I've just been working on a monitoring PC which have, which uses server perfmon to monitor the health of all our servers. Graphs include items such as CPU load, RAM available, and disk queue. I've also put a little system in place which will send an alert to twitter in the event of a server crash, or non-responsive ping;
It requires 2 batch files. The first one, looks like this;
--------------------------------------
@ECHO OFF
cls
REM Send 1 ping to server
ping %1 -n 1
IF %errorlevel% == 1 goto ServerFail
EXIT
:ServerFail
REM The next ping is just to force a few seconds of delay befor re-testing
@ping 127.0.0.1
@ping %1 -n 1
IF %errorlevel% == 1 goto ServerFail2
EXIT
:ServerFail2
CLS
@echo Server %1 Failed to ping on more than one occasion
tweetc "Server %1 was showing communication issues at %TIME% on %DATE%"
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When calling the bat file it takes one parameter, which is the server name or IP address.
The second batch file simply calls pinger.bat for every server we want to run a check against.
You will notice a command in there "tweetc". This is a niftly little utility which allows you to tweet via the command line in windows.
If a server fails to ping, a delay is implemented, and then another ping test is done. If the second test fails, the message is sent to twitter saying "Server whatever was showing communication issues at %TIME% on %DATE%"
Its fairly crude in that its only relying on ping as a test, but its a good front line, and can be used in conjunction with more complex reports such as SMTP traps, or even using event logs.
If you want to see the live twitter go to http://twitter.com/bcolservers There isnt much on there at the moment aside from testing, and hopefully there never will be!
A little known feature which many of our users seem to find useful has been Shadow Copies. Often used from an Admin point of view, by systems such as Virtual Machine Manager, shadow copies can also be used by the end users. This allows people to restore their own lost/deleted files, and roll back to a previous version.
It does have its disadvantages, such as the number of available previous version available, and the overhead on storage and disk utilization, but overall it reduces calls to the helpdesk, provides users with a faster way to recover lost data, and minimizes the time your backup administrator has to spend sifting through tapes for lost files.
Video tutorial is here;
It does have its disadvantages, such as the number of available previous version available, and the overhead on storage and disk utilization, but overall it reduces calls to the helpdesk, provides users with a faster way to recover lost data, and minimizes the time your backup administrator has to spend sifting through tapes for lost files.
Video tutorial is here;
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