The tools presented here help to manage and monitor various levels of quality relating to the uptime and security of servers. These tools all have different features but they should tested in order to optimize the server in terms of functionality and reliability.

Webmetrics GlobalWatch

GlobalWatch is an interactive tool that allows you to monitor a variety of web applications and sites. It digs deep into the root of the problem and quickly identifies and diagnoses any downtime errors, and poor performance levels in detail reports and customizable alerts. With this tool you’ll always be informed of any of your websites irregular performance.

Pingdom

Pingdom ensures that your website is accessible and responds accordingly consistently. It’s able to monitor uptime, various levels of performance, multiple applications, FTP servers, email servers and any application that’s accessible from the Internet. Pingdom provides you with detailed email and SMS alerts if anything is wrong. It also lets you read results in the form of charts and tables that are extremely legible. This tool is also available as an iPhone application.

McAfee Secure

McAfee Secure strategically monitors any and all of your severs that may be at a potential security risk. This powerful tool will protect your servers against security breaches, the end-users from being subject to identity theft, credit card frauds, viruses, scams, and your dose of annoying spam. Your site will be in good hands since McAfee will test it and certify it on a daily basis. McAfee currently monitors and certifies over 80,000 websites ranging from a wide scope of business sizes and structures.

Nimsoft Monitoring Solutions (NMS)

NMS actively monitors your servers and any applications found on the servers. Everything from CPU to memory, server resources, even logs and more are accurately monitored and recorded. Being quick and easy to install is just the beginning, NMS is also a lightweight application that has the power to monitor thousands of servers at a time. NMS is also very easy to use, alerts and details are always clear, and it also visually shows you your servers interconnected, color-coded indicators, and the response times from server-to-server. It’s a great choice no matter the size of your servers.

Simple Server Monitor

Simple Server seems to understand the importance of having a valuable application that can effectively monitor your servers. It’s designed for those on a small budget and offers a free 30-day trial. Useful features such as the monitoring of uptimes, performance levels, and FTP/HTTP/POP/IMAP servers (to name a few) are included. It’s ideal for those who wish to receive updates and alerts within their desktop in the form of pop-up messages, SMS format, and charts.

Solarwinds Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

Orion’s NPM tool monitors all of your servers and ensures that their running without any problems every minute of the day. It also monitors all of your routers, switches and wireless access points within your network as well. It comes with a fairly easy set-up and the support of 100’s of expert network engineers. It’s extremely easy to use and Orion can be up and running in less than an hour right after it’s been downloaded!

ENVIROMUX Server Environment Monitoring System

Nagios hit the ball out of the park when they developed powerful tool that monitors your servers temperature, humidity, liquid presence, motion, intrusion and vibration all to ensure that your server’s in tip-top operating capacity. You’re able to create custom alarm signals, monitor and manage security conditions over IP, monitor/ping up to 64 IP network devices, and manage your servers using a single attractive web interface for all systems connected.

SiteUptime

SiteUptime works like clock-work by monitoring your website 24/7 365 days a year. SU provides free and advanced remote monitoring services that notifies you when your servers are down via email and or SMS text messaging. This will ensure that the errors are sent to you with priority and speed so that you’re able to quickly fix any problems with your connections. SU allows you to view detailed statistics about your website’s availability and server response times anytime you’d like. Overall, it’s a very useful multiple monitoring tool for servers that runs tests on specific intervals (every couple seconds).

Further Resources

• How to Easily Monitor your Web Server Using PHP
• Setp-by-Step: Monitoring and tuning your IIS Web servers
• Optimizing Apache Server Performance
• How to Monitor Server Availability

Please feel free to add a comment to this post, by clicking on title. Thank you.

Exchange Server is a widely used corporate email, calendar and messaging server, and is a separate piece of software installed in addition to Windows Server. Now,  Snow Leopard has built-in support for Exchange Server 2007.  The compatibility requirements are Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Update Rollup 4.

