Why do you need to monitor your Security event log?

A good article written by Adrian Grigorof

note - http://www.eventid.net/show.asp?DocId=33

WatchMouse

Performance - Trusted To Monitor the websites.
Load Testing - How many visitors can a website handle.
Periodic Vulnerability Scanning - Saving servers safe from hacker attacks.
Website Performance Benchmarking - comparing websites.

For more information please click on the following link - http://www.watchmouse.com/en/

All in one - Server Monitoring, Application Monitoring and Capacity Planning tool

GOTO - http://www.uptimesoftware.com/itservicemonitoring.php

Enterprise-strength server monitoring and reporting seamlessly across Windows, Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, Linux, Novell, VMware, and more
Easily Test and Implement 'up.time' with no consultants needed to deploy or maintain
Less Expensive than heavy, complex framework solutions. Get the depth of server monitoring you need at a fraction of the Framework price
The best GUI and Dashboards (like 'Resource Scan' to the left) in the business.
Dozens of monitors right out-of-the-box plus many more easy to add, free plug-in monitors

Always Be the First to Know - instantly figure out what is happening in your IT infrastructure with deep resource, process, and service metrics. Use capacity planning and trending to see when you'll run out of resources.
Quick and Easy Installation… Really - no expensive consulting or integration required as up.time plays nice will thousands of applications. Start server monitoring and reporting in less than 15 minutes, including the download time.
The Work Gets Done for You - automated report creation and distribution, automated IT service and monitored element discovery, automated virtual machine discovery, as well as automated recovery and restart actions. Proactive out-of-the-box and customizable alerting keeps you in charge.
Take the Guess Work out of Server Consolidation and Virtualization - use automated reports to easily identify all server consolidation potential candidates, then analyze, monitor, and report on all your virtual instances.
Get it done under Budget - Lower your Total Cost of Ownership by at least 35% compared to the heavy, complex system management frameworks (IBM, HP, CA, Microsoft, BMC).
Fanatical Support Experts - relentless perfectionists help you solve problems quickly. All future product upgrades and continuous three month feature packs are included FREE with support.

Dashboards and Scorecards

I found a good article by Wayne W. Eckerson on Best Pracices on deploying Dashboards and Scorecards.

Here is the link -
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=c2eacd44-f0b5-46b9-a91a-61acb3a5ec53&displayLang=en

Dashboard for sharepoint

This bundle gives you all you need to turn your collaborative portals into visually appealing dashboards and scorecards - quickly and easily. With powerful charts and an assortment of gauges and dials, you can dramatically visualize your KPIs and other key corporate data within your own portal, all without Visual Studio!

Dundas Chart for SharePoint - Dundas Chart for SharePoint gives you charting technology from the industry leader, to add highly customizable, stunning charts to your SharePoint portal.

Dundas Gauge for SharePoint - Now you can get Dashboards and Scorecard features in your reports by adding easy to interpret Gauges, Dials and Knobs and display data that simply can't be shown effectively in a chart.



for more information click on the following link

http://www.dundas.com/Technologies/SharePoint/DashBundle.aspx

Whitepaper - BMC Knowledge Management

LINK -
http://documents.bmc.com/products/documents/66/88/56688/56688.pdf

RightAnswers Unified Knowledge Suite

The RightAnswers Unified Knowledge Suite enables organizations to cost-effectively improve the productivity and efficiency of their End-Users and Support Analysts while lowering the overall cost of support by: Providing a 24x7, online support channel Reducing calls to the Help Desk Improving first call resolution rates and minimizing call escalation Building an enterprise-specific library of solutions.The Unified Knowledge Suite provides a “personalized” knowledge-drivenSelf-Service environment that creates a level of intimacy between RightAnswers'innovative software, high-impact content, and value-added client and contentservices. Our unique, end-to-end solution enables clients to leverage a dynamicand powerful Knowledge Base to improve the end-user support experience andincrease support capacity while helping enterprises of all sizes meet their Desk business objectives, improve time-to-value, reduce overall Total Cost ofOwnership (TCO) and increase Return on Investment (ROI).

for more information please click on the link below -
http://www.rightanswers.com

RunBook Automation

http://www.realops.com/flash/RBA_Overview.html

10 automation companies to watch

RealOps
Virtugo Software
Opsware
Opalis
mValent
NetworkAutomation
Enigmatec
FastScale
BladeLogic
Aveksa

want to read more on the above companies and there tools in automation. Please click on the links below.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/062507-automated-companies-to-watch.html?page=1

Monitoring Microsoft Exchange Server

Before deploying Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 in a production environment, you should establish routine, automated monitoring and error detection strategies for your operating system and applications. Immediately detecting application and system errors increases your chances of resolving errors before the system shuts down. Monitoring can also help alert you of scalability needs. For example, if one or more servers are operating at capacity some or all of the time, you can decide if you need to add more servers or upgrade the hardware of existing servers.
For more information about monitoring, see "Monitoring and status tools" in Windows Server 2003 Help.
You can use the following tools and programs to monitor your Exchange Server 2003 organization:
* Exchange 2003 monitoring tools
* Windows Server 2003 monitoring tools
* Additional monitoring tools
* Monitoring with MOM
* Third-party tools



