A Guardian for Your Networks. Large or Small - Software Review - Evaluation

ENT, Nov 8, 2000 by JOHN F. McGLINCHEY

Making sure systems are healthy and running properly is the bane of every system administrator's life. No matter how much monitoring is done, administrators feel they can always do it a little better.

Argent Guardian from Argent Software tries to answer this call by addressing both the smallest network and the largest. The Argent Guardian claims to improve system availability and service levels by monitoring critical resources and automatically taking appropriate action when an exception condition occurs. Argent Guardian can detect and warn of an impending problem before it blows up by deploying from one to hundreds of Regional Monitoring systems on a network of Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers. These monitor Windows NT/2000 server systems, Windows NT/2000 workstations, and any other server running TCP/IP and SNMP, including Unix and Linux systems, as well as routers and hubs. Argent Guardian has the ability to distribute monitoring servers while still being centrally controlled. This provides for network efficiency on both the LAN and WAN while enhancing monitoring reliability.

There are four parts to Argent Guardian: Rules, Alerts, Node Lists, and Relators.

Rules are the tests that check the status of a resource. Rules can be created for break-in detection, CPU utilization, low disk space, server functionality, and printer functionality; No coding or scripting is necessary to create rules since rules are created from prompts and lists using a GUI-based management tool. Argent Guardian includes more than 150 of the most commonly used rules. Rules are organized to monitor NT event logs -- but not additional Windows 2000 logs -- performance counters, programs and applications, services, SNMP traps, system commands, server response and availability, and printer response and availability. Of particular interest to us is the included ability to create rules to monitor Exchange -- which was added in the July 2000 update -- SQL -- which was added in the May 2000 update -- and DNS and IIS servers.

Alerts define the action taken when a rule is triggered. These actions can come in the form of a message to a support person or a corrective action, such as restarting a stopped service or rebooting a server that is down. Alerts can be sent to a pager -- alphanumeric or numeric -- an e-mail address, a network broadcast, SNMP trap, system bell, any site-specific command file, or a system reboot.

A unique feature is the ability to escalate alerts for unanswered problems. This helps ensure that someone will respond to an alert. Argent Guardian also supports calendaring so that during normal business hours a message can be sent to the helpdesk, but during off hours someone could be paged.

Node Lists define groups of servers with common characteristics to be checked. For example, servers may be grouped by the type of server they are -- Web, DNS, Exchange, or Notes -- by where they are located, or by any other method an administrator comes up with. A Node List is just a group of systems to be monitored.

The three modular elements -- Rules, Alerts, and Node Lists -- are tied together into a Relator. The Relator applies a rule to the nodes in the Node Lists; if the rule fires, then the appropriate alert action is taken. This modular methodology allows for simple modification to any of the parts to be modified and effects the changes to all the Relators that use that part. This is great for when a system administrator takes a vacation and needs to redirect all of his or her alerts and messages to someone else for a short time, or when someone leaves and needs to be replaced. It is also great for when new servers are added or removed from the network. One change can update all Relators that used that part.

We downloaded an Argent Guardian demo from Argent's Web site and installed it on one of our servers. We had it monitor four other servers on our network. It was easy to install. The install does not include a user manual or a quick start guide. You must download a PDF-format user guide separately. We recommend that you do this first and get a feel for the product prior to installing the demo. When we installed Argent Guardian we were prompted with a screen that asked if we wanted to set up a phone demo. The folks at Argent prefer to do a phone demo, in which an Argent engineer walks the customer through the product. We didn't wait for the demo before digging into the product, but we do recommend going through the process. We found it easy to figure out, although we would have preferred a configuration wizard to guide us through setting up a typical configuration.

The next day, at the appointed time, we received a call from the customer support manager at Argent Software. He walked us through every feature of Argent Guardian and explained how the product could help us monitor our servers and provide better support. Argent Guardian has an optional service that Argent Software sells in which a support engineer comes to a location to help configure Argent Guardian so it is tailored to a company's needs. This two-day consultation ensures a complete implementation of the product and is something we highly recommend.