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AlertCentre
AlertCentre is a complete solution for monitoring,
alerting and corrective action automation scheduling. AlertCentre can
monitor your mission-critical systems and applications 24 hours a day,
seven days a week to provide you with the peace of mind of knowing that
your network, applications, and Internet/Intranet-based information systems
are running normally.
As of AlertCentre v2.03, you can now get AlertCentre a free-add-on when you
purchase MKS Toolkit. Under this special license arrangement, each AlertCentre
monitoring station would require a copy of MKS Toolkit.
Powerful and Extensible
MKS AlertCentre derives its power and extensibility
from MKS Toolkit
for System Administrators (TKSA). AlertCentre includes TKSA, a systems
management solution platform, which provides tools for scheduling, alerting,
automating repairs, and much more. AlertCentre lets you define monitors
that can observe, report on, and control the activities of other programs
or devices on your network so that you can be sure that mission-critical
applications are up and running at all times. AlertCentre gives you and
your colleagues the ability to be notified in a timely fashion if anything
on your network is malfunctioning.
- Automation of Monitoring, Alerting, Escalation,
and Corrective Action. AlertCentre automatically triggers actions
to be taken upon failures or system events. Using these actions, you
can alert people of failures and critical system status through e-mail,
cell phone, pager, SNMP trap, or your own custom actions. AlertCentre
also lets you implement an escalation process to notify the right people
and take appropriate action based on the severity of a problem. And
AlertCentre can trigger monitors, scripts, and programs as actions,
letting you take automated corrective action.
- Built-in Monitoring Redundancy. AlertCentre
provides the ability to monitor the monitors, to help ensure that your
critical resources stay available and that your business continues to
run non-stop. Should the primary machine go down, the backup will automatically
kick in and resume monitoring your systems and applications.
- Easy Customization. While designed to work
out of the box with a wide array of predefined
monitors, AlertCentre is also easy to customize. You can configure
monitor behavior via the graphical user interface, organize your monitors
into easy-to-manage groups, and create custom monitors. Using custom
monitors, you can plug-in existing custom scripts to create your own
monitor types and still benefit from AlertCentre's built-in action and
alerting capabilities.
"AlertCentre fills a critical
need in the market with a monitoring solution that is affordable and
easy-to-use and yet powerful enough to handle the needs of today's
businesses. The value that AlertCentre delivers at this price point
is unparalleled in the market."
Tim Kraus, President of Kraus Architectures, Inc. and former Microsoft Program
Manager for Systems Management
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Affordable and Easy-to-Use
MKS AlertCentre is very affordable from all perspectives
including licensing costs, deployment costs, and maintenance costs. It
is also easy-to-use.
- Easy Installation and Configuration. AlertCentre
installs and is ready to use in less than 30 minutes. Configuration
is simple and is done via a graphical user interface.
- Dual User Interfaces. AlertCentre offers
both web
browser and Microsoft
Management Console (MMC) interfaces. Further, these interfaces navigate
and operate identically so there is no need to learn 2 separate ways
to use the product.
- Remote Configuration. AlertCentre's web-based
interface runs in any browser window, so you can manage your site over
your LAN, WAN, or from any Web-aware workstation or device and from
any operating system.
- Remote Monitoring Without Agents. AlertCentre
is built around the ability to monitor any machine or device without
requiring agents on the remote machines. Its no agent architecture reduces
your deployment and maintenance costs and eliminates potential security
problems associated with agents.
"Less than
40% of survey respondents say they perform scheduled checks of critical
systems. 25% monitor systems only when an issue is brought to their
attention, and only 24% use automated utilities to convey the status
on different systems. Moreover, those who monitor critical systems
use two or three applications to do so. Bottom line: IT operations
likely function in crisis mode where it puts out fires first and relegates
systems monitoring to second."
TechRepublic - What
IT Professionals need in Automated Monitoring Solutions |
Monitor Types
- Network Connectivity: enabling you to ensure
your network is connected and available to authorized users and devices
from all appropriate access points. Includes HTTP, FTP, Email (SMTP,
POP3, and IMAP), TCP Port, NetBIOS Share, DNS, Remote Access, and Ping
monitor types.
- Resource Availability: enabling you to ensure
your systems infrastructure is available with adequate capacity and
performance. Includes Disk Space, CPU Utilization, Memory Utilization,
File and Directory, Newsgroup, Printer, SNMP, SSL Certificate, and Performance
Counter monitor types.
- Application Availability: enabling you to
ensure your mission-critical applications are available to authorized
users and that the content has not been tampered with. Includes Windows
Service, Web Page, ODBC Database, Windows Event Log, Web site link integrity,
ADO Query, and Application Log monitor types.
- Packaged Application Wizards: enabling you
to completely monitor entire applications in a single step. AlertCentre
includes PAWs for Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and IIS Server.
MKS AlertCentre Benefits
AlertCentre enables system administrators and other
IT professionals to:
- Monitor the availability of:
- Individual IT resources such as URLs, CPUs, system
services, mail ports, etc. through the use of a wide variety of
monitor types.
- Complex applications such as mail servers and Web
sites that require a host of underlying hardware or software resources
to be functioning normally in order to minimize downtime for you
and your customers.
- Monitor remote devices and IT resources from any workstation
or Web-aware device with access to your network.
- Implement an escalation process to notify the right people
and take appropriate action based on the severity of a problem.
- Be notified through various media including e-mail, cell
phone, pager, SNMP trap, or through the execution of an error recovery
script that can leverage the full power of MKS Toolkit scripting to
maximize your responsiveness to critical issues whether you are in or
out of the office.
- Extend the power of AlertCentre through the powerful MKS
Toolkit scripting languages including Perl, KornShell, awk, C Shell;
as well as Windows Script Host to customize and evolve your Network,
Systems, and Application Administration within your organization.
- Schedule Batch Jobs to automate the timely execution of
processes.
- Measure performance through Windows Performance Counters
including scriptable access to the counters via Perl and Windows Script
Host (using either VBScript, PScript or JScript) for complete awareness
of the health of your network.
- Limit access to only authorized AlertCentre users.
If you would like more information, complete our information
request page and we will contact you. Additional detail is also
available from the MKS web site www.mkssoftware.com
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