For more information click on the link below -
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997513.aspx

Storage Monitoring - ManageEngine OpStor

OpStor is a multi-vendor storage infrastructure monitoring tool offering unified Inventory, Fault and Peformance management for Storage Arrays, Fabric Switches, Tape Libraries, HBAs and Host servers through a webbrowser.Major devices supported are: EMC CLARiion/NetApp/HP-EVA/Hitachi HDS/StorageTek/IBM FastT/InforTrend/Areca ARC storage arrays,Brocade/EMC/McData/Cisco switches,Dell PV/ADIC/STK/Qualstar/IBM SLX Tape Libraries,QLogic/Emulex HBAs.

for more information click on the following link -http://manageengine.adventnet.com/products/opstor/index.html

Web-based Business Service Dashboards

The assystBSM Web Client delivers an integrated view, or "Dashboard" representing real-time and historical end-to-end Business Service availability, performance, security, and end-user experience. Regardless of the underlying technologies and management platforms deployed throughout your organization, assystBSM provides vital service health information direct to your Web browser, providing support staff with the ability to rapidly identify service impacting technology failures, understand their business impact, and zoom in to the failing object level. Immediate access to tools, online help, procedures, and automation scripts is provided via context sensitive launching to restore service fast.

for more information click on the link below -

http://www.axiossystems.com

Applications Manager from ManageEngine

ManageEngine Applications Manager is an Availability and Performance Management Solution that proactively monitors Business Applications and help enterprises ensure that their web applications meet end user expectations.

For more information click on link below -

http://manageengine.adventnet.com/products/applications_manager/applications-monitoring-features.html

http://blogs.appmanager.com/

ESMGUY weblog

Working on new site -
http://esmguy.wordpress.com/

Argent Predictor

The Argent Predictor is a comprehensive capacity planning, trend analysis and reporting solution. While monitoring the rate of consumption of critical resources, the Argent Predictor is able to produce graphs and analysis from any data source including disk space, CPU utilization, SQL log sizes, Exchange and IIS usage. Monitoring and truly understanding the workload a system is capable of handling in a given period of time allows the meeting of current and future demands with minimal surprises. The Argent Predictor analyzes long-term movement, allowing more effective planning for the future. The Argent Predictor also provides Service Level Agreements so that the efficiency and uptime of critical devices such as servers, hubs and routers can be rated to better support business units.

Key Features And Benefits
Built-in Service Level Agreement ReportingThe Argent Predictor provides powerful and flexible Service Level Agreement reports and graphs, showing the reliability and efficiency of critical servers and devices - their uptime and reliability over a period of days, weeks, or months.

Select The Database That Best Fits

The Argent Predictor saves capacity planning data to a customer's SQL Server, Oracle, or any ODBC database.

Completely Integrated With The Argent Guardian

The Argent Predictor is fully integrated with the rest of Argent's product line - there is no learning curve for users.

Advanced Features Make The Argent Predictor Unique

The Argent Predictor has a large number of extremely powerful advanced features such as Automatic Report Distributions, Calendaring, and advanced 2D and 3D graph customization. Quick Reports are available, providing "executive level" web-based reports. Reports are automatically generated and can be emailed, exported, or uploaded into a designated FTP site at pre-defined times.

Fully Customizable Under Crystal Reports

The Argent Predictor's graph templates interface directly with Crystal Reports, providing the ability to customize reports in various ways, such as adding company headers and logos, and modifying layouts.

For more information click on the link below -

http://www.argent.com/

zabbix - 1.4

ZABBIX offers functionality that will make your IT resources look more transparent, and it will also help to easily identify performance and availability problems. ZABBIX greatly increases the productivity of system administrators by providing simple-to-use monitoring system.

Key features
*Open Source solution
*Runs on AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Linux, MacOS X, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Tru64/OSF
*SQL database for storing configuration, collected data and trends
*Web interface offers minimal learning, ubiquitous access
*Instant drill down from real-time status of IT Services to historical trend and statistics
*Data visualisation and mapping
*High performance native ZABBIX agents for performance and integrity monitoring for virtually all platforms (UNIX, Win32)
*Monitoring of "agentless" environments
*Assuring and monitoring SLA for IT Services
*Monitoring of SNMP (v1,v2,v3) devices

IT Services
ZABBIX's unique technology allows you to relate your applications and underlying servers or network to a IT Service such as application, location, server, network device, region, etc. This technology allows you to correlate your business to your IT infrastructure and identify the impact of your IT infrastructure to the delivery of business service to your customers.

Data visualisation
ZABBIX provides excellent visualisation of statistical and real-time information, ranging from simple graphs to complex views containing graphs, maps and text information. All graphical information is accessible from WEB interface. The wealth of information available such as the trend analysis (days to threshold), the historical graphs and histograms allow you to make informed decisions about the weaknesses and performance of your IT infrastructure.

Application monitoring
Enterprise applications such as Oracle, WebSphere, WebLogic, Exchange, Apache, etc. can be monitored using SNMP. In many cases, agentless technology can be used, cutting down on the deployment and management costs.
ZABBIX agents can be easily extended to perform monitoring of any aspect of your applications. It is matter of writing a shell script which would return required data back to the agent.

