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F e a t u r e s
Big Brother is designed to let anyone see how their network is doing
in near real-time, from any web browser, anywhere.
An experienced Systems
Administrator should be able to get the core of Big Brother up in about
an hour (less if they read the documentation). Once you've done this,
you're a Brother.
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Display
Big Brother displays status information as
web pages
or WML pages for WAP-enabled devices.
These web pages
have the systems monitored down the left hand side of the page, the
tests for each system across the top of the page. This results in a matrix
of color coded dots on screen. Green is Good, Red is Bad. In addition,
the background color of the status pages is always the color of the most
serious condition of any element being monitored at that time.
Architecture
Big Brother uses a client-server architecture combined with
methods which both push and pull data. Network testing
is done by polling all monitored services from a single machine, and
reporting these results to a central location (the BBDISPLAY). If
you want local system information, you can install a BB client on the
local machine, which will send CPU, process, disk space, and logfile
status reports in periodically. Each report is timestamped with an
expiration date (like milk). This lets us know when a report
is no longer valid, which is usually an indication of a more serious
problem.
Redundancy
It's not much good if your monitoring system can fail and not tell
you of the problem. Big Brother supports redundancy through
allowing you to run multiple instances of Big Brother in
parallel. This means that BB clients can report into multiple
Web Displays (BBDISPLAYs) and Notification servers (BBPAGERs).
Protocol
Big Brother sends all status reports from client to server over port
1984. What other port would Big Brother use? The IANA has assigned
Big Brother this port, and the BB protocol itself is open. Limited
support for SNMP trap handling is supported using third-party plugins.
Platforms
The Big Brother servers and BBNET functions run on Unix/Linux, with
a scaled-down version for NT/Win2K is also available. Client software
is available for Unix/Linux, NT/Win2K/Win2003 while user contributed
clients for Netware, Mac OS 9, VMS, AS/400 and VM/ESA at
http://www.deadcat.net.
Network tests
Big Brother includes support for testing ftp, http, https, smtp, pop3, dns,
telnet, imap, nntp, and ssh servers. Support for additional tests is
easily added.
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Local Tests
If you choose to install a BB client on a local machine, it will
monitor disk space, CPU usage, messages, and can
check that important processes are up and running.
Notification
Big Brother has a sophisticated notification ruleset, not for the faint of
heart (blame Rob). You can notify based on time-of-day, machine,
or the test that failed. In addition we support an initial delay
before paging (useful to cut down on late night false alarms),
page-only-every defined amount of time, paging groups, acknowledgement,
and escalation. Built in support for e-mail paging, alphanumeric paging
via Qpage or Sendpage, or numeric and SMS pages via Kermit for the BB Unix/Linux
server platform while the NT/Win2K server platform only supports e-mail for now.
Under the Unix/Linux server platform, you can even create your
own custom notification procedure.
History & Reporting
Big Brother supports reporting, which will allow you to determine
whether Service Level Agreements are being met. In addition, we
provide access to historical status information so you can see what
the problem was at any given time.
Plug-ins & Extensions
Big Brother supports plug-ins. You can write plug-ins in any
language, and we include several samples to make it easy. In
addition, Brothers from around the world have written hundreds
of plug-ins to monitor everything from Oracle Databases to
CPU temperature on Solaris machines. You can see the current
list at http://www.deadcat.net.
Flexibility
Big Brother is very flexible. Warning and alarm levels are all
easily redefinable. The Web Display can be easily customized. We
have hooks into other products, like MRTG for bandwidth monitoring.
Since you have the source code, you can easily figure out what
Big Brother is doing, and change it to suit your needs.
Community
One of the best things about Big Brother is the community that has
sprung up around it. Over 2000 Brothers on the various mailing list provide
quick and friendly support and commentary.
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Real-Time Diagnostics
Beyond monitoring for high availability, you will also need to manage your
system for optimal performance. Once Big Brother alerts you of a
condition, you can then use Quest Software's
Spotlight to gather domain
specific information and quickly resolve performance issues.
Spotlight
is a real-time diagnostic tool designed to diagnose and resolve
performance bottlenecks before your users are affected. More information
on Spotlight is available
here.
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Copyright © 2004 Quest Software. All rights reserved.
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