Serio IT Service Desk & Helpdesk Blog

To celebrate the launch of Serio IT Service View Pro, Serio will be holding a Plugin writing competition during July, August and September 2009.

We’ll be awarding a winning prize of USD$400 and a runner-up prize of USD$200 for the most useful, original and best thought-out Plugins submitted.

Background: IT Service View monitors IT Services & computes Availability statistics by means of Plugins – these are monitoring packages written in SerioScript that have published Properties and Responses defined by the Plugin author. Plugins can access WMI and SNMP data, read files, access Performance Counter data, read web pages, analyse web page content – and in this way verify the state of different IT Services.

This is what the judges will be looking for, and the criteria on which Plugin entries will be judged:

1. The Plugin covers a product or service not covered by one of the current Standard Plugins.
2. The Plugin covers a product or service in reasonably widespread use.
3. The Plugin works reliably.
4. The Plugin is easy to use, by sensible use of Properties and Responses. There should be no need for users to change the Plugin code to make it work.
5. The Plugin has a clear description telling you what it does, and how to use it. If the product or service being monitored requires any special set-up, then the description will tell you this also.

Closing date for submissions is September 30th 2009.

Terms and conditions of Entry

Entries must be submitted by email to competition@seriosoft.com.

Plugins must be exported and supplied in exported form, as attachments you your entry email.

If you’ve used any MIB files that are not supplied as standard in IT Service View, you must include these in your entry email.

Correspondence of any kind will not be entered into regarding the competition.

The entry email must be entitled ‘Plugin competition’.

The decision of the judges is final.

You must have a Paypal account in order to accept the prizes offered – no Paypal account, no prize. Any fees deducted by Paypal will be made from the prize money.

You may submit more than one entry. However, each separate entry must be submitted in a single email – do not submit multiple entries in a single email.

By entering, you agree that we may place your Plugin onto a Community Plugin webpage for download by others.

If you create a DLL to be used as part of the Plugin, you must supply full source code for the DLL and instructions on how to build (or supply the project files).

Winners must supply the following information about themselves for publication: Name, Nationality, Country of Residence, Occupation – so that we can publish the winner’s details.
By taking part in the Competition, you warrant that any Plugin supplied is your own work, and does not breach the copyright of any individual or organisation.

Prizes are non-transferable and there are no alternatives.

All taxes, transfers, insurances, and other expenses resulting from the prize are the sole responsibility of the winners unless otherwise stated.

Failure to claim a prize within the time or in the manner specified may result in disqualification and the selection of an alternative winner.

The competition and these rules are governed by Scottish Law.

It is your sole responsibility to ensure that your details and e-mail address are accurate, and that Serio is informed of any changes to these. Serio accepts no responsibility for any changes which are not properly notified from the time of submission of your entry to the time of notification that the prize has been awarded.

If you or your colleagues receive work emails through Blackberry handhelds, the chances are your company is using a piece of software called Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES).

BES provides the link between your company’s mail server (e.g. Microsoft Exchange) and the mobile network (T-Mobile, Vodafone, etc.) that actually delivers and receives emails from handhelds (see diagram).

If this link is broken, no-one will be able to send or receive work emails through their Blackberries.

It’s clearly in the interests of Service Delivery managers that the availability of this vital service is continuously monitored, so that Service Desk staff know about any problems before users do. Additionally, if you can report at the end of the month on the exact periods of downtime experienced and the percentage availability achieved, you have valuable information for improving user experience of the service.

The Blackberry Enterprise Server Plugin for Serio IT Service View helps you monitor and report on key indicators of the health and availability of your Blackberry Enterprise Server.

Connection to the SRP Host

In order to send emails out over the mobile network, your Blackberry Enterprise Server periodically connects to something called the SRP Host. You’ll have entered the address of the SRP host when you first set up your Blackberry Enterprise Server. You can see what the SRP Host address is for your country by going to the Blackberry website.

The BES Plugin for Serio IT Service View monitors the ability of your Blackberry Enterprise Server to connect to the SRP Host. Since no connection to the SRP Host effectively means no service, IT Service View changes the BES device status to Red (Unavailable) and, if desired, sends out email notifications.

For users of Serio IT Service View Pro, these periods of downtime will appear on scheduled Downtime and Availability reports sent to managers via email.

Build-up of Undelivered Emails on the Blackberry Server

Another indicator that there may be a problem is a build-up of undelivered emails on the BES. Again, the Plugin can notify you when there are an excessive number of such undelivered emails. As soon as the number rises above a threshold you define, IT Service View will alert you.

Using other Plugins to Monitor BES

Other Plugins for Serio IT Service View can provide valuable information about problems elsewhere that may be affecting your Blackberry Enterprise Server.

For example, use the Exchange Plugin to monitor the health of your Microsoft Exchange Server. Use the Windows 2003/2008 Plugin to monitor the Windows Server on which BES is running, or to check that Blackberry services are running correctly and restart them if not.

Technorati Tags: Monitoring, Blackberry

• Monitoring an (Ubuntu) Linux Server with Serio IT Service View
• Using Serio to obtain Availability Statisics
• Serio IT Service View WMI Troubleshooting Checklist

Serio IT Service View comes with a Plugin for monitoring Linux servers, allowing you to monitor free disk space, free RAM, processor utilisation, and running processes.

This article describes how to set up monitoring of a Linux Server with Serio IT Service View. The specific distribution discussed is Ubuntu, but hopefully you will find it straightforward to adapt the procedure to your own version of Linux.

