Server Monitoring

OpManager doesn't have any specific requirements for server monitoring. Servers are included in OpManager's regular device-based license. You can monitor unlimited metrics for each server in your license, including: uptime, performance, hardware, and the connected interfaces.

To discover, identify, classify, and monitor servers, OpManage uses network protocols like

• SNMP
• WMI
• CLI
• PrismAPI

You have to provide credentials for the respective servers for OpManager to reach and collect data from the servers. Alternatively, you can install a lightweight monitoring agent.

OpManager lets you set up monitoring intervals ranging from 30 seconds to one hour or more for your devices. Depending upon the criticality of the server device, you can choose the right monitoring interval.

For instance, if your server is hosting a user-facing service that requires high availability and performance, you can monitor the server at 30 second intervals. This gives you a better chance to detect issues faster.

You also have to keep in mind that smaller monitoring intervals can increase the load on OpManager's monitoring server. If you add more than the recommended amount of low intervals, performance can be impacted.

OpManager also has an option to track specific metrics at 1-second intervals. These real-time 'heart beat' monitors can be set up in dashboards to track mission-critical resources.

After discovering your devices, OpManager classifies them and creates a list of dedicated performance metrics based on the type of the server and the vendor. You enable monitoring for these metrics in bulk from a device template list, or individually, from the device's dedicated 'snapshot' page. Once enabled, you can set up alarm thresholds. Based on the type of metric, you can set up various threshold conditions (Greater than, lesser than, equal to, etc.)

There are three levels of alarm severities for which you can set thresholds:

• Attention
• Trouble
• Critical
• You also have a rearm value that can be used to reset an alarm as 'clear'.

OpManager uses machine learning to automate the process of setting up alarms for various performance metrics. Adaptive thresholds use algorithms to predict the 'normal' or 'expected' value for each metric. This is then set as thresholds for each metric and updated every hour automatically.

Adaptive thresholds needs up to 14 days of prior performance data to set alarms accurately, and as data collection continues, the accuracy increases. Given enough training data and time, adaptive thresholds can reach an accuracy of up to 90 - 95%.

When it comes to servers OpManager can also monitor things like:

• Files and folders:Metrics like folder/file size, age, existence, and the presence of specific strings within files.
• URLs:Track the availability and check for specific strings.
• You can also create custom scripts using Perl, VB script, Powershell script, Shell script, etc and monitor specific metrics from your server devices.

Rack views and datacenter floor views are server visualization tools used to track the location, uptime, and health of datacenter servers.

A rack view is a simulation of a server rack within which you can drag and drop server devices. Once racks are built, you can add them to a datacenter floor view. You can also add other things like walls and walkways in the floor view.

Once built, you have a visualization of your datacenter where each server can be tracked with a number on the rack and an alapha-numeric grid on the floor. So, if you want to direct your technician to a specific server, you can just tell them the exact location from the datacenter floor view. These floor views can also be rendered in 2D or 3D.

OpManager is versatile a server monitoring tool offering extensive monitoring features.

For home servers:You can use OpManager's standard or free edition to track uptime and basic performance metrics like CPU and memory.

For datacenter servers:You can use OpManager's professional or enterprise edition to ensure 99.999 percent availability, fault resilience, and automated remediation. You get visibility into server infrastructure, hardware, hosted VMs, application performance, and service delivery architectures from the network end to the application end.

OpManager is preferred by IT admins around the world for its simplicity, extensive feature offering, and affordable pricing.

• OpManager monitors 300+ dedicated performance metrics for 130+ server vendors, including physical and virtual servers, domain controllers, exchange servers, MS SQL, and more.
• Monitoring and licensing is intuitive and has little to no learning curve.
• Most importantly, OpManager's server monitoring features are included with its network performance monitoring feature sets and don't require additional licensing. This makes server monitoring with OpManager extremely cost-effective compared to other tools.