ViewPoint

Keep watch over the activities of multiple servers and multiple systems

Do you have to manage multiple servers andmultiple operating systems? If so, ViewPoint from Datametrics Systems might bejust what you need. Windows NT comes with a nice pair of monitoringtools--Performance Monitor and Disk Monitor--but ViewPoint extends theircapabilities. ViewPoint collects and displays more performance data than otherperformance monitors. Its features, such as programmable AutoAnalyze,AutoCorrelate, AutoCorrelate filters, AutoInvestigate, AutoReporting, Alerting,and extensive graphing capability, offer flexible and easy-to-use performancereporting and management technology.

ViewPoint can monitor, identify, and analyze the activity of 30 operatingsystems from one location. ViewPoint identifies performance problems withoperating systems, with applications such as Microsoft SQL Server or ExchangeServer, with memory and hard disk access, with a network, and more. You can setup ViewPoint to automatically alert you to a specific problem, such as a fullhard disk, via an alphanumeric pager, email, or a custom alert mechanism.

ViewPoint consists of two components: the host software that collects dataon the monitored system, and the client software that displays and analyzes theperformance data on a PC. I reviewed ViewPoint 1.1 for NT host monitoringsoftware. (The latest version, ViewPoint 1.2 for NT, runs on Intel and Alphaplatforms and supports NT 3.51 and 4.0.)

ViewPoint is simple to set up and use. You create an administrative accountfor the monitoring software and manually install the software on each hostsystem that you want to monitor. Finally, you install the reporting and analystsoftware on your workstation, and the fun begins.

The ViewPoint client is loaded with features. You can generate automaticreports or graphs that print on a predefined schedule. As Screen 1 shows, youcan use many graphing formats: line, area, stacked, bar, scatter, pie, meter,gauge, high/low, histogram, statistics, and correlation. For example, you canuse a line graph or high/low graph to show the history of CPU utilization; youmight prefer a gauge or a bar chart to show hard disk capacity. You can set upalerts for any threshold violations that you want to monitor, (e.g., CPUutilization exceeding 90 percent) and then compile a log of the alerts. With theAutoAnalyze function, you can set up programmable scripts, or expressions (oruse the included expressions) to create reports. The AutoCorrelate function letsyou compare the behavior of a given variable with the behavior of every othervariable in the same trace file or across all other open trace files over aspecific period. The AutoCorrelate filter lets you remove extraneous data fromyour trace file and focus on the data that is important to you. AutoInvestigatelets you determine when a given variable deviates the most from other instancesof the variable.

Using the client software, I monitored the CPU, disk, I/O, and memory usageof some servers in the Windows NT Magazine Lab. I set up ViewPoint tosend an alert if any hard disks on the monitored systems were more than 90percent full. This alert was useful because one hard disk filled up and Iresolved the situation before it became a problem. ViewPoint also let me knowthat a server was running out of memory for a short time during the day.

ViewPoint is a full-featured monitoring and reporting package. ViewPointlets you monitor several NT servers or multiple servers running differentoperating systems.