Heroix Longitude 2.0.1

Heroix Longitude monitors the performance and availability of Windows and Linux systems and applications. Heroix touts its agentless monitoring architecture, which makes extensive use of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) providers on Windows systems, as well as queryable protocols on both Windows and Linux systems. Longitude has an extensive feature set, including role-based security, a SAP database that automatically consolidates older data, and powerful reporting and alerting systems. Longitude runs on Windows Server 2003 and several versions of Linux, and it includes out-of-box support for common applications.

Longitude implements a distributed architecture. A Statistics server collects data from monitored systems and relays it to the Longitude Management Server. Using a Web-based UI (WebUI), administrators connect to the management server to configure monitoring, alerting, and reporting. In my tests, designating systems and applications to monitor was easy. Longitude's thoughtfully prepared Getting Started guide clearly explains what to do when a system or application requires changes to its default configuration.

Generally speaking, Longitude collects data from monitored applications and generates alerts based on default or custom rules. Longitude makes this data useful to you in several ways. I used the customizable Event Monitor display to show the current state of each monitored application. I created a custom Service Level Agreement Dashboard to show an IIS server's compliance with performance and availability baselines I configured. And I created consolidated graphical reports, which Longitude dutifully emailed to me each day. Despite Longitude's high level of customization opportunity, a little tweaking would improve the WebUI's ease of use.

I have room for only this milehigh view of Longitude. Many more features await your discovery. Suffice it to say, Heroix has found many ways to give administrators both ease of use and powerful flexibility to meet individual needs. If you need improved application monitoring, check out this many-faceted product.

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