TNT Software May 2008 Newsletter

ELM Event Log Monitor May Special Promotion - 50% Off Server Agents!

Get real-time event log monitoring, alerting, reporting and archiving of your Windows Servers with ELM Event Log Monitor 5.0 at half price through the month of May.

Act soon; this is a limited time offer. Contact your Account Manager or sales@tntsoftware.com for details!

May Product Demonstration Schedule

May 20, 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 May 20. 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: Tuesday, May 20, 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=97803597&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 5/20

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!

Tech-Ed 2008 is Coming

See ELM in action at Tech-Ed 2008! Stop by booth #725 to visit with staff from TNT Software and get a live, personal demonstration of ELM.

June 10-13, 2008
Orlando, FL

Vote for ELM Enterprise Manager!

ELM Enterprise Manager has been nominated for the Windows IT Pro Community Choice Award - Exchange Server Monitoring Tools. This is your opportunity to support your peers and identify ELM as a valuable tool for managing your Exchange servers. Just click the link below and vote for TNT Software.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2fz97tv4rU5iY2IsYDbyCRg_3d_3d

The "ELM 411" - Using Thresholds to Control Notifications

"Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" How many times have you heard that over and over again and wished you could just make it stop. However you wouldn't want to silence that sort of thing completely or you might miss a "I have to go to the bathroom!" Monitoring busy IT environments can yield similar results - being overwhelmed with too many notifications saying the same thing over and over again and potentially missing the more critical ones. This month's ELM 411 article will discuss how to use threshold settings to control notifications.

Thresholds determine how many times identical events can occur before a Notification Method will be executed, or stopped from executing. It is important to identify what increments the event counter. For example consider this sequence of events.

Computer Source Event Message

10.1.1.25 ImageWriter 7 Printer out of paper

10.1.1.25 ImageWriter 7 Printer out of paper

10.1.1.25 ImageWriter 7 Printer out of paper

10.1.1.25 ImageWriter 7 Printer out of paper

10.1.1.25 ImageWriter 7 Printer out of paper

MyDC1 EEMSVR 5506 Ping failure. System down.

10.1.1.25 ImageWriter 7 Printer out of paper

10.1.1.25 ImageWriter 7 Printer out of paper

You probably don't want the ping failure suppressed by chatty printer messages. ELM handles this by incrementing only for identical events; that is, events that have the same four fields

Computer Name

Source

User Name

Event ID

There are three main threshold settings available in ELM: Disable, Activate and Consolidate as seen in this properties screen.

The first threshold setting will allow you to receive the first few notifications that occur within the specified time period, then disable the notification for a set period before automatically re-enabling it again. This basically allows you to get the first few messages that you specify you want, then staggers the messages or creates a "sleep period" giving you time to take corrective actions.
This setting option allows you to activate the notification method only after it is triggered a specific number of times within a specified time period. By default this is set to activate after occurring just one time. When this threshold is selected, the notifications will not be processed unless the rule is triggered the specified number of times within the time period selected. For example, if you set this to activate only after being triggered 3 times within 10 seconds for a logon failure, then you'll get notified for one out of every three times that a logon failure occurs within 10 seconds.
This option can be used to consolidate notifications for barrage or event storm protection. If you are expecting potentially hundreds of messages in a short amount of time then this is a good option to use. It can be set to a specified number of similar events that occur or to a designated amount of time passing.

The final option within threshold settings is to disable this notification method for all Cached (old) data sent from a Service Agent. By default, 60 minutes is the window of time differentiating old data from new data. If an event occurred within the last hour, even though it may be from a Service Agent cache file, ELM will not treat it as (old) cached data. This feature is designed to account for and notify you of events that occur during a brief ELM Server outage such as a reboot, service restart, etc. The 60 minute window of time can be changed in the CacheDataTrigger value in the Registry on the ELM Server.

Modifying your threshold settings within the various notification methods helps you to fine tune the information you are receiving from ELM and can help to calm down the number of notifications you receive that you may not need or want. You can also create unique schedules with different notification types and rules for further fine tuning (ie. emails during workings hours, pager notification after hours).

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 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?
Contrary to popular belief, Mother's Day was not concocted and fine tuned in the boardroom of a major gift card corporation. The earliest accolades to mothers date back to the annual spring festival of the Greeks dedicated to Rhea, the mother of many deities. The Romans also made offerings to their Great Mother of Gods Cybele. Christians celebrated this festival on the fourth Sunday in Lent in honor of Mary, mother of Christ. In England the holiday was expanded to include all mothers and was called "Mothering Sunday."

About 150 years ago, Mother's Day first got started in United States when Ann Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized a crusade to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community. This was a cause she believed would best be advocated by mothers, hence it was called "Mother's Work Day." After her death in 1907, her daughter Anna Jarvis continued the crusade to found a memorial day for women. On May 10, 1908, in Grafton, West Virginia, the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School, the first "Mother's Day" was celebrated.

From there the custom caught on and rapidly spread to 45 states being declared officially by some states starting in 1912. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day - a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday had become so rampant (imagine that) that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day to this day is known as one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions.

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