TNT Software April 2008 Newsletter

ELM Enterprise Manager at ELM Log Manager Prices in April

So you've been looking into ELM Enterprise Manager and you like the capabilities and see the value it will bring to your IT operations, but you're leaning more toward ELM Log Manager based on your budget? If this describes you then you'll be interested to hear about TNT Software's latest promotion.

Make sure to contact your account manager today for details! Click here to contact us.

April Product Demonstration Schedule

April 10, 2008 - Live Overview and Demonstration of ELM Enterprise Manager

Would you like to know more about the system monitoring and event log management capabilities ELM can provide your organization? Would you and/or your team like to "kick the tires" and take a look under the hood before deploying ELM Enterprise Manager? Then you're in luck! TNT Software will be giving a live demonstration of ELM Enterprise Manager on April 10. This one hour overview presentation will introduce you to the architecture, power, flexibility, and efficiency ELM can bring to your IT Operations.

Areas we will cover include:

Monitoring

Deploying Agents - Virtual and Service Agents for agentless or real-time monitoring

Setting up Monitor Items - Collectors, Alarms and Monitors

Creating Agent Categories - apply common monitoring templates across groups of servers

Notifications

Filters - the "criteria" for all notifications

Notification Methods - Email, Scripts, Pager, Desktop ELM Advisor and more

Rules - the "connector" between Filters and Notifications

Results

Alerts - open and closed status (Agent color coding: Red, Yellow)

Event Views - default and customization options: include filters and custom date and time range settings

Demonstration Details
What: ELM Enterprise Manager 5.0 Live Overview and Demonstration
When: Thursday, April 10, 2008, 8:30 am, PDT
Where: WebEx On-line Presentation
Duration: 1 hour

How do I attend?

Register by using this link: https://tntsoftware.webex.com/tntsoftware/j.php?ED=97271277&RG=1&UID=0

-Or-

Request a formal meeting invitation by emailing: sales@tntsoftware.com
The subject line should read: ELM 5.0 Live Demonstration Invite 4/10

Call for ELM Beta Testers!

Development on ELM 5.5 is well underway and we are now putting out the call for beta test sites. If you are interested in getting a first look and hands on experience with the latest release of ELM and the new features available we'd like to hear from you.

Don't wait! Take an active role in the future of TNT Software's ELM products by sending an email to info@tntsoftware.com with "ELM Beta Test Site" in the subject line. Our development team will then contact you to discuss the opportunity and requirements for being a Beta Site for the newest version of ELM. We hope to hear from you soon!

Trade Show Season is Coming!

See ELM in action at booth #728!

The "ELM 411" - Virtual Server Tips & Tricks for Running ELM

Often times our clients ask for ways they can improve the efficiency of ELM running in a virtual environment. We have found that if you take the time to optimize some settings you will find that more performance can be obtained with just a little research and effort. The tips and tricks below are general guidelines as each system and environment is unique and there may be other variables to consider.

In general we have found that if memory of the guest OS is set too low, then seemingly random errors and hangs can occur. Recently a customer running ELM on VMware ESX Server discovered that paging within memory itself can cause the ELM Console to freeze or hang and that by increasing the memory to 2GB, the paging activity dramatically decreased and the console was more responsive.

As a general performance tip, we also like to check the performance counters: 'PhysicalDisk | Avg. Disk Queue Length' and 'PhysicalDisk | Current Disk Queue Length' for each drive letter instance. As a rule of thumb, the counter should not exceed the number of spindles plus two.

For example, if the E-drive is a RAID5 array with 4 physical drives, then the disk queue should not exceed 6. You may see occasional spikes to 8 or 9 which is nothing to be overly concerned about. However, if you see spikes to 100 or more, that is a sign the disks cannot keep up with the read and write commands. By putting the Windows pagefile.sys, SQL .mdf file, and SQL .ldf files on separate drives, this will help to avoid disk contention.

If possible, it is best to run SQL on a "real" server and not in the same virtual environment as ELM is running. If both are in the same virtual environment, then the number of agents or volume of data collected generally needs to be limited for best performance. This issue is magnified for reporting.

Finally, some companies, such as VMware, provide performance tuning documentation which can also be extremely useful in fine tuning your installation and performance. If you haven't done so already, you should check into any document libraries or knowledge base articles that are available.

NOTE: All ELM 411 articles are written based on Version 5.0 and instructions may not be accurate for previous ELM Versions. If you would like assistance upgrading to Version 5.0 so you can use these tips - please contact support@tntsoftware.com.

Share your own ELM tips!
Have a tip or trick with our ELM products you'd like to share with our newsletter subscribers? Send your ideas and any applicable screen shots to info@tntsoftware.com with "ELM 411" in the subject line. We'll take a look and if usable you'll see it published here in the ELM 411 section of upcoming newsletters!

