Client Server Monitoring software?

[Vyper28]

After being thrown in the hot seat due to a very messy employee termination, I'm tasked with taking over and sorting out a very very messy small business client base. I'm talking, stacks of paper and no decent organization system for client info, client contacts, ect ect. The old tech used his head to store pretty much everything.

I started looking around and noticed that as a general rule, they fixed problems if and when the client phoned in meltdown mode. I've found they have a very old version of whatsupgold, but it's not set up properly.

What software do you guys use to monitor your clients servers? I want to know when something goes down before the client does, so I can already be researching a solutions or fixing a problem when we get the calls. Almost everything at this place is windows server environments, so I would need something that can watch key services on a per-server basis (I.E. some clients use exchange, some don't). Any suggestions?

 

[cyabro]

We use Mobile PC Monitor and you can use a free version on up to 5 computers so I would give it a go and try it out.
www.mobilepcmonitor.com

 

[Vyper28]

Looks pretty nice, does it handle any response control? Like if exchange server crashes can it restart the service for me or is it strictly for monitoring?

I don't think the free part will work for me because I really need to test the functionality of exchange, sql, iis, and vmware monitoring. Maybe I'll give it a try with one of my servers before I commit to hosting in ourselves.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

We use N-Able.

You'll see others here use GFI

 

[Vyper28]

What kind of price point is N-able. They don't give anything on the website except asking me to request a quote. I can shoot off a request when I get in to work tomorrow but I'm curious about the per machine rate?

 

[uprighttech]

We use GFI MAX. It can monitor any services you want, alert you if one fails, try to restart it and alert you after that fails x times, etc, etc. Pricing is very reasonable, but, per our agreement with them, we don't publicly discuss pricing.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What kind of price point is N-able. They don't give anything on the website except asking me to request a quote. I can shoot off a request when I get in to work tomorrow but I'm curious about the per machine rate?

N-Able is one of the pricier ones....so you want to have a lot of clients you'll put on this fairly quickly. There is a minimum purchase. Prices are negotiable. As with most MSP products...prices are hidden...because they're negotiable, and because they work only through resellers (partners)...no end users...so naturally you don't want YOUR clients seeing what YOU pay for this, right?

 

[bits-n-bytes]

Most have trials so you can try them out.
Thats what I do till i find something i like, be sure to try out a few, some have features others dont, and some are a easy peasy install, others rely on configs and setup routines you might not wanna bother with,esp given the prediciment of being "thrown" into IT role.
the almighty oracle the internet is your friend, and dont do anything without backing up and thinking about it overnight.
this last piece of advice is a hard lesson to learn, dont be on step 295 , and forget about step 1, sometimes it's as simple as a loose cord, or just needing a reboot....imho

bNb

 

[e2346437]

After being thrown in the hot seat due to a very messy employee termination, I'm tasked with taking over and sorting out a very very messy small business client base. I'm talking, stacks of paper and no decent organization system for client info, client contacts, ect ect. The old tech used his head to store pretty much everything.

I started looking around and noticed that as a general rule, they fixed problems if and when the client phoned in meltdown mode. I've found they have a very old version of whatsupgold, but it's not set up properly.

What software do you guys use to monitor your clients servers? I want to know when something goes down before the client does, so I can already be researching a solutions or fixing a problem when we get the calls. Almost everything at this place is windows server environments, so I would need something that can watch key services on a per-server basis (I.E. some clients use exchange, some don't). Any suggestions?

+1 on GFI Max. It's truly amazing in what it does for the price you pay, with no up front costs.

Eric

 

[AndyM]

I use N-Able as well. Used to use GFI, but my preference is for N-Able. Easier to set it up with SNMP for minitoring everything.

They used to have free 1 year trials if you were a Microsoft or Intel Partner.

I'd give them a call.

Andy

 

[itech88]

+1 for Mobile PC monitor. This is a great program, we install this on mostly all of our clients servers, we include this monitoring for free to most clients. The cost and performance is great, it's about $12 a year per computer. You can monitor exchange, ad, iis, vmware, sql, hyper-v. We setup several notifications for quite a few services, if one of these services stop we get notified, if the server goes offline, comes back online, ip changes, shuts down, and much more. You will have to try it out and see if you like it and will work for your needs. For the price you can't go wrong much more affordable then GFI if you are looking for monitoring.

 

[Skydivingcows]

It's probably not what you are looking for as it is more manual than automated, but for simply starting a service that recently stopped you could use the following as a batch file. Create a scheduled task to call the program, say every 5 minutes. It creates a simple log file when the service was started and adds to it every time. Perhaps you could change the output to more relevant location say a mapped network drive or possibly a folder that is synced with box on your machine as well? Just change the output to Client1_Spoolerlog.txt for box sync to know which client. Just a suggestion anyway for non-critical services and those that stop instead of hang. Sorry on the late reply. I had to create an account.



FOR %%a IN (Spooler) DO (SC query %%a | FIND /i "RUNNING"
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 goto Spooler)

:continue
FOR %%b IN (Fax) DO (SC query %%b | FIND /i "RUNNING"
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 goto Fax)
goto end

:Spooler
SC start Spooler
echo Spooler started @ %date% %time% >> "%~p0\Spoolerlog.txt"
goto continue

:Fax
SC start Fax
echo Fax started @ %date% %time% >> "%~p0\Faxlog.txt"

:end
Exit