The Event monitor Proyect
Notification, Action-Based system for network, system and application monitoring
Abstract
Today, managing hetereogeneous systems its a hard task if you haven't the right
tool. There are some solutions on the market (IT OpenView, Patrol) but this
solutions are expensive, hard to learn, requires a big machine and, at last, the
90 % of the times you only use the event monitor (this funny screen that shows you
the events). Fortunately, some free tools has been developed, like Big Brother,
Over-CR, RADAR, etc.
This is a beta page. So if you want to contribute with a superb logo or document
some part of the proyect, please drop some lines to the author. This proyect is in
early stage of development, anyway, the main modules are ready an can be use to
test the system
Tech Info
I think that monitoring tools must be very portable, easy to use and configure,
and must use a wide and easy way of communication, so why not use TCP/IP ?. Some
tools used SNMP for this, but I think that SNMP is big, slow and complex (it has
some highlights, but I think that its like firing flies whith a 100 mm gun.
Another thing is the distribution. The clients (systems that are being monitored)
only has the agents (a special process or script that talks to the server if it
found some thing that its wrong) So we have a server on one machine, and agents
on the monitored systems. This is not 100% true, see below.
So we have a monitoring tool, but how it can save the day ? A monitoring tool is
only useful if you are 24 hours sitting in watching the tool. So we need some
proactivity. By this you need some server (another process) running on managed
nodes. With this you can launch actions on managed nodes automatically, so
human presence its not required. See the basic model below.
The Event Monitor Proyect Basic Architecture
The tools
- emsrvmsg
(Event Monitor Server Message) this server runs in the monitor machine and collects
the messages send by agents. The servers adds a univocal ID to de message and stores
it on a file (spool)
- emsrvcmd
(Event Monitor Server Command). this servers runs in the monitored machine and listens
for commands to be invoked in this machine. This allows proactive managing of the
system (useful for routine task like erasing core files, etc). For more details,
see features.
- emtlog
(Event Monitor Transaction Logger) this tool has 2 uses, syncronize the spool file
(this feature allows you have multiple console monitors running concurrently, it is
useful by axample for using it with some operators), and delete a specified message
(identified by its ID). the deleted message is stored into a historical file.
- emconsole
(Event Monitor Console) this is the graphical console where the messages are show.
It allows acknowledge the messages, sorting them, send mails, check for new messages,
etc. See features for more details.
- emputcmd
(Event Monitor Put Command) this tool it used mainly for send actions so a
specified client machine. This allows proactive managing of the client system.
- emputmsg
(Event Monitor Put message) this tools alows any script to send messages to a
server message (monitor system). It has two versions, binary (you can use it in
a script) and function library (the system gives you a library with some tools).
Features
- Support for unlimited number of agents
- Configurable almost anything: refresh rates, warning levels, etc. etc.
- Proactive managing: send actions, perform automatically tasks.
populate actions when some messages are received ...
- Support for clusters (groups of machines, process, etc)
- Heterogeneous network, operating system and archiquecture.
- Notification via email
- Multiple console monitors running simultaneously
- Historical track of messages
- Multiple ack of messages
- Multiple level of warning
- API provided
- Portability granted
- low load rate on monitored and console machine
- Runs on user space -- no root privileges required execpt for emsrvcmd
- Configuration by files or shell variables
- fully customization
- Security access for console
- Security checks in emsrvcmd (to prevent unauthorized use)
- Graphics, User Friendly environment
- TCP/IP message-passing system
- Buffering security on emputmsg to prevent network failures. This allows network breaks
- Message counter notificator
- User profiles
- User access security
- Status line
- more ...
Monitors
- emdskagt
(Event Monitor Disk Agent) a high-perfomance, C-written disk agent. Support file configuration, warning level, autoconfiguration, etc. This agent is up and running
- emprcagt
(Event Monitor Process Agent) a high-perfomance, C-written process agent. Support keep alive, CPU time level, IO level, orphan detection, etc. Support CPU, and MEM usage.This agent is under development.
- emkrnagt
(Event Monitor Kernel Agent) all the kernel logs are filtered and processed, this is useful to parse warnings and kernel (and hardware) faults. Under development.
- emsrvagt
(Event Monitor Service Agent) the specified inet services are checked. Under development.
- emnetagt
(Event Monitor Network Agent) Ensures network conectivity, test of lan adapters, etc.
Under development.
Requeriments
- Tck/tk 8 for emconsole only
- TiX for emconsole only
- C compiler (like gcc) for al the binaries and tools
- GNU make to compile the makefiles
- 2 Mb of free space for the configuration files, binaries, doc, etc.
- 30 Mb or so for server instalation (this a safe value)
- A unix box The software is developed on a linux box, a solaris box and a HP box
- A little time to configure the system
- More litte time to send your suggests, bugs and improvements
Screen Shots
Contact Info
So you want to contact with me ?, well, here you are my e-mail address. Fell free
to tell me all your comments, bugs, patches, donations, etc etc etc (specially,
all the corrections for my bad english).
Mail me
Im a spanish student at 5th of Computer Sciences at Carlos III University of Madrid.
Im graduated in Technical Eng. at the same University. I work in Santander Investment bank
as full-time system administrator (dealing with HPs, SUNs, etc etc ...). My interest are
Operating systems (focus on Linux, of course) and programming languages (C and C++ mainly)
So if you want to know more about me, send me a e-mail !
Download
Here it is ! the Source code
has been released. I hope you find it useful. For any question, send
me an email at assman@gsyc.uc3m.es
Related Proyects
GNU and non commercial Proyects
- Big Brother. A not GNU proyect but free. The first (I think). Very portable, web based interface. Only monitoring.
- Over-CR. This proyect is a GNU network monitoring system.
- RADAR. The GNU Realtime Action-Oriented Deterministic Automaton for Remediation. Based on SNMP traps.
Commercial proyects
- OpenView. A very good-quality product by HP. Based on SNMP traps, it has a lot of agents and alows you integration of your applications. Its big, requires a very good machine and I think that the server side only runs on HP's machines
- Patrol and Best/1. Another product for systems & network monitoring. It has a lot of agents for a lot of applications (say MqSeries, Oracle ...) very pretty software.
This software and its documentation is copyrighted 1998, 1999 by and released under the
GNU
GPL Version 2
All Graphics, code and HTML created using Gimp and
Xemacs
Last modified 12:42 04/08/1999 MET
