While the basic IPSentry package provides the ability to monitor web servers and make sure that specified content is received, the HTTP/s Enhanced Monitoring add-in allows you to substantially extend this capability with SSL, Secured Logon (Basic Realm & NTLM), Form Data Posting, Redirection, and other enhanced options in order to monitor your web servers using more advanced functionality.

This add-in can evaluate page contents in order to trigger alerts when the content of a page changes either by calculating a base CRC value against the page content or by evaluating the last modified date as sent by the server.

The form posting functionality is ideal for simulating a users actions such as posting form data to the web server or logging into a specific area of your system as well as following redirects.

The HTTP/s Enhanced Web Monitor can also be used as an alerting option allowing you to post data to web servers such as web only paging systems and other web based services that allow form data or a simple URL to be sent. With the introduction of CAPTCHA showing up on many providers web based paging, you will need to contact your mobile service provider to identify a method for bypassing the visual input requirements.

SSL Certificate Monitoring
Included in Version 5.5 and later, this add-in will also monitor SSL certificate properties an alert you when the certification will expire in a user-defined number of days, if it has expired, if any certificate attribute changes, or if there is an SSL certification validation error associated with the certificate on the https site.

This add-in is definitely for when you need a little (or a lot) more horsepower in monitoring web servers than a simple GET request at the server.
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The IPSentry Event Log Monitor Add-In provides you with the ability to monitor various event logs such as Application, Security, System, DNS, Active Directory, and etcetera for specific event log entries to which you want to be notified.

When the event information you have selected is detected, the alerts configured in IPSentry can be triggered.

This add-in allows you to specify the event log, event source, event type, and other event specific information to be applied to the filter. The latest release allows you to select how many occurrences of the event must be found within a specified amount of time in order to trigger alerts..

Scan your local and remote event logs for entries too which you want to be alerted day and night.

Event messages like account lockouts, login failures, application errors, system errors, the list goes on. Only you know what events keep popping up in your logs that are a precursor to a failure of one sort or another. We go a step further than just looking for an event.

With the Event Log Monitoring Add-in, you can be alerted to a single event, a specific number of events within a time frame, include and exclude events in the filter, be notified whether the events are or are not found within a time frame. Once the events filter is matched to trigger an alert, the details of the events can be included in your message alerts to let you know what events.
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The IPSentry Performance Counter Monitoring add-in provides you with the ability to evaluate performance counter data values against a user defined threshold to detect values which exceed thresholds, change abruptly, increase or decrease unexpectedly or by more than a defined threshold.

Some uses of the add-in include testing Exchange mail queue sizes for high watermark thresholds or abrupt increases in size of the queue, drive space percentages, CPU utilization, and etc...

This add-in monitors local and remote computers performance data, so you can centralize your alerting, charting, and graphing of values onto the IPSentry machine.

Use of this add-in is generally utilized to test the following aspects of performance data values.

• The host being monitoring is accepting connections.
• The counter values are accessible.
  The values are then compared against your filters which may include whether or not:
  • Value is Equal To a specific value
  • Value is Greater than a specified value
  • Value is Less than a specified value
  • Value has Changed
  • Value has Increased
  • Value has Decreased
  • Value is Within a specified range
  • Value has Increased by more than a specified value.
  • Value has Decreased by more than a specified value.
  • Value has Changed by more than a specified value.

Each of the above can be compared for both positive or inverse matches.

If the returned value is out your specified threshold, the configured alerts associated to this entry will be triggered.

The windows performance data is loaded with useful system performance information.

Obviously, we could include just about every valuable counter we can think of and market IPSentry has having hundreds upon hundreds of monitoring types and features.

The fact is, monitoring performance data is just one feature of network monitoring whether you are monitoring CPU, Memory, Disk Space, Exchange Services, SQL Services, AD Processes, Network Services, etc... What objects, counters and instances that you monitor is entirely up to you.
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The IPSentry SNMP Monitor and Alert add-in provides you with the ability to monitor SNMP compliant devices for management objects for specific value thresholds.

The SNMP add-in allows you to setup multiple filters to be checked during a cycle - if any one of the values queried match the specified alerting filters, the add-in will return an alert state to IPSentry thus causing any scheduled alerts to be triggered.

The add-in component contains a built-in MIB browser, MIB compiler, and SNMP MIB walker allowing you to import vendor specific MIB definitions and perform hierarchical viewing of the devices many values for selection within the given filters.

Use of this add-in is generally utilized to test various aspects of values returned from the queried device and compare to a user-defined threshold. However, the add-in provides additional monitoring functionality as a byproduct of it's usage.

