BACKGROUND

Systems monitoring is more than than just having the ability to see current problematic conditions withing your network infrastructure. Monitoring lends a degree of foresight which allows administrators to anticipate undesirable conditions, and thus mitigate these issues before they become larger and ultimately unmanageable. From the managerial perspective, monitoring allows organizations to make better analytical assessments of current needs, and to ensure customer service levels are in fact being met.

TECHNOLOGY

Conventional monitoring systems often function based on a system of periodic checks to destination host systems. These checks are often ICMP “pings” which send small control messages to your servers or network devices, and alert administrators if responses aren't received in a timely manner.

Slightly more sophisticated monitoring systems take the “ping”  concept one step further by implementing  “service checks.” In essence this is where your monitoring server makes an outbound connection to one of the target servers on a predefined port, such as port 80 (HTTP) or port 25 (SMTP).  The service check itself typically knows only enough to ascertain if the destination server port is open or closed, and returns a status message based on the outcome of the check.

Based on proven Nagios systems monitoring technology, Atomic Fission's network monitoring solution takes the service-check approach to a new level by introducing “service-aware” plug-ins. Rather than simply checking if port 25 (SMTP) is open, our monitoring system will send an application-specific command, such as an SMTP “HELO”, to ensure your SMTP port is not merely open but actually functioning correctly. Likewise, should an administrator wish to monitor port 80 (HTTP), our system would send an HTTP-specific command (such as “GET / HTTP/1.0”) and wait for an appropriate response from your web server.  Listed below are just a few of the services currently supported by Atomic Fission monitoring:

 

OBJECT-ORIENTED MANAGEMENT

Everything within the Atomic Fission monitoring system is an object. As as consequence, administrators may group together similar/related services to build “global views” of the network services offered by your organization. For example, administrators may want to have a quick glance at all of the MTA mail queues, across all servers throughout the organization:

Once servers (and their associated services) are added to your inventory, combining services and other various properties of monitored objects into “service groups” is a quite easy, and lends a more human-friendly/logical view to the overall status of your network. 

HIERACHIAL ADMINSTRATION

Several levels of administration exist, allowing organizations to create lower-level “read-only” managers, administrators who may make changes to hosts and services, and super administrators who have full control over all aspects of the system. Furthermore, customers may be broken down into various “contact groups” in order to ensure only relevant individuals are notified should service problems ensue.