Thanks

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timn
Posts: 184
Joined: Thu Nov 20, 2003 9:57 am
Location: United States

Thanks

Post by timn »

Sometimes, with all the wish list posts and user questions (certainly including my own), someone new to KS Host Monitor might get a mistaken impression.

So, for the record, I just wanted to state that KS Host Monitor has been a HUGE improvement for our company. We have been using HM for 3 months now. We are seeing more, detecting problems sooner, becoming much more proactive, and definitely reducing downtime. It is making me much more effective at my job. This, in my opinion, adds value far beyond the actual cost of the software. Most significant of all, it is improving our customer's experience.

In addition, the level of support provided by Alex in this forum is extremely impressive. There are Fortune 500 companies who could learn a great deal from Alex. Discussing issues, and more importantly, addressing them in a public forum with your customers can be painful. But I can think of no better way to improve your product. Kudos.

HM therefore gets my personal 5-Star Product Of The Year Award. And yes, I know... my opinion and $4.95 will buy you a coffee at Starbucks. Regardless, I never grant such personal awards gratuitously. Thanks. :D
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Stoltze
Posts: 174
Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2004 1:58 am
Location: Denmark

Post by Stoltze »

I must say, that I totally agree with Timn. HostMonitor is a great program, especially when you consider the price...!

The only reason not to buy AHM, are if you need a graphical presentation of your network, with nice backgrounds showing you country etc..

Otherwise, it has all the kind of tests that has been needed by my company so far..

And yes, it's really great with the help Alex give in this forum.. THNX!

Best regards,
Stoltze
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Marcus
Posts: 367
Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2002 6:00 pm

Post by Marcus »

The only reason not to buy AHM, are if you need a graphical presentation of your network, with nice backgrounds showing you country etc..
And even that could be possible if you know you're way around with web-pages and php or asp. Custom HTML reports are not limited to HTML :wink:
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Stoltze
Posts: 174
Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2004 1:58 am
Location: Denmark

Post by Stoltze »

Marcus wrote:
The only reason not to buy AHM, are if you need a graphical presentation of your network, with nice backgrounds showing you country etc..
And even that could be possible if you know you're way around with web-pages and php or asp. Custom HTML reports are not limited to HTML :wink:
That leeds to another question... Does anyone have something that does this?

Regards,
/Stoltze
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Marcus
Posts: 367
Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2002 6:00 pm

Post by Marcus »

We don't have a network representation, but a service representation. Every test is shown with an 11x11 pixels square (green = ok, red = bad, orange = unknown, etc).

Hovering the mouse will give you some more information, clicking the square will redirect you to a more detailed page. The main page is devided on a customer basis (including all tests of a single customer) with a top menu bar (which can devide a customer on a location basis). The largest pages now have about 2100+ tests defined and take up 1/3 of the screen (1280x1024 resolution). All pages are available through a web-interface running under IIS.

But it doesn't use any php or asp, just javascript. But it must be possible to create *any* page you want, using php or asp. Time and programming skills are the bottlenecks here :wink:
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hmo
Posts: 81
Joined: Fri Feb 14, 2003 6:00 pm
Location: Denmark
Contact:

Post by hmo »

Stoltze wrote:The only reason not to buy AHM, are if you need a graphical presentation of your network, with nice backgrounds showing you country etc..
Beeeeep! 8) Swiiinging into arena....

HM is very good build due to logic GUI ie. drop-down/tree-view etc.
We use to operate OpenView (Yes!!!) and dropped into HM for many reasons. It's easy... it's fast... it does the job in a cost protected way!
We have devided our network into a graphical view by running an old WhatsUp Gold (only shows the network - and doing "pings")... and then we have HM too... that's where our attention is locked! :-)

I totally agree your comments regarding Alex. It's very impressive that he can manage extensive forum debate, write the code etc. But please remember that KS Soft is "just a small" company... and dont misslead this statement... I hope the best for HM and Alex... it's really "something" on the right track!
ptrevino
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Mar 29, 2004 12:22 pm

Interested in the Service Representation page....

