Windows Server Monitoring and Event Log Management Solutions
April 5, 2011 - Volume 6, Number 4 |
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-In this Issue- |
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ELM 6.5 is Coming - Feature Preview! March Curiosity Poll Results - Websites Websites Everywhere Reminder - Sunset of ELM 5.0 Coming April Curiosity Poll - Compliance Standards The "ELM 411" - The Beauty of Backups 100%
Developed & Supported in the state of Washington, U.S.A. |
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Dates to Remember
April 22
Earth Day
April 24
Easter
April 27
Administrative Professionals Day
April 29
National Arbor Day
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Contact Us: Phone: 360-546-0878 |
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For over15 years, TNT Software has developed centralized Windows event log management solutions for companies seeking more system visibility, efficiency, and compliance support.
ELM Enterprise Manager's real-time server monitoring, alerting and reporting provides System Administrators the information they need to make informed decisions and become more proactive with enterprise systems management.
ELM 6.5 is Coming - Feature Preview!
Our product management and development teams have been hard at work over the last several months and we've got some exciting new features coming your way in ELM Enterprise Manager version 6.5! Although we can't totally 'let the cat out of the bag,' we'll start to share some details each month in this newsletter of the new features and enhancements coming out, giving you a preview of all the good stuff we've been working on.
You Talked - We Listened.
A common challenge among customers has been database size management. When you're collecting the massive volumes of event data today's servers and network devices generate, you need some serious storage and management capability. This demand has continued to grow through the years.The database schema in ELM Enterprise Manager 6.5 has gone through some extensive reconstruction, including taking advantage of enhanced features available in SQL Server 2008 as well as simplifying database maintenance and setup. Although it's too soon to talk about specific numbers, customers moving to ELM version 6.5 will enjoy significant improvements in speed and performance due to a reduced database size.
We've also reworked the database configuration settings and archiving settings interface, providing much easier access and flexibility to better support your data retention strategy and policies.
Stay tuned for future updates on the new features and enhancements coming in ELM Enterprise Manager 6.5 - scheduled for release later this year!
Last month we were curious how our readers are hosting their websites. We asked if your website is being kept/managed: In-house? At a hosting company? and What kind of plan seems to work for you?
As of the publishing of this newsletter, here's what respondents had to say.
Not surprisingly, most larger or technically savvy companies maintain their own web server in-house. Although we did not ask on this poll, it would be interesting to see how many are Windows vs. Linux based as well.
As the date grows closer, we want to remind clients running older versions of ELM once again that commercial and technical support of all four ELM version 5.0 products will be terminated effective May 31, 2011, in accordance with our product lifecycle policy.
An upgrade license is available free of charge for all clients with a current Support and Maintenance Agreement.
If you are wondering about the latest product offerings and where your upgrade path leads, the diagram below demonstrates the upgrade path from the individual ELM 5.0 products to the corresponding licenses in ELM Enterprise Manager 6.0.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our Sales or Support departments.
We live in a world of checks and balances. Policies, procedures and proof that we're following the rules and maintaining security. With that in mind, we got to wondering...
What compliance mandates are you required to adhere to?
FISMA: Federal Information Security Management Act.
GLBA: Gramm Leach Bliley Act (also known as the Financial Services Modernization act of 1999).
HIPAA: Health Information Portability and Accountability Act.
NERC CIP: North American Electric Reliability Corporation - Critical Infrastructure Protection.
NISPOM: National Industrial Security Program (Operating Manual).
PCI DSS: Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standard.
SOX: Sarbanes Oxley Act (also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act).
In this month's ELM 411 technical article we'll revisit the importance of a simple housekeeping task that can literally save you hours of work, potential frustration, and maybe even a little headache. The Beauty of Backups.
Let's face it, although it may be rare, hardware or an OS failure does still occur on occasion. When you enter the restore and reconfigure stage after a failure, being able to quickly reload your finely tuned configuration settings can save you hours of work. Maybe not a big deal if you are monitoring say, 10 servers; but if you are monitoring a hundred, or even hundreds, then it's a whole other ball game.
In fact, our support engineers recently assisted a customer who's OS failed after a Microsoft update. Fearing they would have to go through an extensive re-configuration of ELM is what prompted us to revisit this article. With a quick restore of their configuration files from a backup, they were up and running in Minutes, not Hours!
Getting Started
The ELM Server stores the majority of its configuration data in the ELM installation directory (c:\Program Files\ELM Enterprise Manager). Depending on your needs, some or all of the components described below should be backed up.
appSettings.xml
The appSettings.xml file stores settings for ELM reporting options, directories, timeouts and the home/standby server settings. Updates are relatively infrequent and do not use the internal notification mechanism like with the .dat file. Therefore the ELM Server service does not need to be stopped to backup this file.databaseSettings.xml
The databaseSettings.xml file has the connection string and credentials for ELM to connect to the databases, the database pruning filters as well as the pruning schedule. Just like the appSettings.xml file, the ELM Server service does not need to be stopped to backup this file, but all ELM Wizards should be closed.EEMSVR.bak
The ELM Server is notified internally when its configuration changes. If no more changes occur for a fifteen second period, then the ELM Server writes the changes to its current configuration in the .dat file.When the ELM Server is started, it loads the configuration in the server .dat file. If this loads successfully, the ELM Server then makes a .bak copy of the configuration. Stopping the ELM Server service and backing up both the .dat and .bak files provides a copy of the current configuration and the prior configuration.
We recommend backing up at least the .bak file to backup media. If many changes have been made since the last time the ELM Server service was started, then we recommend stopping the ELM Server service, making a backup of the .dat, and then restarting the ELM Server service. Note that this will momentarily interrupt data collection and notifications.
EEMSVR.dat
This file stores the majority of the configuration settings in ELM including:
- Assigned Monitor Items
- Notification Rules
- Notification Methods
- Include/Exclude Filters
- Event Views
- As well as the ELM Console snap-in security settings
If you are not actively making configuration changes in ELM on a regular basis, a good rule of thumb is to backup the files listed above at least on a weekly basis. Depending on the magnitude of your monitored environment of course, the total file size for backup of these components is likely less than 15MB.
For more details on creating backups as well as how to restore ELM Server Configuration settings we encourage you to visit the Administrator Guide section of the Help File, then Planning Guide > Backup Guidelines.
These backup guidelines also come in very handy when you are migrating your ELM installation to another server. For more details on ELM Server Migration, check out this handy KBA Article: www.tntsoftware.com/support/kba/default.aspx?kba=080207JB1
We hope that you found this article informative and wish you continued success with your ELM deployment!
NOTE: All ELM 411 articles are written based on ELM Enterprise Manager Version 6.0 and instructions may not be accurate for previous ELM Versions. If you would like assistance upgrading to ELM 6.0 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!
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