Monitor a servers network connection

djd80

Hi All
We have a system here which we are having some problems with. the support company are blaming "loss of network connectivity" for the problems but we are not having any network issues as far as we are aware.

Does anyone know of a program we could use just to monitor the network uptime of one server and show up any loss of connectivity etc?

If it was free it would be great too!

seamus

http://www.nagios.org/

djd80

Thanks Seamus. I downloaded nagios but I can't seem to get it up and running on my windows machine and I can only find installation guides for Linux based machines

shaner

dar_d wrote: »

Thanks Seamus. I downloaded nagios but I can't seem to get it up and running on my windows machine and I can only find installation guides for Linux based machines

Nagios itself runs on a Linux based machine with an Agent installed on each windows server you wish to monitor.

You could install it on a virtual machine if you didn't have a spare machine to install Linux+Nagios on.

Shane

djd80

No I dont have a spare machine. I'll keep looking to see if I can find some other app. Thanks

shaner

Depending on bandwidth of the connection you could do something as simple as a constant ping? (Also assumes that the remote host will allow a ping)

use:

ping <IP of remote host> -t

and see if it drops packets / the latency of the connection.

If you describe the issue with the server in more detail it might help.

djd80

shaner wrote: »

Depending on bandwidth of the connection you could do something as simple as a constant ping? (Also assumes that the remote host will allow a ping)

use:

ping <IP of remote host> -t

and see if it drops packets / the latency of the connection.

If you describe the issue with the server in more detail it might help.

I know a constant ping would work but I'm looking for something that I can run over a week or so and then export the time and date of any loss of connectivity to some sort of a file which i can send to our support company.

basically the apps on the server are hanging and the support company insist the only way this can happen is if the server loses its connection to the network. I need to prove this isnt the case.

shaner

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/148942

"How to capture network traffic with Network Monitor"

If the Network Monitor process stays alive for a week...then you could save the results.

Most other Windows based solutions cost although you could try the 30 day trial of http://www.activexperts.com/activmonitor/

Dardania

A simple (free) way to do it could be with SNMP & odmon.com...I use odmon.com to monitor my DSL modem & a wifi router based on dd-wrt for bandwidth usage but you can monitor far more than that...

What OS is your server?

_CreeD_

Hyperic HQ is a pretty decent multi-platform monitor (so yes it has a windows server), the free edition will do what you need. Pretty easy to get going.
I prefer Nagios as it's more flexible and versatile than Hyperic's Free edition, it does have a relatively steep learning curve though and limitations when it comes to historical performance data - for the best of both worlds I highly recommend Opsview (it's based on Nagios and has all of it's strengths but is much more user friendly and versatile, linux only again though but setting it up under VMWare inside a windows server is easy enough (and all free)).

djd80

Thanks for all the replies

I found a little free app which suits my needs perfectly
Its called IsItUp from www.tarosoft.com

You can monitor an IP for uptime, at whatever interval you like, between whatever times you like and generate reports/graphs based on the results which is exactly what I needed.