macOS and Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris Expertise

Network monitoring conventionally consists of observing a system's bandwidth usage in order to identify areas of congestion or to troubleshoot hardware or software issues. Nagios and MRTG are powerful, free monitoring utilities that run with Linux and can be helpful to understand mixed-vendor networks where UNIX family systems and Windows both operate. Progent's system integration engineers can help you use both these products to optimize and repair your infrastructure.

Nagios Network Monitoring System
The Nagios network monitoring application is a host and service monitor that operates with Linux. The monitoring daemon executes intermittent inspections of servers and services you specify by means of external plug-ins which bring back status information to Nagios. When problems are detected, the daemon can generate notifications to support contacts in a variety of ways such as email, IM, or SMS. Up to date status information, archival logs, and reports can be accessed via a web browser.

Key capabilities of the Nagios monitor are:

• Tracking of system services such as SMTP, HTTP, FTP, and PING
• Tracking of host resources: processor load, disk and memory usage, running processes, etc.
• Ability to define network host ranking, allowing differentiation between hosts that are down vs. hosts that are unreachable
• Support personnel notifications by e-mail, beeper, or other user-defined method in case service or host issues are detected or are fixed
• Ability to define event handlers to be executed upon the detection of service or machine events for automated problem resolution
• Accommodation for implementing redundant and dispersed monitoring computers
• External command option that enables on-the-fly edits to be defined for the monitoring and alerting activity via the utilization of event scripts, the web interface, and independent software
• Preservation of machine and service state after application restarts
• Scheduled downtime for eliminating host and service notifications when there are intentional service breaks
• Browser interface for examining current network status, alert and problem archive, log file, etc.
• Permissions scheme that enables you to restrict what customers can see and do from the browser applet

Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG)
MRTG Graphical Traffic Load Monitor is an Open Source tool to track the traffic load on a network. Powered by MS Windows or Linux and most UNIX platforms, MRTG captures data from the traffic counters of routers and creates web pages which provide an up-to-date intuitive representation of this traffic.

Multi Router Traffic Grapher permits you to track the bandwidth in and out of any SNMP network device. This can represent processors, routers, and switches. Administrators can use the resulting data to identify system bottlenecks.

Type of information you are able to depict with MRTG include:

• Bandwidth in bits or bytes/sec
• Connection rate in connections per second
• Bandwidth in an out of a specific Virtual server or real server
• Number of simultaneous sessions

Ask Progent for Network Monitoring Consulting
Progent's network monitoring specialists are experienced in using a variety of tools that can help you to troubleshoot or tune your network infrastructure. For network monitoring expertise, phone Progent at 800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.

Progent's Support for UNIX-family Systems
Progent's UNIX support services provide small companies and product developers assistance with managing and supporting UNIX/Linux/Mac-based systems that can coexist with Microsoft technology. Progent provides your organization access to UNIX support experts, authorized Microsoft engineers, Cisco-certified CCIEs, and security experts accredited by CISSP. This wide array of expertise gives your company a readily available single source to help your business to create and maintain a protected and robust multi-vendor connectivity and communications infrastructure that incorporates Windows with leading versions of UNIX such as: macOS and OS X , Sun Solaris, IBM AIX Open UNIX, HP-UX (Hewlett Packard UNIX), Berkeley UNIX (BSD), SCO and SGI/Irix or major Linux distributions such as RedHat Linux, SUSE, Debian GNU/Linux and CentOS Linux, Ubuntu, Mandriva, PCLlinuxOS Linux, fedora Linux, and Gentoo.