Post by ptrevino »

Hello there Marcus.... Would your Service Representation page be somthing you could share or assist me in building for our use?

Thanks!!!
Marcus wrote:We don't have a network representation, but a service representation. Every test is shown with an 11x11 pixels square (green = ok, red = bad, orange = unknown, etc).

Hovering the mouse will give you some more information, clicking the square will redirect you to a more detailed page. The main page is devided on a customer basis (including all tests of a single customer) with a top menu bar (which can devide a customer on a location basis). The largest pages now have about 2100+ tests defined and take up 1/3 of the screen (1280x1024 resolution). All pages are available through a web-interface running under IIS.

But it doesn't use any php or asp, just javascript. But it must be possible to create *any* page you want, using php or asp. Time and programming skills are the bottlenecks here :wink:
Flashback
Posts: 37
Joined: Sun Oct 27, 2002 6:00 pm
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Post by Flashback »

One of the tricks I've found is by setting one of the commentline variables in the test to a certain RGB value, I can choose the severity of certain "alarms" on our report that we have displayed on several 36" monitors in our tech support center. Some applications are considered critical, while others are not. It provides an "at a glance" view as to the status of our network.
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Marcus
Posts: 367
Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2002 6:00 pm

Post by Marcus »

I'll give it a try:

-We use custom reports
-An IIS server to publish the pages (including the scripts and images)
-We use overlib to generate extra information for every test. This extra information is mostly contained in the commentlines for every test, see below.
We use a different script for the main menu. Don't know where I found it, but somewhere from 'the internet' :-) I haven't changed the script name, so if you search for it, I'm sure you'll find it.

The IIS Server contains:
<SERVER>/images/
<SERVER>/images/good.gif
<SERVER>/images/bad.gif
<SERVER>/images/unknown.gif
<SERVER>/images/wait.gif
<SERVER>/images/schedule.gif
<SERVER>/images/nottested.gif
<SERVER>/images/disabled.gif

All images have a 11x11 pixels size.


<SERVER>/scripts/overlib_mini.js
<SERVER>/scripts/nwrmenu_var.js
<SERVER>/scripts/menu_com.js

The last two are used for the main menu......


Folder structure inside HostMonitor:
Root\Department\Customer\server1
Root\Department\Customer\server2
Root\Department\Customer\server3


Comment lines for every test:
-CommentLine1 - Type of test
-CommentLine2 - server name
-CommentLine3 - Item used for the test
-CommentLine4 - Extra information if available
-CommentLine5 - Ip address
-CommentLine6 - Customer name

In the code:
<SERVER> = full dns server name.
<dep1> = Name of first department.


This is the "header" tab in the custom report....