• Ensure that the Device is responding to SNMP queries
• Ensure that the object being queried is accessible.
  The values returned are then compared against your filters which may include whether or not:
  • Value is Equal To a specific value.
  • Value is Like a specific value (OCTET STRING)
  • Value Contains a specified value (OCTET STRING)
  • Value is less than a specified value
  • Value has changed
  • Value has increased
  • Value has decreased
  • Value is within a specified range
  • Value has increased by more than a specified value.
  • Value has decreased by more than a specified value.
  • Value has changed by more than a specified value.

Each of the above can be compared for positive or inverse matches.

The SNMP Device and Trap alerting add-in is a dual function add-in component with built-in MIB browser allowing you to walk the MIB on an SNMP device with it's primary focus on the ability to query SNMP compliant devices (V1, V2c, V3) for object values and evaluate them against a user defined filter that ranges from octet matches and contains, to value range thresholds, along with inverse and delta based comparisons.

You can specify the object ID directly if you know it or you can import the MIB definitions, locate the object in the SNMP tree, walk the host and select the object for filtering and alerting.

Within this add-in comes the SNMP trap alerting functionality for use in the IPSentry Add-In Alert area. The IPSentry base application includes an alerting mechanism for add-in components which extends the base functionality considerably. IPSentry can send traps to a trap host as a notification regarding the state of the entry being monitoring along with a descriptive on the reason for the alert allowing you to incorporate monitoring results into your existing SNMP management systems.
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The IPSentry Database and Query monitoring add-in provides you with the ability to ensure that your databases and database servers are not only available, but can accept and response to query requests

This add-in utilizes your ODBC data sources in order to established the connection with the database or database server and then optionally issue SQL query against the database.

The results of the query can be evaluated for the number of rows returned, the value of a variable assigned in the query, or can be used simply to executed a stored procedure and test the query time.

Use of this add-in is generally utilized to test the following aspects of your database server.

• Server or Database is accepting connections.
• Server or Database is accepting logon credentials.
• The time to connect is within the specified threshold.
• The server is accepting queries.
• The returned results are within specification.
• The time to complete the query is within specification.
  

The ODBC Database and Connection Monitoring Add-in connects to a database over ODBC and optionally executes a query, and optionally evaluates the results. Notice how many times we mention 'optionally'? There is a reason for that.

The add-in can be used to just test database connections on your network, it can be used to submit and EXEC query that returns no results, and/or it can be used to perform a query that will return row data which can be counted by IPSentry or you can design and SQL query to return a specified value that the add-in can evaluate.

For example, let's say you know there should be 10000 records in a given database at all times, and of those we know that 2000 of them will always contain a specific value in a specific column. We could simply have the add-in perform a basic 'SELECT * from db where column=value' query against the database and evaluate the count as being required to be at least 2000. Now, that can be pretty resource intensive, so we also provide the means to utilize just a SELECT count() option and this information is available in our help documents.

You can also query system table values, status values, all kinds of cool things where a numeric value can be returned and compared to denote failure or success.
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The IPSentry DNS/RADIUS/UDP Monitoring add-in provides you with the ability to monitor UDP based systems for proper response values and response timing options.

This add-in includes a UDP Packet builder for both DNS Query and RADIUS Authentication in order to help you build the required packets for monitoring these services.

DNS / Domain Name Server Resolution Monitoring functionality allows you to query a DNS server and perform a query for the A record of a given domain name and evaluate the response to make sure it contains the IP Address expected.

RADIUS Server Monitoring functionality allows you to send a properly formatted Authentication request to a RADIUS server, specify the response (ACK or NAK), and evaluate the response times to ensure that the RADIUS server is responding and authenticating properly.

The UDP packets can be configured using escaped sequence to encode binary data for UDP packet sending and response evaluation.

This add-in is primarily used for DNS Query monitoring and RADIUS Server monitoring since the building of UDP packets is somewhat complex and must contain the exact information required by the receiving host.
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The environmental conditions of your data centers, wiring closets, and other areas can have a great impact on the performance and availability of your network systems.

By incorporating the Sensatronics Environmental sensors and probes in conjunction with the IPSentry IT Environmental Monitoring add-in, you can make sure that you are alerted to environmental conditions such as Temperature, Wetness, and Humidity levels which may be outside of your desired thresholds.

Don't be left out in the cold while your data-center is overheating. In the best of all worlds, we all have data centers with the best airflow, temperature, and humidity regulation that money can buy. Even in that ideal situation, failures can and do occur. In most cases, it seems that the more money you have in your environmental systems - the more costly the damage will be if things go wrong an stay that way.

