Submitted by HealthMan

• Keep an eye on nearly every aspect of your system with 60 different checks for system and network (connectivity, database, e-mail, performance, SQL Server, Exchange, and others).
• Decide how you will be alerted about problems and what actions should be taken (send e-mail, sms, open a ticket, launch a script).
• Define suspend/shutdown intervals for your workstations and have HealthMonitor turn them off when they are not used
• Track power savings over time and increase your system energy efficiency

HealthMonitor

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A while back, I reviewed SpeedFan, which is a nice CPU temperature monitoring tool. Real Temp is a similar utility, but it is more focused on measuring processor temperature than SpeedFan, which has quite a few other functions. I somehow like Real Temp better, although I miss a hard disk temperature monitoring feature.

Real Temp is a standalone tool that is useful if you want to measure the CPU temperature on a server quickly because you don’t have to install the program. Real Temp can display the temperatures of all CPU cores and the GPU (graphics processing unit) separately in the systray. This can be useful if you have to stress your CPU for some time, and want to stay informed about the temperatures at all times.

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It’s summertime in the northern hemisphere, and the high outdoor temperatures can make your computers sweat as well. SpeedFan is a free tool that allows you to monitor the temperature of various hardware components and take measures if certain limits are reached. The latter feature is also useful for servers.

SpeedFan monitors the temperature of processor cores, GPUs (Graphical Processing Units), and hard disks. It can also measure motherboard voltages and the speed (in RPM) of your CPU fan, chassis fan, and power fan.

Measuring the voltages and fan speed didn’t work on my Dell laptop using Vista x64, even though, SpeedFan officially supports 64-bit systems with signed drivers. Monitoring the hard disk temperature only worked after I started the tool as administrator.

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Sysinternals Process Monitor (Procmon) is one my favorite free tools. Microsoft recently released version 2.5, and just a few days ago Procmon 2.6 fixed a bug on Windows 7. I had a quick look at the new features. I just added this text to my former review of Process Monitor 2.0 at the end. If you already know Procmon, you can skip the introductory text and read about Procmon’s 2.6 new features.

This well-known Microsoft tool was already in the 4sysops free admin tool list, but I decided to add a new entry because a new version is now available. The old post was also about Process Explorer, which I reviewed two years ago. I transferred your votes to these articles.

I guess that Process Monitor is in the tool box of many admins, because it is one of the most important troubleshooting tools. The old version, 1.37, allowed you to monitor file system and registry activity. The most important new feature of version 2.0 is that you can now also monitor the network activity of processes.

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NetWorx is a nifty free traffic and bandwidth monitoring tool. It supports usage reporting, speed metering, quotas, graphical netstat (current network connections), trace route, and ping. The tool comes in a portable version that can be easily run on a PC if users suspect odd things are happening to their computers. The tool also has some features that could prove useful in a server environment.

NetWorx places itself in the systray from where all its tools can be easily reached. The following is a brief introduction to each function.

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TCP Analyzer was just added recently to CodePlex, Microsoft’s Open Source platform. It is the first Network Monitor Expert (extension) that was not developed by the Network Monitor team, but from Microsoft Research. It allows you to analyze network traces of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connections.

Statistical analysis is only useful if you analyze large amounts of data. So if you open a big Network Monitor capture file, keep in mind that the parsing process can take a while, and that it will require your CPU’s full attention. Thus, I would wait until parsing is completed before selecting a specific TCP connection and launch TCP Analyzer from Network Monitor’s Experts menu.­

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In the last post in this series, I introduced the Network Monitor Experts, which basically is a set of plug-ins for Microsoft Network Monitor 3.3. Top Users Expert is an extension that helps you find heavy talkers in a captured trace. “Users” should not be understood literally here. In this context, users essentially are just IP addresses. Top User Experts enables you to analyze how much bandwidth machines connected to your computer are using. This can be useful if your network is clogged and you want to find the culprit. Of course, there are many other scenarios, such as when you have to know how much bandwidth a certain service requires.