Code: Select all

<html><head>
 <META http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
 <title>HostMonitor report</title>
 <STYLE TYPE="text/css"><!-- a:hover { color: "#00FFFF"; } --> </STYLE>
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
var d= new Date();
var time;
time = Math.random();
function move() {
    window.location = 'http://<SERVER>/<dep1>/%Folder%.htm?' + time;
}
function CreateMenu() {
    document.write(
        '<font face="Arial"><br>' +
        '<b>Microsoft Server Management</b> - ' + 
        '<a href="/<dep1>/%Folder%.htm?' + time + '" style="color: #7BFC16">Good: %GoodTests%</a> - ' + 
        '<a href="/<dep1>/%Folder%-bad.htm?' + time + '" style="color: #FF2126">Bad: %BadTests%</a> - ' + 
        '<a href="/<dep1>/%Folder%-unknown.htm?' + time + '" style="color: #E47607">Unknown: %UnknownTests%</a>' +
        '<hr></font>'
    )
}
function C(str_image, str1, str2, str3) {
    document.write('<input type=image src="../images/' + str_image + '.gif" onmouseover="return overlib(\'Reply: ' + str1 + '\', CAPTION, \'' + str2 + '\', WIDTH, 300);" onmouseout="return nd();" onclick="window.open(\'./' + str3 + '.htm\' , \'_self\')">')
}
function WriteFooter() {
    var ActiveTests=%GoodTests%+%UnknownTests%+%BadTests%+%WaitForMasterTests%;
    var NotTested=%TotalTests%-%GoodTests%-%UnknownTests%-%BadTests%-%WaitForMasterTests%-%OutOfScheduleTests%-%DisabledTests%;
    document.write(
        '<hr><table width="100%"><tr>' +
        '<td><img src="../images/good.gif"> = Good (%GoodTests%)</td>' +
        '<td><img src="../images/bad.gif"> = Bad (%BadTests%)</td>' +
        '<td><img src="../images/unknown.gif"> = Unknown (%UnknownTests%)</td>' +
        '<td><img src="../images/wait.gif"> = Wait for Master (%WaitForMasterTests%)</td>' +
        '<td><img src="../images/schedule.gif"> = Out of Schedule (%OutOfScheduleTests%)</td>' +
        '<td><img src="../images/nottested.gif"> = Not Tested (' + NotTested + ')</td>' +
        '<td><img src="../images/disabled.gif"> = Disabled (%DisabledTests%)</td>' +
        '</table><hr><font face="Arial">' +
        '<table width="100%" align="center">' +
        '<td><a href="http://www.ks-soft.net/">Advanced Hostmonitor</a></td>' +
        '<td><i>Generated on %Date% at %Time%</i></td>' +
        '<td><font style="color:YELLOW">Total tests defined:</font><font style="color:White">%TotalTests%</font></td>' +
        '<td><font style="color:YELLOW">Total tests active:</font><font style="color:LightGreen">' + ActiveTests + '</font></td>' +
        '<td><input type=image src="../images/help.gif" alt="Click to open the help page..." onclick="window.open(\'../help/help.htm\', \'_blank\')"</td>'
    )
}
//-->
</script>
</head>
<body onload="timer=setTimeout('move()',60000)" bgcolor="#000000" text="#E9E9E9" link="#00FFFF" vlink="#00FFFF" alink="#00FFFF">
<div id="overDiv" style="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:1000;"></div>
<script language="JavaScript" src="../scripts/overlib_mini.js"></script> 
<script type='text/javascript' src='../scripts/nwrmenu_var.js'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='../scripts/menu_com.js'></script>
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
CreateMenu();

The test items tab, contains a function call for every type of status possible for the tests. C is a function, declared at the header tab. This is a call to a document write, to create the image entry on the main page. Every test result has it's own picture, so it's own line of code.

Code: Select all

C('good','%Reply%','%CommentLine2%|%CommentLine1%|%CommentLine3%|%CommentLine4%','%CommentLine6%');

C('bad','%Reply%','%CommentLine2%|%CommentLine1%|%CommentLine3%|%CommentLine4%','%CommentLine6%');

C('unknown','%Reply%','%CommentLine2%|%CommentLine1%|%CommentLine3%|%CommentLine4%','%CommentLine6%');

C('wait','%Reply%','%CommentLine2%|%CommentLine1%|%CommentLine3%|%CommentLine4%','%CommentLine6%');

C('schedule','%Reply%','%CommentLine2%|%CommentLine1%|%CommentLine3%|%CommentLine4%','%CommentLine6%');

C('nottested','%Reply%','%CommentLine2%|%CommentLine1%|%CommentLine3%|%CommentLine4%','%CommentLine6%');

C('disabled','%Reply%','%CommentLine2%|%CommentLine1%|%CommentLine3%|%CommentLine4%','%CommentLine6%');

Now we only have to close the page, so the 'footer' tab will look like:

Code: Select all

WriteFooter();
-->
</script>
</body>
</html>
All other tabs of the custom reports are empty. If everything is set up the way we did, you will have a main page with each 11x11 pixels image representing a single test and the page will be reloaded every 60 seconds. Clicking one of the small images will link you to the next page. This is in our case a page with more details about the tests.
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