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One of the most critically important parts of managing IT infrastructure is having the right tools for monitoring and management. The tremendous shift to a hybrid workforce and hybrid infrastructure over the past few years means that it is critical to monitor and manage infrastructure remotely. The Pulseway Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solution allows admins to leverage the power of the cloud to monitor and manage infrastructure effectively, no matter where it is located. In addition, recent updates to the Pulseway RMM platform have extended automation, policies, and integration capabilities for even richer functionality and features.
What is the Pulseway Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solution?
The Pulseway RMM solution was founded on the premise that IT admins should not be tied to their desks. Therefore, the founding mission of Pulseway is to provide the tools that allow mobility for IT technicians and to provide the visibility and capabilities to manage critical infrastructure from anywhere.
With this goal in mind, Pulseway is built using a cloud-native approach. The management plane exists in the cloud and uses agents installed on endpoints to monitor, manage, and configure critical infrastructure. With the evolution of the hybrid workforce and the blurring of boundaries between corporate networks and edge devices, this architecture is undoubtedly the way forward for IT admins looking for modern tools that support current and future infrastructure designs.
Note the following features and capabilities of the Pulseway solution:
- Monitoring—Pulseway provides robust monitoring capabilities. You can monitor networks, workstations, servers, VMs, appliances, and other devices.
- Anywhere access mobility—Pulseway provides access to your monitoring and management tools using mobile devices. Going back to the original mission, using the Pulseway mobile app means you don't have to be tied to a computer screen at your desk.
- Automation—Pulseway RMM provides automated tasks and workflows. Automated tasks allow you to automate mundane tasks and auto-remediation workflows allow you to define sophisticated workflows that will automatically start remediating issues as soon as they happen.
- Easy cloud-based configuration—One thing that stands out with the Pulseway RMM solution is the easy cloud deployment. When you sign up for Pulseway, your cloud environment is deployed and provisioned in minutes. Of couse, you can also run Pulseway on-premises.
Below is a screenshot of the deployment screen that displays after you sign up for the Pulseway trial. Pulseway will provision your cloud environment and dashboard in around five minutes. As a nice deployment feature, it displays a countdown clock showing the time remaining until you can log in.
Deploying Pulseway RMM in a little over 5 minutes
New Pulseway features in 8.11.2
The latest version of Pulseway RMM is version 8.11.2. It contains many new features and enhancements, including the following:
- New extended policies for macOS and Linux
- New automation functionality for macOS and Linux
- Enhanced integration with IT Glue
- Additional macOS and Linux improvements
New extended policies for macOS and Linux
With the new release of Pulseway, you can centrally manage your macOS and Linux agent settings using endpoint policies. Endpoint policies provide IT admins with centralized management and configuration of the Pulseway agent.
Pulseway also has a pretty slick visual enhancement with this release, allowing IT admins to see which features are supported for a particular agent operating system. Notice the highlight settings for drop-down box on the Endpoint Policy screen. Below, you can see the visual overlay when Linux is selected.
Highlighting settings for Agent operating system versions
New automation functionality for macOS and Linux
One of the great features of the Pulseway solution is the automation built into the platform. Based on alerts, conditions, or metrics in your infrastructure, you can trigger automation that can self-remediate problems in the environment. There are new automation workflows for macOS and Linux devices in your Pulseway inventory with the latest Pulseway release. With this release, you can now execute scripts for macOS and Linux agents. In addition, new workflows include notifications for your macOS and Linux agents. Further enhancements are planned in forthcoming releases to give greater functionality.
Pulseway can now run scripts for macOS and Linux agents
Enhanced integration with IT Glue
Pulseway continues to strengthen its third-party integrations. As of Pulseway 8.11, native IT Glue integration is now built into the platform. With the native IT Glue integration, you can now integrate IT Glue documentation and other features into your Pulseway workflows.
For example, on the system details screen, you can access inventory asset information, documentation, and passwords associated with the system to match IT Glue assets.
IT Glue integration with Pulseway
Additional macOS and Linux improvements
In addition to the extended policies and automation with macOS and Linux agents, the new Pulseway release has other improvements for macOS and Linux agents. These include the following:
- You can now install and run the macOS agent natively on the macOS hardware with the Apple M1 chip.
- You can now disable remote control features with the macOS agent, allowing macOS users to disable remote control from the Agent system tray.
- Create and run Bash scripts in macOS as well as support for tasks.
- On the Linux system details screen, you can view all Linux services, even if they are not monitored.
- The Linux agent can also use a proxy for registration with the Pulseway cloud service.
General thoughts and impressions of Pulseway
Pulseway is a solution that "just works." You won't find a more straightforward monitoring solution to deploy, especially with the cloud-driven wizard, which gives you a countdown until your cloud instance is deployed and ready to log in. I think this cloud-centric approach is key to managing and monitoring infrastructure in the future with hybrid deployments and a highly distributed workforce.
Pulseway also "holds your hand," so to speak, after the deployment, which is a nice touch. If you are like me, you have likely deployed solutions in the past where you wonder what steps you need to complete next. Again, Pulseway has you covered here with a list of required tasks after deployment.
After deployment checklist in Pulseway
Another great feature of the after-deployment wizard is that it directs you to download the Pulseway mobile apps with links to the respective app downloads for Android and Apple.
After deployment wizard directs you to download the Pulseway mobile apps
It also provides links to download the agents needed for onboarding devices.
Links to deploy the Pulseway agents
You can also onboard multiple devices in an automated way with a Pulseway probe that automatically onboards and installs Pulseway agents on endpoints in your network.
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Install a Pulseway probe for onboarding multiple devices via network discovery
Wrapping up
There are many powerful features in the Pulseway solution, and we have only scratched the surface in this overview of the new features. The new features in this recent release help strengthen the monitoring, management, and automation of macOS and Linux devices, which are extremely common in the enterprise environment today. If you are looking for a solution that allows you to have visibility and management tools at your fingertips, even on a mobile device, Pulseway is a great solution that gets better with each new release. Pulseway offers a free trial.