The auto-setup of this will require the enabling of the Auto-discovery feature of Microsoft Exchange Server.

1. Setting up Mail

For easy configuration of Exchange 2007 accounts, your exchange server will need to have Auto-discovery enabled (check this with your IT department). If not, you’ll need to get the server details and enter them manually. First open Mail, then go to Mail > Preferences.

2. Add an Exchange account

Click the Accounts toolbar icon, then + to add an account, as you would any other account.

3. Enter your details

Next, enter your name as it should appear in the From column in the recipient’s email. Include the company name and your job title and/or department if necessary.

4. Enter your Exchange Server details

If Auto-discovery is enabled the server details will populate the appropriate fields in the account setup wizard; if not, the Incoming Mail Server sheet will appear. Choose Exchange 2007 from the Account Type popup menu.

In the steps that follow you’ll be setting up a client access server: start by entering a server description (optional) and your Exchange user name and password.

To set up iCal and Address Book to access Exchange calendar and contacts automatically, select one or both of those options. Click Continue, and choose whether or not you want to use SSL for incoming mail (your IT department will have told you this).

5. Confirm your Exchange Server setup

The Account Summary sheet will appear: this is your final chance to check the details you’ve entered before you create your Exchange account. If you want to check the server for messages, contacts and appointments as soon as the account is created, select Take account online by ticking the checkbox. Click Create.

6. Exploring the alternatives

For those of you who aren’t planning to upgrade to Snow Leopard just yet (perhaps you still have PowerPC Macs in your office), there is another way of accessing Exchange Server from your Mac: install the standard edition of Microsoft Office 2008 (the Home and Student Edition doesn’t have Exchange support).

Admittedly, at around £340 it isn’t the cheapest solution, but if you’re on Mac OS 10.4.9 or later, and your Macs have a minimum of 500MHz or faster G4 processors, then this might be the solution for you.

Another reason for going down this route might be that your server still has an earlier version of Exchange Server installed: Microsoft specifies Exchange Server 2000 or better for Office 2008. See here for more details.

Whichever solution you choose, there’s no longer any justification for the accusation that Macs have no place in the corporate world. With the incorporation of Exchange support, Snow Leopard has managed the difficult feat of putting Macs in the heart of the workplace.

Please feel free to add you comments to this post, thank you.

For any database administrator, the database management tools make tasks related to maintaining relational databases efficient. Prior to the popularity of these tools, most DBA’s had to use the command line to create, edit, and delete databases. You can read below the top five most popular/most voted for database management tools.

5. Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

For Microsoft SQL Server database admins, there probably isn’t a better tool out there than Miscosoft’s freeware app (downloadable at $0 dollars on the Microsoft site), SQL Server Management Studio. SQL Server Management Studio has a GUI that Windows OS users will find straightforward, and it has an innovative feature called Object Explorer that lets you browse, select, and perform tasks on database objects. It’s the only tool you need for creating and administering Microsoft SQL Server databases.

4. Sequel Pro

For Mac OS users, Sequel Pro–an open source MySQL database management front-end tool–is a top pick. It has a slick and intuitive GUI that keeps it barebones so that you can easily navigate the app. To get started with Sequel Pro, make sure to check out their docs page (but a word of caution, the docs is still under development at this time).

3. SQLyog

SQLyog is a GUI administration tool for MySQL developed by Indian-based software company, Webyog. It comes in two flavors: Enterprise (with the price ranging from $99 to $999) and the pared down Free Community version; to see the differences, check out the feature comparison table. SQLyog’s list of features is outstanding and unfathomable – a top-notch tool for professional database admins.

2. Navicat for MySQL

Navicat for MySQL is part of the family of cross-platform (Windows/Mac/Linux) relational database management tools created by PremiumSoft. It has a visual query builder for creating complex database queries in a snap, import/export/backup tools for your databases, a report builder for printing out db queries that the boss can understand, a task scheduling assistant for scheduled execution of jobs, and much more.

