Cuevision Server Monitor Overview

The first time you install Cuevision Server Monitor, you will notice that it has installed a new Windows service called CSMSVC. The service is used to perform the monitoring activities behind the scenes. There is also a console installed which you can find in your start menu or on the desktop if you chose to install it there. The console allows you to interact with the service to create new monitor lists, add or remove monitors, configure recovery actions and notifications or to view statistics and reports about your monitors. When the Cuevision Server Monitor service is installed, it is configured to use a sample monitoring list. To see what is contained in the list, open the console and it will be loaded. The service is started automatically when it is installed. It is automatically configured to run using the system account, but you should change it to use an account that can access the systems in your network that you plan on monitoring. The Monitor tab in the console displays the name of the monitor, what the monitor is 'watching', the current state, UP or DOWN, the status information returned from the monitor, the last update date and time, the interval the the monitor is running on, the name of the device beging monitored and the type of monitor. Monitors can be grouped into containers. You can use a container to group monitors by function, location or any other way that you see fit. The Map tab in the console window displays a graphical view of the monitors. The state of the monitor is differentiated by the background color of the icon. You can load an image onto this map and then arrange the icons to represent the phsyical location of the monitors or any other way that you see fit. The Device tab groups the monitors by their device. Click on a device name and the device properties (when available) as well as the associated monitors are displayed. The lower part of the console contains the status, performance and alert tabs. The status tab displays information about each monitor as they perform their checks. The alerts tab displays only alerts that have been generated by a monitor. The performance tab displays a graph of the available data from the currently selected monitor. If there is no graph, select a monitor from the Monitor tab. You can view or configure the properties of each monitor by right clicking on the monitor and selecting 'properties' from the menu. When adding a new monitor or viewing the properties of an existing monitor, the window contains three tabs, Properties, Notification and Recovery. The properties tab contains general information about the monitor such as the name, the details, and the interval. Global notifications can be set from the Tools->Options menu item. These notifications will apply to all alerts that occur. The Notification tab is used to configure notifications at the monitor level. The available notifications are the following: Send Email: You can send custom messages to one or more parties specifying the subject line and body. You can also insert system variables containing data from the monitors Event Log: Logs alert messages to the Windows Event Viewer. Message Popup: a message popup will be displayed on the system where the monitoring service is installed. The text is configurables and can contain monitor variables. Network Message: Use this to send messages accross the network. The message is configurable and can contain monitor variables. Notification can be sent each time the monitor fails, only when the monitor changes to a failed state or after a configurable number of failures in a row. Use the recovery tab to configure a program to execute when an alert occurs or to restart local and remote services and processes. The number of failures before executing the recovery can also be set here. The default is after every failure. After making changes to the monitors through the console, the monitoring service must be restarted before the changes will take affect.