds can provide more granular
tracking of specific aspects of network traffic including
host, protocol, application, domain, location and other
flow parameters.
Alert
Center Reports
Alert Center reports are used to troubleshoot and
monitor individual alerts as well as for historical
archival that can support IT process audits. They can
be accessed from either the Reports tab or the Alert
Center tab in the main WhatsUp Gold console.
Three core reports are available, including:
- Items Report – displays all configured monitors
and their status
- Running Notification Policies – displays all
configured notification policies and their associated
monitors
- Log Report – logs and displays all events as
well as information on alert acknowledgements and
resolutions.
With Alert Center, network and systems
managers benefit from higher productivity, better collaboration
and faster recovery from device downtime or system performance
issues. Since Alert Center threshold and notification
settings can be applied to either individual or groups
of devices, it saves valuable time and effort in building
and maintaining organization wide policies. Easy access
to threshold report workspaces from the Alert Center
also enables editing of configured parameters directly
from the WhatsUp Gold web portal.
Quick and Easy Configuration
Alert Center settings are accessible from a single
console making bulk updates to thresholds and monitor
parameters quick and easy. Threshold configurations
and notification policies once defined can be applied
across multiple devices or groups. This saves valuable
time and effort in locating and setting parameters for
multiple passive or performance monitors.
Consolidated Reporting and Coordinated Action
Consolidated alert listings in Alert Center, provide
a global view of events as they occur. Network and systems
administrators can acknowledge alerts, initiate troubleshooting
action and update problem status with comments. This
enables other team members to follow progress and support
quicker, coordinated resolution of business impacting
issues. Logged information on alerts, acknowledgements,
and their resolution may also be used for conducting
IT process audits at a later time.
Multi-Level
Policy Based Escalation
Alert Center allows set up of multi-level policy
based escalation. When critical devices are impaired
or identified issues are not responded to within timeframes
specified in the Service Level Agreement (SLA), business
and IT stakeholders may be notified via email notifications.
Email alerts may also be used to automatically open
trouble tickets in Help Desk systems. This enables network
managers to draw management attention and marshal additional
resources that can help speed up triage and resolution.
Scalable Traffic Monitoring for Security and Performance
Alert Center adds configurable alerting capability
to Flow Monitor enabling network managers to identify
specific application behaviors and traffic patterns
that may impair business operations. For example, high
number of network conversations from a single host may
indicate the occurrence of a virus attack. Similarly,
high volume of network traffic to a particular destination
may signify unauthorized video or streaming downloads
that may slow down other business applications traversing
the same segment. Alert Center enables the network team
to manage a significantly high volume of traffic information
without becoming overwhelmed.
24/7 Visibility and Monitoring Oversight
Alert Center helps optimize the performance of the
WhatsUp Gold server and Flow Center plug-in 24/7. Network
managers can proactively deal with installation issues
arising from database overload, monitor or alert volumes
and other system performance characteristics. This improves
overall network uptime and performance as there is less
likelihood of monitoring blackout periods or data loss
– when visibility into the environment is lost because
of performance issues with the WhatsUp Gold installation.
Monitoring the management system is
as important as minding your critical network infrastructure.
After all, if your monitoring system is not performing
robustly, gaps in data collection and reporting can
make it hard to diagnose real issues with applications,
systems and devices. The result – missed opportunities
for troubleshooting or, even worse, flying blind during
an actual network outage. While the WhatsUp Gold is
proven as a reliable and robust management tool in over
100,000 networks, its functioning may be impaired by
issues common to any application – systems degradation,
insufficient capacity or over-utilization, or, lack
of available network bandwidth.
With WhatsUp Gold Self-Monitoring in place, you can:
- Track WhatsUp Gold Server and Flow Monitor application
health through detailed reports
- Monitor underlying database, process and service
status
- Proactively identify system slowdown or gaps
in reporting and initiate remediation measures
- Fine tune thresholds to align with service level
requirements in your organization
- Streamline the WhatsUp Gold monitoring workload
and adjust archival timeframes
WhatsUp Gold Self-Monitoring system accessible through
the Alert Center features the following key monitors:
WhatsUp Gold Database Performance Monitors
WhatsUp Gold Database performance monitors report
status on multiple system parameters:
- Number of performance monitor records in the
database – sends alerts if it exceeds configured
thresholds
- Number of passive monitor records in the database
– sends alerts if it exceeds configured thresholds
- Number of expired records in the database –
sends alerts if it exceeds configured thresholds
and which may require changes to archival timeframes
- License limit – sends alerts if the license
limit has been exceeded
WhatsUp Gold Service Status
Status of the following WhatsUp Gold Services can
be viewed from Alert Center:
- Polling service up/down status and duration
- Discovery service up/down status and duration
- WhatsUp Gold Web service up/down status and
duration
- Polling engine queries against database (number
of queries) – to identify if SQL queries are taking
too long on average
- HTTP response times – to track if responses
are taking too long on average
WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor Status
If the WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor plug-in has been
licensed, Alert Center provides status of Flow Monitor
components and flow records collected by the Flow Monitor
including:
- Main database size – sends alerts if it exceeds
configured thresholds
- Archive database size – sends alerts if it exceeds
configured thresholds
- Collector service up/down status and duration
- Number of Host records – sends alerts if it
exceeds configured thresholds
- Bounced traffic – alerts if any traffic between
sources and collector is lost
- Raw hourly/daily records – reports and alerts
if the number of records exceed configured thresholds
- Licensed number of data sources –sends alerts
if it approaches purchased license limits
WhatsUp
Gold Technology