Navicat also produces front-ends for Oracle and PostgreSQL. Navicat products have a Lite version (non-commercial) and a Premium version; check out the feature matrix to see the difference in features of both versions.

1. phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin, the most popularly voted database management tool by you (and where my vote would have gone), is an open source web-based MySQL manager. Don’t let it’s simple and aesthetically-challenged GUI fool you, phpMyAdmin packs a punch: you can create/manage databases, tables, db users, optimize and check for errors in your db tables, run queries, export/import data in plenty of file formats, and much more; couple all of that with ease of installation and you’ve got yourself a true winner.

To learn more about phpMyAdmin, you should consider getting the Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 for Effective MySQL Managementbook by Packt Publishing.

About the Author

Jacob Gube a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development.

Please feel free to add a comment to this post, by clicking on title. Thank you.

When you have a website or a network, it’s helpful to be aware of any issues as soon as they occur. There are open source and freeware server/network monitoring tools that will supervise your infrastructure for any issues that may arise. These tools are meant to aid you in avoiding being taken offline and evaluating if your resource needs has outgrown your infrastructure.

In this article, we review our top 10 server/network monitoring tools. You will see a variety of server applications here so that you might find the tool (or tools) for your needs.

1. Monit

Monit not only monitors your server, but also attempts to remedy problems by taking predefined actions for certain situations. For example, if your database server crashes, Monit can automatically restart the service if this is the action that you want to take (hint: it usually is).

If you have more than one server that you need to monitor, then you can use M/Monit- an extended version of Monit that provides a simple way to monitor multiple machines.

There’s also an iPhone app available for M/Monit to help you conveniently check on your network without lugging around a laptop around.

2. Ganglia

When you have a cluster of machines, it’s difficult to see how the whole cluster is doing all at once. Ganglia, instead, presents an overview of the whole cluster. This is a great tool to have set up when you’re working with a server cluster; with that said, it may be overkill for single-machine set-ups.

3. Munin

Munin monitors and graphs system performance metrics. It can automatically produce daily/weekly/monthly/yearly performance graphs and reports of many important metrics. It comes with the ability to monitor core system resources, such as memory, disk space, CPU usage, server applications such as MySQL, Apache, and Squid.

One of Munin’s greatest strengths is how simple it is to extend. With just a few lines of code, you can write a plugin to monitor almost anything. Being so easy to extend means that Munin is also a good choice for graphing things unrelated to server performance, such as the number of user signups or website popularity.

4. Cacti

Cacti is similar to Munin in many ways. What is makes Cacti different though–and where it stands out in relation to Munin–is that it allows you to resize your graphs and view data for an arbitrary range. Whereas Munin has fixed daily, weekly, monthly and yearly graphs (unless you write a custom extension), Cacti lets you view your data however you want to: last 2 hours, last 4 days, last 6 months, out of the box. You can even visually select and zoom into regions on your graphs.

5. Nagios

Nagios is “the industry standard in IT infrastructure monitoring,”–well, at least that’s what it says on their website. Nagios can be complicated to install and configure, but its wealth of features are unmatched by any tool out in the market and is geared for the experienced IT network administrator. Nagios supports monitoring of multiple hosts and can send out alerts via email, pager (if you still use this ancient technology) or SMS/text messaging. Like Monit, it can also be configured to automatically respond to problems.

6. Zabbix

Zabbix is a feature-packed monitoring tool. It has great visualization support including user-defined views, zooming, and mapping. It can send out alerts via email, SMS or instant message. It also provides audible alerts, which can be useful when you’re physically near the monitoring machine.

7. Observer

Observer is geared towards Linux, BSD and Cisco networks. It supports auto discovery of your network infrastructure, finding the networks that you’re likely interested in monitoring; this feature can be compared to how your Wi-Fi software automatically finds signals in range that you can jack into. Observer provides detailed graphs, and can be set up alongside Nagios to provide alerts.

