Comprehensive Physical Server Monitoring
PHD Virtual Monitor's Windows & Linux Agent provides deep monitoring capabilities to enable administrators the ability to clearly track actions taking place in their environment. PHD Virtual's agent provides administrators server health and performance data for maximum visibility. This agent may be deployed on virtual machines, with no limitations, on hosts running VMware's full family of virtualization products, Citrix XenServer & Desktop, and Microsoft Hyper-V. PHD Virtual's Windows Agent runs on all Windows operating systems from NT SP4 to Windows 2008 Server including 64-bit versions of Windows systems. Linux Servers including Debian, Fedora, SCO-Unixware, Solaris, HP-UX, Ubuntu, Suse, RedHat, and CentOS are supported with a Java based agent.
What We Monitor
CounterWatch - Performance Counter Monitoring
CounterWatch for Windows monitors the performance of your Windows servers via the available performance counters installed with Windows and all Microsoft applications, and for various 3rd party applications that take advantage of the performance counter option in Windows. Performance Counters are available for all aspects of the hardware, including CPU, Disk, Memory, and Network, and software applications. Administrators can create their own custom CounterWatch report collection set/templates to monitor, analyze, diagnose & report, and make recommendations for improving performance and solving operational problems. Additionally, administrators can optionally have PHD Virtual Monitor use this comprehensive performance data to trigger alerts if specified thresholds are exceeded, and you can generate consolidated performance reports, or dynamic graphs. All CounterWatch data is logged and can be reported to Excel via a CSV file to provide baseline and trending data.
CounterWatch for Linux/Unix monitors CPU utilization and Load Average counters. All of the various CounterWatch features available for Windows CounterWatch are also available for these Linux/Unix Counters including monitoring and alerting for exceeding thresholds, for creating dynamic graphs, and for baseline and trend reports.
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EventLogWatch - Real-Time Event Log Monitoring and Archive Log Management
EventLogWatch monitors Windows servers in real-time for entries into all the Microsoft Event Logs as well as 3rd party Custom Event Logs. The new EVTX Event Log formats introduced with Windows Server 2008 is supported as well as the 'classic' EVT Event Log format for all earlier Windows versions. This provides administrators with the ability to monitor real-time virtually any and every event of significance that occurs in Windows server operations. You can choose to be Critical events can be set to alert necessary personnel for immediate action and response.
When Windows auditing is enabled, administrators can monitor real-time for a variety of auditing events to the Security Event Log to significantly increase your server security monitoring. These types of security events include a variety of events for Logon, Account Management, Privilege Use, and Policy Change actions.
A powerful Event Log Viewer is provided to display user-selected events based on easily defined filters for:
- Events in the Archived Event Log files
- Events in Monitor's database that were captured with real-time EventLog Watches
- Events in the actual current Event Log files
Administrators can filter the monitoring and viewing of Event Log data by Log and Event types, as well as filter based on Event Source, Event IDs, Event Category, and User Name or substring in the Event Descriptions. Filters can be saved and then easily loaded into the viewer again where you have the option to Print, Email, or Export to a CSV file.
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ProcessWatch - Real-Time Process Monitoring
ProcessWatch monitors selected Windows & Linux processes to make sure they are running; and, if necessary, to identify 'rogue' processes that should not be running. PHD Virtual Monitor also has the capacity to restart the processes not running, or terminate the 'rogue' processes that are running. CPU & Memory utilization thresholds for running processes can be specified with correlating alerts set if those thresholds are exceeded; optionally ProcessWatch also has the ability to terminate processes that exceed thresholds. All ProcessWatch alerts are logged to PHD Virtual Monitor's database, and you can view the history of ProcessWatch alerts in PHD Virtual Monitor's "Alert Notifications" report.
WinServicesWatch - Real-Time Services Monitoring
WinServicesWatch monitors selected Windows services to make sure they are running. Alert notifications can be defined to alert when critical Windows services are not running, including services that are 'hung' during startup, which PHD Virtual Monitor can be set to automatically restart. All service failures are logged to PHD Virtual Monitor's database, where administrators and managers can view the history of service failures using PHD Virtual Monitor's "Alert Notifications" report.
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FileWatch - Real-Time Monitoring of Files and Folders/Subfolders
FileWatch enables administrators to monitor select Windows & Linux desktop files, folders and groups of files & folders for additions and deletions. PHD Virtual Monitor's alert notification options can be set to alert when watched files or folders have met one of the optional conditions specified. FileWatch's flexibility enables administrators and compliance officers to monitor 3rd party application log text files, watch for "hacked" files that should not have changed, or monitor key files that you expect to change and be updated on a regular basis. And when you have appropriate Windows auditing enabled, you can know not only what, when, and where but also WHO caused the FileWatch alert.