Part One: Installing snmpd (Part of the Net-SNMP suite)

Serio IT Service View monitors Linux servers through the SNMP Agent, snmpd, which is part of the Net-SNMP suite. snmpd must be installed and running on the Linux server you intend to monitor.

For users of all varieties of Linux, you can find advice on downloading, installing, and configuring Net-SNMP at the following website: www.net-snmp.org.

For Ubuntu users, there is no need to download as snmpd is included as standard in the Ubuntu distribution. To ensure that snmpd is installed on Ubuntu,

1. Open the Synaptic Package Manager (accessed from the ‘System’ > ‘Administration’ menu).

2. Select ‘All’ on the left.

3. In the list on the right locate the snmp and snmpd packages. If these are not yet installed, then mark them for installation and click on ‘Apply’.

Part Two: Configuring snmpd

1. The snmpd.conf File

The configuration settings for snmpd are stored in a file called snmpd.conf. On Ubuntu, this file is located in the directory /etc/snmp.

A standard snmpd.conf file is supplied with Serio IT Service View. You’ll find it in the ‘Helpers’ folder, under the folder were Serio IT Service View is installed (usually \Program Files\ITServiceView).

Back up your current snmpd.conf file on your Linux server, and then replace it with the standard one supplied with Serio IT Service View.

You can use the snmpd.conf file supplied with Serio IT Service View as-is, wihout changes. However, if necessary, you can make changes to the snmpd.conf file using a text editor. Use the comments within the file to guide you. There are two cases in which you may need to make changes to snmpd.conf:

a. to set the Community String

For security reasons, you may want to change the Community String within the file (set by default to ‘public’).

b. to specify the list of processes you would like to monitor

If you want use Serio IT Service View to check if certain processes are running on your Linux server, you need to list these processes in the snmpd.conf file. Add the processes you are interested in to snmpd.conf, using the example and comments within the file to guide you.

2. Command Line Options

You can run snmpd with various command line options (see http://www.net-snmp.org/docs/man/snmpd.html).

For the Ubuntu distribution, the default command line options are specified in the file etc/default/snmp, which you can open with a text editor. The default options are specified in the line beginning ‘SNMPDOPTS’:

SNMPDOPTS=’-Lsd -Lf /dev/null -u snmp -I -smux -p /var/run/snmpd.pid 127.0.0.1′

One change is required here: you need to remove the final ‘127.0.0.1′. It specifies that snmpd should listen only for requests only on the loopback interface, which means that it will not detect requests from Serio IT Service View. With this change made the line should look like this:

SNMPDOPTS=’-Lsd -Lf /dev/null -u snmp -I -smux -p /var/run/snmpd.pid’

Save the file after making your changes.

3. Restart the snmpd Service

After making changes to configuration files, you need to restart the snmpd service. On Ubuntu, you can issue the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/snmpd restart

Part Three: Testing snmp on your Linux Server

It’s not necessary to do this step, but it will help you confirm that the SNMP Agent, snmpd, is running smoothly on your Linux server. First check that it is running, by entering the following command at the terminal on your Linux server:

ps -A | grep snmpd

Then try the following command, also from terminal on the Linux server:

snmpwalk  -c public -v 2c localhost dskTable

(Note: If you changed the Community String from ‘public’ to something else in step 1 above, you need to substitute your new Community String in the command above.)

You should see a long list of results about the disks on your Linux server.

If you don’t get any results, or you get a time out or other error message, there’s clearly something wrong with the way snmpd is running and you need to resolve that before continuing. In that case, review the steps above to see if you can spot the problem.

Part Four: Adding the Linux Server as a Device in Serio IT Service View

The final step is to add the Linux server as a Device to Serio IT Service View. Do this in the usual way using the New Device wizard.

When using the wizard, you need to specify some SNMP settings. Make sure you specify 2c as the version for SNMP. Also, if you changed the Community String (see Part Two, section 1 above), you will need to specify the Community String you have used.

That’s it! You’re ready to go online.

• Monitoring Blackberry Enterprise Server Availability with Serio IT Service View
• Serio IT Service View WMI Troubleshooting Checklist

Serio IT Service View uses WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) to monitor Windows 2003/2008 Servers through its standard Plugins.

When you add a new Windows Server device to Serio, you’ll be asked for Windows Login details for WMI, and you’ll be able to test that WMI can connect to your target server.

If this test fails, you’ll receive an error message, which may help you diagnose the problem. If you’re still stuck, try working through the following checklist.

1. Starting with the basics, is the Windows Server you’re trying to connect to switched on? Can you ping it?

2. Check your credentials. The Windows username and password you supply to connect to WMI must have Administrator rights on the target server. If you’re using a domain administrator account, make sure prefix it with the domain name, as in:

mydomain\administrator

3. Is the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service running on the target server? WMI uses RPC to connect to remote servers. Check that the ‘Remote Procedure Call’ service is running by looking on the Services panel within Administrative Tools on the Control Panel of the target server.

4. Is the target server Windows 2008? If so, there are a few changes you may need to make to the firewall, DCOM launch and activation privileges, and User Account Control (UAC) settings. It’s all explained in this handy Microsoft article:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa822854(VS.85).aspx

5. Still stuck? Another option is to bypass WMI altogether and use SNMP to monitor the server with the Serio Inventory Agent.

• Troubleshooting Connection Issues with the Serio Inventory Agent
• Monitoring Blackberry Enterprise Server Availability with Serio IT Service View
• Monitoring an (Ubuntu) Linux Server with Serio IT Service View