Like the other extensions, Top User Expert analyzes a Network Monitor capture file. That is, you can’t apply the tool to a Capture tab. To use Top User Expert, you have to open a capture file first, and then launch the program from the Experts menu.

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Microsoft Network Monitor is probably the only free network and protocol analysis tool that is a match for Wireshark. It still lacks a few features when it comes analyzing stored network traces and that’s where the Network Monitor Experts comes in. At the moment, there are three available Open Source extensions: TCP Analyzer, Simple Search, and Top Users.

These extensions are separate tools that require Network Monitor 3.3. After you have installed them, you will find them in the Experts menu. This menu is only displayed when you open a previously stored file. Today, I will introduce Simple Search and in the next two posts, I will discuss Top Users and TCP Analyzer.

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DreamSys Server Monitor is a free, simple server monitoring tool that is very easy to set up, yet it has all the essential features for basic server monitoring. The tool is certainly no match for a sophisticated program like The Dude. However, for The Dude you need a couple of hours to learn how it works. On the other hand you will master DreamSys Server Monitor in a few minutes.

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NetWrix Services Monitor is a new free tool that allows you to monitor the services of multiple servers. When a service fails, NetWrix Services Monitor will either restart the service or reboot the computer. The tool can also be configured to send alerts by email to an administrator.

What I like about the tool is that one doesn’t have to configure which service has to be monitored. NetWrix Services Monitor simply monitors all automatic startup services which makes the tool very easy and fast to set up. If you have a couple of unstable servers, you just have to add their names to the list of machines to be monitored. The number of servers that can be monitored is unlimited.

Keep in mind that the tool doesn’t monitor running services that are set to manual startup, and have been launched by an application or another service. If you want to monitor those services, as well, you have to configure them as automatic startup services.

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fs guard is a very simple free tool that allows the monitoring of services and directories. The description on its homepage says it was developed for Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. I tested it on Windows Vista and it worked without problems. I didn’t try it on Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, but I am pretty sure that it will work there too.

There are certainly much more sophisticated free services and folder monitoring solutions for Windows (my favorite is The Dude). However, fs guard’s main advantage is that it’s very easy to set up. If you have unstable service that you want to monitor and there is no other monitoring solution at hand, then you can install and configure fs guard in less than a minute, even if you are using it for the first time.

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Submitted by Douwe – Blog: Putting IT in perspective

Savision Live Maps for Microsoft Operations Manager allows IT organizations with an investment in Microsoft Operations Manager to easily conceive, build and maintain large-scale monitoring maps.

New wizards and templates empower IT personnel to quickly construct dynamically updated network and application topologies, geographical views, complex business processes and executive dashboards. This ensures that employees at all levels, from the IT operator to the business executive, have access to the information needed to proactively manage IT problems.

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Submitted by Alex Vovk

Disk Space Monitor is a free tool for IT professionals to keep track of server disk space no domain controllers, file servers, SharePoint servers, Exchange servers, database servers and others. The product centrally monitors the free disk space of specified servers and sends daily reports and alerts about low disk space conditions based on configured thresholds.

NetWrix Disk Space Monitor

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Submitted by Josh Stephens – Blog: Thwack

SolarWinds free VM Monitor is an ingenious desktop tool that continuously monitors a VMware ESX Server and its virtual machines, delivering the real-time monitoring of ESX Servers that you’ve been missing. With VM Monitor at your fingertips, you’ll be able to track virtual server health at-a-glance and ensure your mission-critical apps never fail you… after all, VM Monitor ensures you are visually alerted in real time to any issues in your virtual reality.

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FREEping is a ping utility that can be used as a simple monitoring tool. There are many free network scanners that are much more sophisticated, but FREEping has a feature that allows you to monitor the availability of an unstable server without much hassle.

FREEping constantly pings a server, but it won’t immediately mark it as unavailable if no echo response is received within the configurable ping timeout period. This is useful because sometimes packets are lost or a server is just too busy to respond in time.

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