Not Strictly Business

Did you know?
April was the second month of the early Roman Calendar but was changed to the fourth month when the ancient Romans began using January as the first month of the year. April may have come from the word "Aprilis" which means 'to open.' Other historians believe it could have come from Aphrodite, the Greek name for the goddess of love.

In Western Civilization, April often sees small animals that hibernate coming out of their dens and burrows. Birds that fly south for the winter return north and settle down to start new families. The bees and butterflies begin to gather nectar from the first flowers of the spring season.

In some countries April is planting time while in others it's harvest time.

April is the start of "Spring Cleaning," mowing lawns, and Major League Baseball games.

Sources: Wikipedia, The History Channel

April Fools Day - Great Pranks Through the Years
1996 - Taco Bell advertises in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it to the "Taco Liberty Bell." When asked about the sale, White House press secretary Mike McCurry replied tongue-in-cheek that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and would henceforth be known as the "Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial."

1997 - Game show hosts Alex Trebek and Pat Sajak switched hosting duties. Pat hosted Jeopardy that day and Alex hosted Wheel of Fortune where Sajak and Vanna White played as contestants.

1998 - The newsletter of New Mexicans for Science and Reason claims that Alabama Legislature voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi to the "biblical value" of 3.0.

1999 - A bank in Connecticut angered its customers through an ad stating that patrons wishing to speak with one of its tellers would now be charged $5 a visit. Though many got the joke (intended to be a jab at the financial institutions that actually do this), some didn't resulting in customers threatening to close all their accounts. The bank ran the ad again the next day, but clearly marked as a joke that time.

2000 - A news release sent to the media stated that the 15th annual New York City April Fool’s Day Parade was scheduled to begin at noon on 59th Street and would proceed down to Fifth Avenue. According to the news release, floats in the parade would include a “Beat ‘em, Bust ‘em, Book ‘em” float created by the New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle police departments. This float would portray “themes of brutality, corruption and incompetence.” A “Where’s Mars?” float, reportedly built at a cost of $10 billion, would portray missed Mars missions. Finally, the “Atlanta Braves Baseball Tribute to Racism” float would feature John Rocker who would be “spewing racial epithets at the crowd.” CNN and the Fox affiliate WNYW sent television news crews to cover the parade. They arrived at 59th Street at noon only to discover that there was no parade. The police informed them that they had received no notification of a parade. Reluctantly, the reporters realized that they had been hoaxed. The prank was the handiwork of Joey Skaggs, a well-known hoaxer.

2001 -The London Sunday Telegraph reported that a new European law would grant individuals the right to own their voice and distinctive mannerisms. As a consequence, comedians and impressionists would be forced to pay royalties to those they imitated. Politicians, actors, and other public figures who are frequently imitated by satirists could therefore begin to receive substantial payments in addition to their regular income. Impressionists anticipated that the ruling would present a serious challenge to their livelihood.

2002 -Slashdot announced that it would start posting advertiser-sponsored news stories, and disable anonymous posting.

2003 -Payback 1.0 Anti-Hacker Software. The Register reported that there was finally a way for computer users to get back at hackers. A company called Backfire Security had developed a software package called Payback 1.0, which it was making available as a free download at its website, http://www.backfiresecurity.co.uk/ (no longer active). The Register wrote: “PAYBACK v1.0 is a new kind of anti-hacker application called an IRS (Intruder Retaliation System) and is based upon “guerrilla” programming protocols and algorithms originally developed for the Chinese Space Program. The software has the ability to instantly and dynamically ‘trace’ the IP source address - no matter how well masked - of the network attack/infection and respond by launching either a Domain Name or Mail Server flood attack in the direction of the attacker.” The Backfire website was visited by over 30,000 people in a single day, over half of whom tried to download the fictional software. When they tried to do so they were greeted with the words "April Fool."

2004 - The Motley Fool investment site announced that Hormel Foods Corporation planned to sue the United States government over the CAN-SPAM anti-spam law.

2005 -Microsoft announces it will release Visual Studio 2005 for Unix/Linux.

2006 - The "Best Damn Sports Show Period" staged a fight between Tom Arnold and Michael Strahan. On Friday March 31st the show went off the air as Tom Arnold was wrestling NY Giant's defensive end Michael Strahan to the ground over comments Tom made in a tell-all book. Strahan pretended to be very hurt by screaming and clutching his shoulder as the cameras cut to black. It fooled cast members Rodney Peete and Rob Dibble enough to have them intervene in the fight.

2007 - NASA posted a picture of the first "Space Quidditch Match" on their Astronomy Picture of the Day website.

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