In cooperation with Sensatronics, RGE, Inc. offers the IPSentry IT Environmental Monitoring add-in which custom designed to interface with all of the Sensatronics environmental monitoring controls. You can monitor Temperature, Humidity, Wetness, Flood detection, Door Switches, Power Presence, and Dry Contact leads for open/close detection on a myriad of devices.

Check out our Environmental Monitoring Hardware section at the IPSentry Online Store for additional products, capabilities and availability.
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While IPSentry provides the ability to test your SMTP and POP servers to ensure connectivity and communications, the Mail Transaction Monitoring add-in goes many steps further.

This added feature will send periodic test messages through your selected email relay server and then periodically check the destination mailbox to ensure that the message has arrived.

If the message is not found within the specified amount of time, configured alerts will be triggered.

This add-in is ideal to ensure that your message queues are not blocked as well as ensuring that the inbound server is accepting messages.

By actually sending and retrieving email messages, this add-in is basically testing the following situations:

• Connection to mail relay host can be established.
• Mail server is accepting messages for delivery.
• Mail server is delivering email.
• Mailbox server is accepting email.
• Mailbox is accessible and responding.
• Mail can actually be retrieved from the mailbox.
• That the mail is actually being delivered in an acceptable amount of time
  (as configurable in the add-in)
  

Even when the services are reporting OK and the performance counters show normal, and your network connections are all up and running, for some reason - the mail just stops.

The Mail Transaction Monitor will let you know there is a problem because it spends it's time doing nothing but sending mail and waiting for it to get to the mailbox. You can configure this monitor to be very patient or extremely impatient by setting the timeout threshold as to what timeframe is acceptable for mail to be sent to the specified relay via SMTP or MAPI (Exchange) and then received in the destination mailbox via POP3 or MAPI.

Whether it is your mail queue or your service providers mail queue - if there is an unacceptable delay in delivery, you will be the first to know.
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The IPSentry File and Directory monitoring add-in provides IPSentry with file and directory scanning and monitoring of various aspects of file information such as:

• File existence
• File size
• File modification
• Folder size
• File Deletion and Addition
• Change within time frame
• Modified and Unmodified file count
• Modified and Unmodified file size

The add-in can monitor file and directory information on local drives and network shares allowing you to monitor things like user directory sizes, critical folders for file modifications, data integrity issue due to file deletion, changes on active files to detect process activity.

This add-in is ideal for monitoring storage queues, quota limits, file updates, files that must be updated, etc...

Check to make sure log files are being updated at specific intervals and time frames, verify that directories are being cleaned out, queue folders are not growing out of control, and that things are functioning in general with regards to the physical file system.

In some cases, the only way to tell if a process or application is actually doing its job (or has done its job) is detect changes in specific files or folders.

This little tool solves a lot of problems that just can't be solved any other way.
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The IPSentry File Content Monitoring Add-In provides you with the ability to monitor the contents of either an entire file or just the new data written to the end of the file (the tail) for specific data.

You can evaluate the contents using a basic ALL, ANY, or EXACT query capability for one or more query items.

This add-in is ideal for monitoring various log files and detecting certain activities and events. For example, if you have an application that writes out various activity information along with errors generated to a log file, you can configure this add-in to scan all new data written to the file for and occurrence of the error text. If found, then any configured alerts would be generated.

Many configurations that our customers are using include scanning log files for "ERROR" or "Disconnect" type messages, access from specific IP Addresses in web logs, backup completion codes and error codes in backup logs and many other tasks where just a small word or phrase in a log file can mean the difference between a huge problem and no problem at all.
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The IPSentry POP Mail Queue Monitoring add-in provides you with the ability to monitor a mailbox for the existence of messages containing specified text and/or to be alerted if email has remained in the mailbox for a specified maximum amount of time.

This add-in is ideal for being alerted to important incoming messages that may require external notification alerts upon arrival as well as checking mailboxes that should be cleared out at specific intervals.  This add-in can verify how long a message has been in the mailbox and alert you if the time has exceeded your specified wait time.

For example, you may provide a high-priority code to an end user for use in emergency email requests. You can then configure this add-in to locate any new messages that might contain this specific code. When a new message arrives, you can configure this entry to perform a paging alert to send a notification to support personnel cell phones for immediate response.

