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Pulseway's remote monitoring and management solution is an all-in-one solution that can help both managed service providers (MSPs) and IT teams control infrastructure monitoring and management. It uses the modern, cloud-based approach, in which endpoints are controlled using an agent-based solution.
Getting started with Pulseway
One of Pulseway's great features is the ease with which you can get up and running with a new Pulseway environment. When you sign up for a product trial, you can select either the SaaS version or the on-premises server install. If you choose the Pulseway SaaS edition, you will have access to your environment in under six minutes.
Once you choose the SaaS implementation, Pulseway begins provisioning the environment. The countdown timer starts at six minutes.
Pulseway provisioning the new Pulseway SaaS environment for a trial
So, in just a few minutes, you will have access to the features and functionality that Pulseway offers. Let's take a look at the new features added since the last coverage of the Pulseway solution.
Pulseway's new features
The Pulseway remote monitoring and management solution has added quite a few new features in the past few months that will undoubtedly be welcome additions for many organizations. These include the following:
- Network monitoring
- New web dashboard and mobile widgets
- Remote control for macOS
- New patch management applications and support for custom titles
- Built-in cloud backup
- Enhanced automation workflows
Network monitoring
Pulseway's new network monitoring is an add-on built directly into the web platform and the mobile application. It allows customers to monitor their networks as part of the Pulseway RMM dashboard solution. Pulseway monitors network devices, including switches, routers, firewalls, wireless LAN controllers, load balancers, servers, virtual machines, printers, storage appliances, and anything configured with an IP address. What can you do with the network monitoring provided?
You can have a comprehensive view of your network, including network topology. Pulseway admins can use the tool to scan the network for devices, enroll the devices in Pulseway, and run common network troubleshooting commands, including ping, port, and SNMP commands. Using the network monitoring tool also allows remote controlling devices through SSH and telnet connectivity. It also enables proxying HTTP services to access devices remotely, which can help admins drastically reduce the time to resolution.
The Pulseway network monitoring tool ties into the automation workflows found in Pulseway. It offers easy notifications and alerting and enables creating automated runbooks that provide automated remediation of issues.
Pulseways new network monitoring
New web dashboards and mobile widgets
One of Pulseway's new features is web dashboards. These are customizable web dashboards and mobile widgets that allow businesses to customize which systems, metrics, and customers they want to see in real time. This feature is an excellent addition for MSPs who want to keep a close eye on a particular customer. Also, IT teams may have a subset of infrastructure that relates to business-critical applications. This feature gives priority to the visibility of these specific systems and the most important metrics.
New web dashboards and mobile widgets in Pulseway
Creating a new Pulseway web dashboard
Choosing widgets for a new dashboard
Remote control for macOS
Many remote access solutions, even those that are cloud-based, generally only offer solutions for the Windows platform. One of the great new features added to the wide range of Pulseway features, including Windows remote access, is a new remote control for macOS, accesable from both macOS and Windows machines. It uses the same proprietary Pulseway protocol used to connect to Windows endpoints.
Remote access solutions have typically been architected for on-premises connectivity. However, this past year with the pandemic has shown organizations must be prepared to support endpoints across various networks. The Pulseway remote connectivity solution is made possible by the lightweight agent installed on the endpoint. Connections are relayed through Pulseway's servers to connect to remote endpoints. This allows businesses to connect to and support remote end users working from home or elsewhere. All remote communication is encrypted end-to-end.
For many organizations, end-user clients are a mix of various client operating systems. Windows and macOS remote connectivity will allow IT support to support all end users regardless of whether they are using Windows or macOS devices for business productivity. One of the great things about this new feature is that it is included by default with no additional license cost to Pulseway customers.
As you can see below, the Pulseway solution provides easy access for onboarding various end user clients with a wide range of available agents. The macOS agent is among the agents available for download.
Installing the macOS Pulseway agent for remote connectivity
New patch management applications and patch management updates
Effective patch management should not only include patching the operating system. It should involve patching any applications used on the end user client. Security vulnerabilities can be introduced not only by unpatched operating systems but also by unpatched third-party applications.
Pulseway's RMM solution features great third-party patch management with the ability to patch 146 applications.
Notice there are many applications in the list of new third-party applications they are now patching that are indeed being used for remote work. It is great to see these features and capabilities continue to expand in the Pulseway solution. Additionally, if the user can’t find the required application, he can use the recently launched Support for Custom Titles and download the nessesary application.
Pulseway has also introduced optional Windows Updates. Pulseway now supports installing Windows Updates from Microsoft's optional distribution channel which is commonly used for Windows Feature Updates.
Built-in cloud backup
Protecting data across all levels of infrastructure is extremely important. An essential component of data protection is backups. Pulseway has added cloud backup to the list of capabilities it offers. The great thing about the new backup feature is that it is included in the same Pulseway RMM web app. From the Pulseway console, backup jobs can be configured and monitored. File recovery is also performed from the usual Pulseway dashboard.
Recovering a file using Pulseway backup
One thing that caught my attention about the Pulseway backup feature is that it requires an additional agent. While it would be great if the solution could use the same agent already deployed on the client, Pulseway mentions that onboarding hosts for backup is an automated process once the primary Pulseway agent is in place.
Backups can be scheduled as you would expect and can also be run in an ad-hoc fashion. Pulseway uses "backup health" to analyze the health of backups taking place in the environment. This health rating is calculated based on thresholds that the admin configures for the solution. Pulseway backups allow configuring notifications for backup failures and when the backup health rating falls below a configurable threshold. Critical backup functionality can be monitored and managed through the Pulseway mobile apps.
Impressions of new features
Pulseway is a great cloud-based solution that provides mobility for IT admins and teams to manage business-critical infrastructure from anywhere, including their mobile devices. In its latest release, Pulseway has added excellent new capabilities that will undoubtedly empower organizations to continue supporting remote workers and embrace the day and age of cloud-based management.
Pulseway's Automation Engine with auto-remediation technology can increase the efficiency and productivity of organizations relying on limited resources, making Pulseway more than just an IT management solution, giving the IT professionals the power to put most common IT tasks on auto-remediation and focus on more pressing issues.
The agent-based Pulseway solution allows businesses to have the flexibility to manage clients no matter where they are located. It will be great to see if the backup functionality can eventually be included in the primary Pulseway agent instead of relying on a separate agent. The other features, including network monitoring, web dashboards, remote control for macOS, new patch management applications, and built-in backups, increase the value that Pulseway brings to the table.
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