Monitor Specified Folders for:
- Creation and Deletion
- Changes Including files added, deleted, or changed
- Subfolder creation and deletion
- Exceeding a maximum size for all the combined files in the folder
- Exceeding a maximum file count of files in the folder
- Unchanged for a specified time period
- Exclude files and subfolders from the monitoring
Monitor Specified Files for:
- Creation and Deletion
- Changes in size and/or modified Date/Time
- Exceeding a maximum size C
- Containing new text substring content
Monitor Sets of Files Matching a Wild-card Specification for:
- Addition and Deletion to the set
- Changes in size and/or modified Date/Time of any file in the set
- Combined files in the set or individual files in the set exceeding a maximum size
- Containing new text substring content
- All files or individual files in the set unchanged for a specified time period
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Logical Drive, Physical Memory, and Swap/Page File Monitoring
For Logical Drive, Physical Memory, and Swap/Page File monitoring, Linux/Unix & Windows administrators can easily enable an alert notification to be notified when available Logical Drive Free Space, Available Physical Memory or Swap/Page File Free Space drops below a defined threshold.
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CustomWatch - Extensible Monitoring Programming Platform
CustomWatch provides the ability to extend monitoring of your Windows servers by executing any Windows program, command, script, or batch file executable for remediation that an administrator specifies. PHD Virtual Monitor runs the executable periodically on the monitored desktop according to a specified schedule. Use the powerful CustomWatch to create your own custom monitors but also use CustomWatch as a central Windows Job Scheduler, and easily manage the scheduled execution of all your jobs across all servers from the central PHD Virtual Monitor dashboard.
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Registry, HW Configuration & Server Availability, and Reboot Monitoring
With PHD Virtual Monitor's RegistryWatch, there are any number of monitoring possibilities for critical and important data changes due to the richness of the information maintained in the Registry, both hardware and software. For example, administrators can be alerted when any software is added or removed from a server simply by monitoring a specific Registry Subkey.
Registry & Hardware Configuration monitoring enables administrators to be alerted when hardware configuration changes are detected, or when select Registry Key/Value additions, changes, or deletions are detected. The Hardware configuration of a server is monitored via the WMI information that the Agent tracks, and can detect when changes occur in the hardware configuration.
Linux/Unix & WIndows Server Availability & Reboot Check, can be set to alert administrators when a monitored server reboot/restart event is detected, and when the server is detected as down and not available.
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User Logon/Logoff Monitoring
Monitor thousands of servers from one or more distributed Agents via "agentless" monitoring for interactive User Logon/Logoff status and reporting. You can designate multiple Agents to accomplish this task and thus handle a large population of workstations. Each Agent can handle monitoring of up to 500 servers/workstations for this interactive User Logon/Logoff activity. This give PHD Virtual Monitor the scalability to monitor up to 10,000 servers while deploying only 20 agents.
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Reporting
Feature-rich reporting and analysis tools let you perform real-time and historical assessments of your servers/workstations and network devices, right down to the smallest level of detail. Create custom CounterWatch reports for monitoring and analyzing any performance counters. All reports are generated in HTML for easy distribution and viewing. There are Inventory reports that provide summary information about the servers, workstations and desktops being monitored. And there are ServerWatch reports with features that include the ability to generate a consolidated report on server and services availability and response times for any time period. All reports can be executed manually, or scheduled for automatic, periodic report analysis with complete flexibility in when and what is reported. The automatic reports can be emailed to one or more recipients.
With Windows & SNMP CounterWatch, Active Graphing lets you watch network and system performance levels in real time. Choose from over 25 supported graph types or customize the graphs to display the way you want them to. Display multiple graphs simultaneously, and friendly but sophisticated VCR-like controls let you forward, reverse, fast forward/reverse and stop for optimized visual display and examination. Save your defined Graphs and reopen them at any time to view the selected counters for any time period. Multiple administrators can even view or share the same graph. Changes made by one are automatically applied to the others. In addition, this data is stored in a central database for detailed analysis and reporting. CounterWatch reports provide an intelligent Performance Wizard that identifies performance bottlenecks and recommends a strategy for enhancing performance. This can save countless unnecessary equipment upgrades by helping you maximize the efficiency of the systems already in place.
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Managed Service Providers & Distributed Enterprises
Managed Service Providers and distributed enterprises can manage remote infrastructures at customer locations and branch offices by leveraging PHD Virtual Monitor's encrypted Agent connection for logging and alert notification processing
- For MSPs, support multiple clients in a single, scalable central PHD Virtual Monitor Server, with optional separate security settings based on client login and limited to viewing only the clients' servers, workstations, devices and associated Watches on the various console displays.
- For Medium-Enterprise Businesses, support multiple administrators and analysts, with optional security settings based on their Windows login and limited to viewing only their responsible servers, workstations, devices and associated Watches on the various console displays.
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