Tembria Blog

Version 6.0 is getting closer to release and there are some really cool features in it that we would like to share with you. In this post I’ll show you a bit about our new network diagramming functionality.

This is a feature we have wanted to add for a long time but we didn’t want to resort to browser plug-ins or third-party apps. Finally with HTML5 support coming in most browsers we can let you design and use network diagrams right in the browser.

Here is an example of what you can do with this new functionality in Tembria Server Monitor v6.0 and Tembria Multi-Site Monitor v6.0:

Let’s say you have network facilities in California and in New York. Perhaps they are connected by a VPN or you are using Tembria Multi-Site Monitor to monitor and manage them across HTTPS/SSL.

With version 6.0 you can build a dashboard like this showing a map with pushpins for each of your locations (click on the image to view it full size):

As you can see the red pushpin indicates there that one or more of the systems in California are in an error state. So we click on it and it brings us to another dashboard:

Looking at this dashboard we can see that the problem is in the San Francisco data center so we click on the red pushpin to zoom in:

This is my favorite dashboard in the demo. We drew out one of our server rooms using Visio and used an image of it as a background. Then we overlayed status indicators for each rackmount cabinet. It makes it easy to spot the problem server and know exactly where it is located in case it needs a visit from one of our admins.

But we can do a bit more. We can click on the rackmount cabinet and actually see the cabinet layout compose of some 1U, 2U and 4U components:

The problem unit is wdms05.tembria.local and by clicking on it we can see quickly that our System Health event monitor is warning about low disk space.

This is just an example of what you can do with our new diagramming ability in v6.0. As usual we give you the components to build the layout that you need and allow you complete ability to design and customize everything to your needs. The diagram editor lets you put down different kinds of indicators, shapes, lines, images, maps and much more. It’s really amazing that all works right in your browser without the need for any plug-ins or add-ons.

To view and edit network diagrams you’ll need to use Firefox 3.6 or later. Internet Explorer does not yet support the HTML5 elements that we need but IE9 will when it is released later this year. We are currently working with the IE9 platform previews when it is officially released we’ll fully support for it. We are also working on support for Google Chrome.

Posted by Dave

We are hard at work on v6.0 and one of the great new features that it will include is notification routing and escalation. For example you’ll be able to route e-mail notifications to one set of users during work around and route them to other people after hours. You can also control which actions occur at which time of day. For example you might choose to send e-mail notifications during work hours but use SMS text messages or voice phone calls for weekends. The new escalation abilities allow you to control what happens based on the number of errors in a row. For example you can just log the first couple of errors, send e-mail to first-line support on the third error, send e-mail to a supervisor after 5 errors and start making voice phone calls after 10 errors. You have complete control over what happens and under which conditions.

Development on version 6.0 is going very well. We are about a week or two behind our original schedule but it currently looks good for a release in the first or second week of September. We’ll have a pre-release ready in mid-August. If you are interested in trying it out then drop us a note at support@tembria.com and we’ll put your name on the notification list for when it is released.

Posted by Don

If you are using the recently released Tembria Server Monitor v5.6.2 or Tembria Multi-Site Monitor v1.2.1, you probably noticed that much of the reports section is missing from the user interface.

Here is what happened: For a while now we have been busy working on some major improvements for a new version to be released in August. One of those improvements is a brand new reporting engine that will unify our summary reports and our service level reports. In our recent release we accidentally included some of that code and it broke the reporting display because it didn’t match with the other reporting components.

We have fixed that and an update is almost ready to be posted as I write this.

So with that said, let’s talk about what is coming in the next release. The new reporting engine is going to allow us to deliver a lot more reporting functionality. Want to see overall CPU usage for your web farm over the Q4 last year? No problem. Disk space trends for your database clusters? Right away. And, even better, you’ll be able to get those reports delivered to you by e-mail.

The reporting engine is just one item in a long list of new features that will be included in v6.0 and over the coming weeks we’ll be able to share more details.

Posted by Don

We have been working on v5.6.2 for a while now with an intended release date “mid next week” for some weeks now. It has been one of those cases where as soon as we close off our last known issue, a new one crops up. Each issue has been relatively minor and temptingly easy to fix so we have pushed back the release date a couple of times. Some of the issues include a problem where it was possible to add devices with invalid characters in their names, a problem with specifying Oracle queries in Firefox, a problem where a SQL Server event monitor option couldn’t be deselected, a problem where very large light panel dashboards might appear blank, and that sort of thing.

In any case, we are now again in the situation where we have just two little bugs to fix but this time we are putting our collective feet down and promising the release for Monday May 31st.

Posted by Don

We have a few known issues in v5.6.1 that we are working to correct. First, if you are accessing the user interface through IIS instead of our integrated web server, you will likely notice that graph images are not being displayed correctly. We have a hotfix for that and you can find it here:

http://www.tembria.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=386

We have also noticed that once a certain number of devices and event monitors have been configured, the light panel dashboard element may not be displayed. We have tracked this down to a safety check that limits the size of the dashboard content and we are working to correct it.

Lastly, we are seeing a problem with performance counter monitoring where some counters that are implemented as ratios can return incorrect values (wildly large values, in fact) when they are close to zero.

Fixes for all of these will be included in v5.6.2 which will likely be released by the end of next week.