This is a very specialized add-in component used to monitor a POP mailbox and check the mail waiting time and optionally search messages for specific content, then trigger alerts when the specific message has arrived or messages have been in the mailbox for (x) amount of time. The add-in is very handy for identifying priority customer emails, expected contact messages, and other situations where a very specific bit of information in a mail message is worth triggering the alert. While it is not for everybody - we do know that when it required, it is the only thing that does the trick and it's worth every penny.
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Whether you have modem banks or a dialup security status modem, you want to make sure that when a request to negotiation a modem handshake is made, that it succeeds.

The IPSentry Modem Connection add-in is a specialized feature intended for systems requiring dial in modem connections.

This add-in allows you to perform basic dial + handshake modem based tests to ensure that you can establish a modem based connection to the remote modem.

With the basic modem scripting option, you can add simple send/receive functionality after an established connection for more specialized situations where modem based dialogue may be required such as user login functionality.

This functionality is ideal for testing dialup terminal servers and provides with confidence that:

• Your customers are not receiving BUSY signals.
• Your customers are not receiving RNA's (Ring No Answer)
• Your terminal servers are requesting login credentials.
• Your authentication system is functioning properly.
• Your Security / Emergency system outbound phone line is available.**
  

**Today, many security monitoring systems use POTS (or PSTN)  lines to send communicate alert condition regarding fire and theft alerts.  What if the lines are down and the system can't make the call? Enter an inexpensive modem, sitting in auto-answer mode on the same line. For about $400 invested in a Modem, IPSentry, this add-in, and a small UPS to keep the modem powered up for an hour during a power outage, you might just save yourself thousands, millions, or even save a life by making sure the telephone line is always up for the emergency and security systems to dial the outbound alert when a security problem is detected. Dial out on one line, inbound on your security line, and if no connection can be established - there's a problem and you will know about it.

*Always check with your security and emergency systems service provider for their advice and recommendations to determine if this type of activity is compatible with your existing configuration before adding any devices to your emergency outbound lines.
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The IPSentry Network Time Add-In provides you with the ability to ensure that the system on which IPSentry is running maintains a valid date and time when compared with the servers such as the US Naval Observatory utilizing either TIME or NTP protocols.

The add-in can be used as a monitoring-only add-in that will trigger alerts when the clock on the local system is out of sync with the time server by the specified number of seconds (recommended) as well as synchronize the local time to the remote time servers time.

The add-in can also be used a an alert style add-in to synchronize the time after alerts have been generated, or the time can be automatically synchronized during the monitoring cycle.

This add-in comes with a customizable database of time servers for regional selection of NTP and TIME servers.

The IPSentry Network Time monitor will compare the local IPSentry machine time against the defined NTP or TIME server and alert you when the clocks are out of synch. This is very important in a network infrastructure where all of your workstations are setting their time off of another server on the network.

When the IPSentry time monitor triggers an alert, there is a problem with your network time which needs immediate attention. While the add-in does provide the option to synchronize the time based on a failure or at the same time it detects the discrepancy, the design of the add-in is to make you aware that there is a problem.
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The IPSentry MRTG Counter Value Monitoring Add-In provides you with the ability to evaluate and be alerted to the reported values contained in your MRTG html reports.

If you utilize MRTG, you know that the values are critical. These values are contained in the header of the HTML reports.

IPSentry can extract and evaluate these for comparison against high/low thresholds allowing you to be alerted when your defined router throughput values are exceeded.

MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a killer utility for graphing traffic on your routers and this add-in compliments this system by checking the data values contained in the MRTG html reports and alerting you when traffic data exceeds your thresholds.

If you have used MRTG, you know what traffic data is available and why this add-in is so useful. More information available on MRTG is available at there site at http://www.mrtg.com/
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The IPSentry Scripted TCP/IP Network Monitoring enhances the basic TCP Network monitoring functionality by providing a scripted approach to send and receive requirements over an established TCP/IP connection.

In using the basic TCP Network monitoring functionality provided in the base IPSentry application, you are provided with the ability to connect, send some data and/or expect a specific amount of data. In contrast, when you utilize the Scripted TCP/IP Network Monitor (and alert) add-in, you can extend this to complete an entire session and test all aspects of an RFC compliant or proprietary TCP system.

For example, the basic monitor will connect to an SMTP server and test to see if the appropriate SMTP response is received. With this add-in however, you can actually script out the entire sequence of events that are required to send an email message through the server.

The add-in is also very useful for proprietary TCP implementations which may require non-standards based inputs and outputs, proprietary TCP devices, and any other area where a simple Send and Receive dialogue of TCP is required.

