Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

April 2020

How to Monitor IIS

IIS is very popular in part because it provides such a compact service with lots of features and configurations. Most enterprises that use Windows Server editions are hosting their websites using IIS. When hosting critical applications, many companies use monitoring software to keep their system administrators informed about the overall behavior of their systems. Such software provides configurable alerts for performance counters, services and applications. We will talk about how to monitor IIS, what the most important performance counters are, and what services should be monitored when talking about Internet Information services.

How to Monitor a Website

In this Power Admin video, learn how to monitor a webpage / website. Monitor one or many pages on a web site. Checks for positive cases (text that must be found), negative cases (alerts if error text found) and if the page has changed at all. Response times are checked and recorded, and reports can be generated to understand trends. The Web Page Monitor lets you define one or more web pages or web resources that should be checked. You can check return codes, data size, content on the page and/or changes in content size.

How to Monitor Services

Learn how to add a Service Monitor to your monitored server in PA Server Monitor. The Service Monitor watches the same system services that can be seen from the Administrator Tools Services applet (services.msc). If a service is not running, actions are fired (which could notify you and/or restart the service for example). The Restart Service action is typically attached to this monitor.

How to Configure a Dynamic Server List Monitor

PA Server Monitor can use rule-based automatic monitor configuration, which makes configuring monitors for your environment almost effortless. The Dynamic Server List monitors are setup to detect specific server types. In addition, they ignore any servers that are tagged as being blocked from Automatic Configuration (more on that below). The Windows Server rule which will be applied to all computers that are marked as being Windows is shown below.

How to Monitor Memory

In this video, learn how to monitor memory with PA Server Monitor. Set up a monitor and alert to monitor memory usage counters. The Performance Counter Monitor can watch any performance counter that the Windows Perfmon tool can display. This gives you great flexibility since many systems and drivers on the computer report statistics and their current state via the performance counters. CPU and memory usage counters are simulated for Linux/Unix machines via SNMP, and via VMWare interfaces for ESX servers. Monitoring and charting those values is now as easy as with a Windows server.

How to Monitor CPU

In today's video, learn how to monitor CPU with Performance Counter Monitor in PA Server Monitor. The Performance Counter Monitor can watch any performance counter that the Windows Perfmon tool can display. This gives you great flexibility since many systems and drivers on the computer report statistics and their current state via the performance counters. In addition, CPU and memory usage counters are simulated for Linux/Unix machines via SNMP, and via VMWare interfaces for ESX servers. Monitoring and charting those values is now as easy as with a Windows server.

How to Monitor the Event Log for Errors

The Event Log Monitor can monitor one or more event logs on the system, including the standard Application, Security and System logs as well as custom event logs. You have complete flexibility in specifying which types of events are important to you and which types you'd like to ignore. In addition, you can manually add dynamic event sources (event sources that register themselves, add an event, and then unregister themselves).

How to Use Smart Config

Video tutorial on how to use Smart Config in PA Server Monitor. The Smart Config feature is a very useful tool for quickly adding servers or devices to be monitored. You specify one or more servers, and the monitors inspect the servers/devices and create appropriate monitors for each one based on default settings. You can access the feature by clicking the Smart Config button at the top of the Console. You can paste a list of server names or IP addresses into an edit box. You can also press the Discover button to find a list of servers for you (more on that below).

A Checklist for Your Website Launch

Launching your business website is a big step, but, if you don’t know how to launch a website the right way, you’re just wasting time. There are many considerations, including design, functionality, SEO, testing, marketing, analytics, and security. Assuming you’ve designed and built a site that’s ready to go, your website launch checklist should include the following.

Blocking USB Drives For Work From Home Employees

With so many people working from home, the perimeter of corporate data safety has suddenly grown very large, in many cases encompassing employee home computers. Data loss prevention (DLP) was challenging enough already, but now it takes on even more importance. One way that data can escape the corporate network is by getting copied to USB thumb drives. Some companies take the approach of gluing or epoxying the USB ports closed.