Posted by Don

We’re sad to announce that as of the next release, Windows 2000 will no longer be support as a platform for running Tembria Server Monitor and Tembria Multi-Site Monitor. Don’t worry though, you’ll still be able to monitor your Windows 2000 systems but our products themselves will need to run on Windows XP or later (for desktop versions of Windows) or Windows 2003 or later (for server editions of Windows).

This wasn’t a change that we wanted to make but it has been pretty much forced upon us. We need to move up to the latest development tools from Microsoft but they don’t support Windows 2000, likely because it is officially due to be retired by Microsoft on July 13th of this year.

Windows 2000 remains one of our favorite versions of Windows and we’re going to miss it. It’s small, fast, runs really well under VMware and Hyper-V and has a uncluttered user interface, all the sorts of things that really appeal to the sysadmins of the world. Despite reaching the end of its support period, it will no doubt play a role in many IT environments for years to come.

So to recap, we will continue to be able to monitor Windows 2000 systems but if your Tembria server is running on Windows 2000 you’ll need to migrate it to a system running a newer version of Windows before updating to the next release of Tembria Server Monitor or Tembria Multi-Site Monitor.

Posted by Don

It’s out of focus and off to one side but we’re pretty sure that what you see in the picture above is a customized Tembria Server Monitor dashboard running in what has been called “The World’s Most Amazing Datacentre”. It’s part of a set of images that are going around the Internet now but are probably from an earlier source. Under Stockholm, capital of Sweden, and housed in a former nuclear bunker that is protected by 16-inch thick entrance doors, this network operations centre adds waterfalls, greenhouses and apparently engines from German submarines for diesel backup power.

We don’t believe Bahnhof, the ISP who owns the datacentre, is a Tembria customer although it’s hard to tell since many purchases go through resellers. But if that is Tembria Server Monitor and they’re currently evaluating it then we would be happy to offer them a free Enterprise Edition license in exchange for a photo with the focus a just a *little* bit to the bottom left and maybe a quick tour of the facility.

Posted by Don

We have been getting great feedback about how easy it is to deploy remote monitoring nodes for Tembria Multi-Site Monitor. If you haven’t tried it, it’s really just a matter of running the setup and entering a few values to tell it how to contact the master console.

But even if it is easy to do, it’s no fun to go back and update all of your remote nodes when a new release is available, especially if you’re pushing 200 nodes or more.

So we’re very happy to announce that in the next release of Tembria Multi-Site Monitor, remote nodes will have the ability to update themselves automatically from the master console. All you do is upgrade the master console and then the remotes nodes update themselves.

The updates happen over the course of a couple of hours, mostly to ensure they don’t hammer to the master console, but you can easily see what’s going on because we added a new column to the sites display that shows the version that each is running.

So when the new version is available in about four weeks, the bad news is that you need to update each of the remote nodes again but the good news is that you won’t have to do it again after that.

Posted by Don

Tembria API

Dashboarding and datawarehousing are playing increasingly important roles in enterprises of all sizes.   And the data sets collected by monitoring systems like Tembria Server Monitor are increasingly valuable especially when it comes to auditing and quality-of-service metrics.  We have always stored our data in XML and comma separate formats to make it easy to import into other systems but doing so was still a challenge.

We are now very happy to announce a new product that will be released within the next two weeks:  The Tembria API.

The Tembria API is standard web service that you can provides access to our monitoring engine and datastores using C#, Java, Visual Basic or any other programming language that can use web services.  You can use the Tembria API to feed our data into your custom dashboarding systems, to build custom reports, to perform long term archival and any other kind of datawarehouse integration.   We have also provided access to the monitoring engine so you can programatically add new devices, add new groups, retrieve device status, pause and resume event monitors, and much more.

The Tembria API works with both Tembria Server Monitor and Tembria Multi-Site Monitor.  It’s currently in the final stages of testing and set for release before the end of April.

Posted by Don

We often get questions about whether e-mail notifications can be customized so I guess this is one feature that we haven’t highlighted enough especially since it has been available for several years now.

When you specify a recipient in a notification profile or in an event monitor’s setting we default to using a template called “html.txt” which is found in the “C:\Program Files\Tembria\Server Monitor\Templates\Email” folder.  It creates a nicely formatted notification that is compatible with almost all e-mail readers.

If you would prefer to receive text-only notifications instead HTML-formatted ones just add (Text) after the e-mail address.  For example:  user@domain.com (Text)

We also offer a compact template that is designed to trim a notification down to a size that can be displayed on a mobile phone or other mobile device.  To use it add (Compact) after the e-mail address as in: “user@domain.com (Compact)

All of these templates are completely customizable.  Just edit one with Notepad and you have total control over which fields appear in the notification, where they appear and even over the length of individual fields.

Here is a complete list of all the tags that are supported:

Another great feature is the ability to create your own templates.  The syntax for selecting custom templates is a bit different.  If you create a template file called “mytemplate.txt” then you can select it using the format “user@domain.com (Template:mytemplate)”.

One last note:  You can mix and match templates in the same notification settings.  In other words you could send notifications to three different users, each with a different template:

user1@company.com (Text), user2@company.com (Compact), user3@company.com (Tempate:mytemplate)

If you have any more questions about customizing e-mail templates just drop us a note at support@tembria.com.

Posted by Dave