EDITOR'S NOTE: At press time, Fidelia released NetVigil 3.5. This new version includes support for nested service containers, which lets users group together a variety of network elements into a virtual business-service view. For information about the new version, visit the company's Web site.
Back in prehistoric times—that is, before the Internet—every IT organization had a built-in system for monitoring the availability of crucial services: the end users. Administrators could always rely on end users to flood the Help desk with calls as soon as the network hiccupped or stopped responding.
Times have changed, and these days many organizations have a significant number of computing resources that aren't designed to serve the end-user community. Instead, these resources serve business partners or the general public. More often than not, the front end to these outward-facing systems is Web based because the Web has become the de facto standard for businesses that provide applications to other businesses or the public.
Without end users constantly looking at the outward-facing systems, outages and performance problems are more likely to go unnoticed. Therefore, over the past several years, a new class of applications has developed. These applications can monitor complex Web infrastructures for availability and notify the appropriate people or systems when a problem occurs.
The first few generations of Web monitoring applications were often simplistic—usually nothing more than tools that would ping a device and check port 80 for a proper response. If the tools found any anomalies, they sent an alert. Over the past several years, these tools have improved significantly and can now simulate complex Web transactions, record and chart response times, listen for SNMP traps, provide availability statistics, document service level agreement (SLA) violations, escalate notification if mission-critical failures aren't resolved, and much more.
Decision Factors
In the Web monitoring space, you'll find many applications from which to choose. With so many choices, how is an overworked network administrator to decide which product is the best? You need to consider several factors, the first of which is whether you want to manage your Web monitoring solution inhouse or outsource it. An outsourced monitoring solution typically has a quicker implementation time and, in the short term, is cheaper to implement. In addition, monitoring providers typically invest significant resources into making sure that their systems are highly available through redundant Internet connectivity and clustered, load-balanced servers. However, you typically have less flexibility with an outsourced solution than with an inhouse solution. And depending on the monitoring provider's monthly charge, an inhouse solution might be less expensive than an outsourced solution in the long run.
If you decide to manage your Web monitoring solution inhouse, you need to know what's most important to monitor in your Web environment so that you can purchase a package that best meets your organization's monitoring needs. Here are some points to consider:
- Do you need transaction monitoring that's more advanced than simply checking a URL for an appropriate response? For example, do you need to test a series of steps in succession, such as completing an order form, confirming the transaction, and receiving an order number as a response? If so, you need a product that provides complex transaction monitoring.
- Do you need to measure availability and responsiveness from multiple discrete points of presence? If so, you need a product that you can configure in a distributed architecture and that has deployable multiple probe points that can report their findings to a centralized database.
- What types of notification options do you need? For example, do you want the product to notify you through email or a pager? Do you need a product that can display SNMP traps in a management console? Do you need the ability to escalate notifications after an alert condition has existed for too long?
- Basic reporting capabilities are standard in most Web monitoring software, but do you need more sophisticated reports? For example, do you need availability reports or responsiveness reports (e.g., a report showing how quickly a page is loaded or a transaction is processed)? Do you want the system to automatically create and distribute reports? Do you need reports that document SLA violations?
- In addition to monitoring Web transactions and server or network availability, do you want to be able to monitor system-level health parameters, such as CPU, disk, and memory usage?
The easy answer to these questions is to simply say, "Yes, I'd like the package to provide all these services and capabilities." With that in mind, let's take a look at a handful of today's leading products: RGE's IPSentry 4.5, Fidelia's NetVigil, Freshwater Software's SiteScope 7.6, Visualware's VisualPulse 3.0, and Ipswitch's WhatsUp Gold 8.0. All these products handle the basic functions—periodic polling, notifications, and reporting—but that's where the similarities end. Each package brings different strengths to the table.