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Topper for Windows Server
Management can conduct round the clock monitoring of your NT server
network and alert you to any abnormal situations that arise. includes 4
basic types of testing that help to ensure the proper and timely
functioning of your NT Server network
Performance
Objects - Topper
can monitor the overall health of any NT performance object (a performance
counter registered with NT by either the operating system or any
software/hardware vendor). TOPPER
enables you to set up continuous monitoring of these objects tailored for
your own environment. Each performance object is configured such in a
fashion that makes sense (i.e., for disk space, an absolute set of
thresholds are configured whereas for CPU utilization, thresholds would be
specified over time (see
example
below).
This unique configuration scheme helps ensure that alerts make sense and
eliminates the possibility of false alerts. As with other TOPPER testing,
once an alert situation is uncovered, a notification is sent to the
appropriate staff
NT
Services -
Topper has the ability to monitor each critical service on your server and
alert when the service is not running
Performance
Sets -
Performance sets are pre-configured groups of performance objects that may
be copied and used to monitor multiple servers with a common set of
monitoring points. Performance sets may be built by the Administrator or
by using the performance sets provided with the TOPPER software.
Currently, TOPPER comes with two pre-defined sets, Microsoft
Exchange and
Server
General Monitoring,
Other pre-defined performance sets for Notes, SQL and other applications
will be added in future releases. These performance sets allow for rapid
configuration and customization for your environment. Here is an example
of the performance
set configuration for Exchange monitoring
NT
Event Log Filtering - Topper can filter
NT Event Log events in real-time to help uncover problems as they occur.
The NT Event Logs store individual status records about processes and
services running on NT workstations and servers. An Event is actually a
status record written by some process running on the PC providing status
and diagnostic information
On an NT 4.0 computer
there are three event logs
- System Events
- Application
Events
- Security
Events
Windows 2000 & 2003 has
added three additional Event Logs,
- Directory
Services
- DNS Server Log
- File
Replication Service Log
Each of these
logs can be filtered against two types of criteria
Each event in the logs
has been categorized by the providing vendor and classified as either a Warning
or Error.
These can be automatically captured by Topper and mapped to Topper's Minor
and Major error conditions, and alert notification rules can be
established for each. Additionally, TOPPER provides the ability to exclude
certain of these conditions, that for your enterprise, are not considered
as important conditions to monitor against. This capability allows you to configure
filtering
in a
matter of seconds.

Secondly, for specific
errors not flagged by the vendor, a text string entry can be configured
that TOPPER will use to filter against the event logs. When a record
contains the text string, an notification will be made to the appropriate
staff
Generic
Log File Filtering - TOPPER
can perform real-time monitoring of any log files created by
applications of services running on your servers. These log files
must be ASCII sequential files. TOPPER will filter the records as
they come in to the log. If there is a match between a filter entry
and the log record, then TOPPER will display that as an alert in the
severity defined in the filter entry. If desired, TOPPER can notify
the appropriate staff of the problem.
Topper is a trademark of Bear
Mountain Software Inc.
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