Server monitoring
Virtually all server platforms are supported including but not limited to UNIX, Win32 and Novell Netware. ZABBIX native agents take care of CPU utilisation, memory utilisation, disk usage, network I/O, temperature of CPUs and mainboards, status of processes, etc. All real-time performance data is immediately available by WEB interface.

Network monitoring
ZABBIX supports monitoring of Cisco, Juniper, 3Com, Nortel, Foundry and other routers as well as firewalls from Netscreen, Fortinet, Cisco or Checkpoint. Any network devices (routers, hubs, printers, etc) having SNMP support can be easily monitored by ZABBIX.
ZABBIX makes possible creation of network maps which give very clear representation of monitored network infrastructure. The maps show network devices, connections, statuses of the devices, and reasons if a device is not available or has any problems.

Integration of Fault and Performance Management
The need to effectively integrate fault and performance management is becoming increasingly apparent to IT organizations seeking to ensure quality delivery of business services. ZABBIX generates real-time notification of threshold violations based on scheduled performance tests.

for more information - click on the link below -
http://www.zabbix.com/

Book on SCOM 2007

Mastering System Center Operations Manager 2007

not released yet -
http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-System-Center-Operations-Manager/dp/0470119306

Hardware Sentry monitors the health of your servers hardware within BMC Software® PATROL®. It's a KM for PATROL: it needs to be installed on each managed server with a PATROL Agent, and then you can check the hardware components of your servers from any PATROL Console. The operators will be alerted as soon as a hardware failure is detected somewhere in your IT infrastructure. It's greater and easier than any other hardware monitoring solution available on the market: with the same module, you can monitor the hardware of almost any server. Great server coverage and easy integration!

For a list of what servers does hadware sentry KM monitors please click on the link below.
http://www.sentrysoftware.net/products/hardwareSentry.asp

Monitoring hardware alerts with VMware ESX

With VMware ESX you can install the IBM Director according to the compatibility matrix (add link).The inband monitored events comprise everything that is surfaced by the service processor (either the Baseboard Management Controller through the openIPMI layer, or the Remote Supervisor Adapter through its device driver). These events can also be monitored out of band.

The service processor however is not able to monitor devices such as ethernet or fibre channel adapters. These objects are owned by the vmkernel, and IBM Director 5.20 (the most current version at the time of writing) only monitors the adapters seen by the Service Console.In a real life scenario, most of the times ethernet and fibre channel cards are redundant, i.e. teams of adapters are created so that if one card or path fails, the remaining adapter or path fails over without any service disruption. Even in such a high availability scenario, you want to receive a notification should a failover occur in order to take the appropriate actions.

IBM Director agent is not able to surface these events. What you can do though is to create a script that queries the vmkernel to see if any adapter is dead and creates an IBM Director event that is sent to the IBM Director Server. As the script polls the vmkernel, you will need to execute it with the frequency that you believe most appropriate to your environment, trading off the additional workload such a script is putting on your servers and the maximum time allowed between the failure (not failover!) and the notification of such a failure.

for Step by step guide click the following link below
http://www-941.haw.ibm.com/collaboration/ibmwiki/display/redwiki/Monitoring+hardware+alerts+with+VMware+ESX

Debunking the Top Ten Myths about Network Monitoring Systems

MYTH #1: The Product with the Most Features Must Be the Best.
The Truth: Network monitoring "mega suite" vendors are notorious for drawing customers in withlarge feature sets—and then charging hefty consulting and training fees for systems
that never get fully configured or deployed. Features don’t always translate to value,
especially when it takes numerous IT specialists to install and maintain the feature set.
A feature’s value drops sharply when it requires several full-time resources to keep it
running.

Critical Mistake: Ignoring the full cost of implementing a feature set—including training, setup, and ongoing support and maintenance.
Best Practice: Ask for proof that critical features are really usable. Test the software on site, and talk to existing customers to get real-world feedback.


MYTH #2: NMS Mega Suites Are Great Because You Can Start Small and Add
Features As You Go.
The Truth: With NMS mega suites, you may become the unwitting owner of a ‘marketecture’—aproduct with features that are fully integrated from a marketing perspective, but
actually stand alone in a technical sense because they were developed separately.
Marketectures sound appealing because they let you start with a limited feature set
and add modules as you need to. But what you generally end up with is a product that
offers very little functionality until all of the modules are in place. You may also find
that each add-on feature is sold separately and has additional separate costs—
including training, integration, professional services, and maintenance.

Critical Mistake: Getting locked into an NMS mega suite and then finding you must purchase a series ofexpensive, non-integrated modules to really make it work.

Best Practice: Be sure you fully understand the license fees, maintenance fees, and integration costsof all add-on modules, even if you feel you don’t currently need them. And try to lock in
future pricing of add-ons. Vendors have a stealthy way of increasing prices on you
once you’re locked into a platform.
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.
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click on the following link for the rest of myths.
http://www.cittio.com/docs/CITTIO_WP_Top10_Myths_7104.pdf