Two top challenges Windows admins face are 1) Improve service delivery—small issues can snowball and finding the problem fast is important, and 2) Do more with fewer people—intensive manual tasks can tie up your staff, says Steve Lafferty, VP of marketing at Prism Microsystems. That’s when diagnostic tools, such as logs, become important.
“Log management used to be just good IT behavior,” says Lafferty. But now, “Even at fairly large companies, if you don’t have a compliance mandate, you can’t persuade the CEO to buy a log management solution. It’s hard to express to someone who hasn’t done it what log management is like—it’s grubby, nasty work. People would use their logs more if they had a solution to help them. But many don’t have the budget to cover a full log management program.”
So Prism Microsystems created a free log search utility, EventTracker PULSE. Built for the sys admin who needs to troubleshoot or do forensics discovery, EventTracker PULSE offers limitless collection and archiving of log data, including real-time collection of log data from Windows servers and workstations, as well as collection from UNIX systems, Cisco devices, software apps, and syslog sources. The utility compresses and secures log data for storage, and lets you search log data by using a Google-like interface. Clicking within a search lets you access Prism Microsystems’ extensive knowledge base of over 20,000 event logs to research and find an answer. Based on the EventTracker architecture, EventTracker PULSE can be configured for Windows machines from a central console and offers full-featured log search and agentless and agented collection. With PULSE, “the days of constant firefighting are over,” Lafferty says. “It’s a killer tool.” Visit Prism Microsystems’ website for more info.