This component can be used as both a monitoring entry as well as an alerting action which means that TCP accessible devices which accept telnet or raw TCP connections to perform certain actions can be access and scripted as an alerting action.

Once again, this is for the power-user adding a lot more power than the basic TCP/IP network monitoring functionality in the IPSentry base application. This add-in expands on the simple Send/Receive functionality required to monitor most TCP connections by allowing a full session dialogue. With this add-in, you can script logins to POP3 servers, send test or heartbeat SMTP messages, login to FTP servers, or virtually any other clear-text top based dialogue over a raw TCP connection. We have included sample scripts to get you started for such items as POP3 login, SMTP test just up to the point of sending, and an FTP login and directory change. This add-in is not for the faint of heart but that's hardly worth mentioning because neither is running and maintaining an IT infrastructure.
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The IPSentry Service State Control add-in is an alerting add-in component which allows you to control services on local and remote computers. This add-in component is used to Start, Stop, and Restart services as a pro-active recovery measure based on the result of a monitored entry.

For example, you can configure IPSentry to monitor a service such as W3SVC if you are so inclined. If this service is detected in a state other than Running when monitoring using the basic NT Service Monitoring functionality of IPSentry, you can configure the Service State Controller as an alert action and attempt to Start the service automatically thereby avoiding human interaction.

This add-in can be used in conjunction with any monitoring entry - not just service monitoring. For example, you may have a custom network application that is tested by a simple TCP connection. If the connection cannot be established, you may need to restart various services on the remote system even if the service show that they are running. This add-in can be used in such a case by specifying either Restart options on a set of system services.

Also important is the fact that you can configure a set of services to be started in a specific order thus allowing you to start or restart dependency services as may be required.

The Service State controller add-in is designed to be used as an alerting mechanism for starting, stopping, or restarting windows system services on local an remote systems.

There are many failure scenarios that require nothing more than a restart of a system service to correct the issue and this add-in fits that bill. We actually use it extensively in our production environment to make sure that our backup services are all running. A common and well known problem with some backup systems is that when the service fails - you don't get a backup and you don't find out about it until the backup software notifies you of some ambiguous error caused the backup to fail. We use the IPSentry service monitor to check the service state and if they don't report as running, we use this add-in to stop them in order and start them in order for a clean service startup.
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Within the SNMP Monitoring and Trap Alert add-in is the SNMP trap alerting functionality for use in the IPSentry Add-In Alert area.

The IPSentry base application includes an alerting mechanism for add-in components which extends the base functionality considerably. Use of this add-in allows IPSentry to send SNMP traps to a trap host as part of the notification sequence regarding the state of the entry being monitoring along with a descriptive on the reason for the alert allowing you to incorporate monitoring results into your existing SNMP management systems.

The MIB definition for the IPSentry taps is located in the SNMP Add-In folder with the IPSentry Distribution and is also defined here.
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Within the HTTP/s Enhanced Web Monitoring Add-In is contained the ability to perform the same functions as an alerting and notification method.

By utilizing this add-in, IPSentry can actually post information to a web site to trigger a remote action or script by sending a simple GET request to a web site, or to log data to your web site by posting keyword based values over the web.

This add-in can be used to post alert notification fields to cell/SMS provider's "Send Message" sites as yet another option for alert notifications.  Check with your service provider for details on sending messages via web interface without requiring CAPTCHA information design to ensure manual input.
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This component can be used as both a monitoring entry as well as an alerting action which means that TCP accessible devices which accept telnet or raw TCP connections to perform certain actions can be access and scripted as an alerting action.

The IPSentry Scripted TCP/IP Network Monitoring enhances the basic TCP Network monitoring functionality by providing a scripted approach to send and receive requirements over an established TCP/IP connection.

An example of this type of use might be communicating via telnet session to a local device such as a router to perform a soft reset via system command after login by simply defining the host to which you will connect, port number, and then the scripted dialogue of Send/Wait commands.

Once again, this is for the power-user adding a lot more power than the basic TCP/IP network monitoring functionality in the IPSentry base application. This add-in expands on the simple Send/Receive functionality required to monitor most TCP connections by allowing a full session dialogue. With this add-in, you can script logins to POP3 servers, send test or heartbeat SMTP messages, login to FTP servers, or virtually any other clear-text top based dialogue over a raw TCP connection. We have included sample scripts to get you started for such items as POP3 login, SMTP test just up to the point of sending, and an FTP login and directory change. This add-in is not for the faint of heart but that's hardly worth mentioning because neither is running and maintaining an IT infrastructure...
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