NetGuard
Southern DataCorp's monitoring solution, NetGuard, takes service monitoring to the next level.
Traditional monitoring solutions monitor services to ensure that a server's applications are simply responding to user requests. However, today's complex hosting solutions demand a higher caliber monitoring capability and a proactive approach. Critical system resources such as CPU, RAM and disk usage must be properly monitored, but most importantly a customer's application must be functioning properly. Southern DataCorp's solution covers service, customer application, resource and server application monitoring.
Service Monitoring
Service monitoring is the means by which basic services are monitored for operation.
An example would be monitoring HTTP (port 80) of a server to ensure that the web server application is running. However, these tests do not reflect what the web server application is returning. It is entirely possible for a service to be responding properly, but there may be other issues preventing a website from working properly. This is where application monitoring comes into play.
Resource Monitoring
Monitoring a system's resources is crucial to ensuring that a system does not experience a critical shortage of resources.
- A system short on RAM might still function, but it may be functioning much slower than what is tolerable.
- Another typical problem is a stray DLLHOST.EXE process on an IIS 5.0 based server may begin to consume all the CPU cycles on a machine. All other monitoring may remain normal, but Southern DataCorp's monitoring system would alert Southern DataCorp to this problem
Application Monitoring Modules
Southern DataCorp is committed to constant development of modules that are specific to popular server applications. These modules are designed to take the service monitoring component to the next level. An example is Southern DataCorp's email relay module. With this module Southern DataCorp is able to test that a mail server is able to perform the following:
- POP3
- SMTP
- DNS resolution
- Local and remote message delivery
Typical monitoring may be able to test the first two items but the remaining items are only testable if the entire mail send/receive process is tested. Also, any in-between components such as network, spam/anti-virus filtering software, etc are also tested. This in-depth testing allows Southern DataCorp to be confident that a customer's entire solution is working, not just the pieces.
Southern DataCorp's application monitoring modules include, but not limited to:
- Microsoft SQL Server 2000
- MySQL
- Microsoft Exchange 2000
- Microsoft ASP/ODBC
- Microsoft .NET
|
