Let's put the focus on the Host. . .

[greyhat64]

After reading some a number of articles in this forum, three thoughts have occurred to me

• (a) One of the first things I noticed using the product is that there isn't even a host column to sort by - Odd. It is, afterall, called Advanced Host Monitor.
  --- In fact, a host may be called different things (Address, URL, computer, etc.) or only abstractly referenced depending upon the type of test being used.
  (b) Looking through a list of, potentially, 20 millions tests is unwieldly at best.
  (c) Replication of that many tests and the maintenance of those replicated tests could turn into a full time job.

I'm still learning the product, but wouldn't it simplify things if the host were the focus of the interface instead of the test, and tests were an inheritable attribute of the host? Let me expound. . .

Now with hosts as the focal object, we could:

• (1) start with a host profile, including an attribute for host type (SQL Server, Web Server, Router, etc.) and the ability to turn inheritance on/off for that host.
  (2) hosts could then be grouped in folders/views and tests, or even a group of tests, applied to the folder/view, the host type attribute, or both.
  --- We would need to have the ability to define additional uninherited tests per host.
  --- On second thought, since some servers perform multiple roles, the ability to apply multiple profiles to a host would be nice.

When it comes down to it, we're all most interested to know if the host, as a whole, is functional. A host could be presented in the right pane with a status color code. - 'Drill down' would allow the user to see individual test results for that host, similar to your dashboard. A much cleaner view when you have a large number of hosts/tests.

Advantages to this approach:

• (1) The necessity for Replicator is sharply reduced, if not eliminated. (Honestly it's a handy tool, but a bit of a stopgap solution when compared to an inheritance model).
  (2) This also resolves the issue of re-replicating changes. Say, for instance, I decide to change my threshold on a certain type of test, or I decide to use a different action profile for a group of hosts.
  (3) Simply moving a host to a different folder could optionally change the inherited test list (allow user to turn off inheritance with a move, copying existing tests for the host to the new folder as uninherited tests.)
  
  (Advanced Feature) Taking into account another user's issue, in a redundant or clustered server environment the functionality of the group (folder/view) could be good (green) even if one of the individual hosts is down. --- I know this is something that can be accomplished with a complex dependency list, but to simplify the process a relationship tree could be 'drawn' in order to define and visualize the releationships based on the host profiles, similar to the tables relationship view in M$Access

Of course that host profile could be initially created/populated using that discovery tool your going to have in the next release
In this way you could then claim asset management/inventory as a feature of HM, especially with user defined fields (Purchase Date, Warranty status, etc.)
In fact, I'm not sure I want to pay more but, it could be sold as a separate, integratable product.

So, does a new potential revenue stream kick this up in priority?
-----(sorry for being so long winded - I got on a role. I still love HM!)-----

[KS-Soft]

Yeah, we thought about such modification. But its not just a modification, it changes just everything. So this task was delayed. We will think about this item again when version 8 will be in development.

Regards
Alex