8. Zenoss

Zenoss is an open source version of the commercial server monitoring tool Zenoss Enterprise, written entirely in Python. It supports the Nagios plugin format, so many existing Nagios plugins can be used in Zenoss. One of the main highlights of Zenoss is its powerful yet simple to use user interface.

9. Collectd

Collectd is similar to Munin and Cacti in that it focuses on graphing system metrics. Where it excels in is that it is designed specifically for performance and portability; this ultimately means it’s great on rugged systems, low-end systems, and embedded systems. Being designed for performance and low-system resource use means that Collectd can gather data every 10 seconds without interfering with your server processes, providing extremely high-resolution statistics. You can write extensions for it in C, Perl or Java.

10. Argus

Argus focuses on the monitoring of network services, and supports IPv4 and IPv6. It has a nice alert escalation procedure: after sending out an alert and the problem still isn’t resolved within a fixed amount of time (because the systems admin is at home enjoying his sleep), another alert will be sent out to someone else.

Author: Ben Dowling

Please feel free to add a comment to this post, by clicking on title. Thank you.

In this post we share several freeware and open source tools available for download to help you harness the power of multi-display set ups and get you up and running quickly on multi-monitor computer set-ups.

Synergy

Synergy is an open source software application that lets users of multi-monitor workstations share a mouse and keyboard between several displays. All you have to do is move the mouse cursor off the edge of one display to have it on another adjacent display. It also creates a single virtual clipboard to allow the copy and pasting across the many displays. With Synergy comes a handy module for synchronizing your screensavers across multiple displays so that they run in tandem. If there is a password required after screensaver mode, you only have to type in the password into one monitor to activate all the others. There is also a fork of Synergy called Synergy+ that you can check out on Google Code.

Input Director

Input Director grants you the ability to use a single keyboard and mouse on a multi-computer set up, making it the ideal solution for networked computers, a common situation where professionals have more than one computer (such as a desktop and laptop). All you have to do is move the pointer off the edge of the display and it appears on the adjacent monitor on that side, making it the active monitor.

UltraMon

UltraMon is a great tool for multi-display computer configurations that can support up to 10 monitors. It allows you to set custom features for each monitor such as resolution, wallpaper, and taskbar settings. UltraMon allows for the moving of running programs from the primary display to the secondary (and vice versa). Each of the monitors will have their own taskbar showing you the applications running on them. You can predefine and save monitor settings, as well as position where a program opens from the shortcut menu to help speed up your workflow. It also has a feature for easily turning off secondary monitors to conserve electricity consumption when you don’t need them and to reduce distraction when they’re not in use.

Multi Monitor Mouse (M³)

This app saves you from the hassle of having to drag your mouse off the desk as you try to get to the farthest monitor in a multi monitor environment. It immediately warps your cursor across the borders of the display on demand and runs in the background to avoid taxing the systems resources. It is accessible from the system tray where you can change the settings at will. It also speeds up mouse targeting by an estimated 30%.

MultiMon Taskbar

MultiMon Taskbar lets you have unique taskbars for each monitor, helping you to easily organize your applications across multiple computer screens. It has a move-to-monitor button accessible from all Windows programs for convenience and ease of movement from one monitor to another. In addition, MultiMon has a clipboard extender module for synchronizing your clipboards across multiple displays, making copy and pasting between networked computers a breeze.

About the Author
John Urban is a sophmore at UCLA and currently majoring in computer science.

Please feel free to add a comment to this post, by clicking on title. Thank you.

The monthly Apple bible has finally been given a long-awaited internet makeover and to celebrate that it has released a PDF version of its celebrated 200 unmissable Mac tips.

Graham Barlow, the editor of the magazine, says: “It’s not just a lick of paint we’ve given the site, either; it’s a ground-up rebuild, hosted on a proper, modern back-end that will let us grow and evolve the site in exciting ways over the next few years.

Please feel free to add you comments to this post, thank you.