software to monitor your network servers and devices 24 hours a day

Use this software to monitor your network servers and devices 24 hours a day, ensuring that your e-mail servers, Web sites, FTP servers, news servers, routers, and other devices and services are active and responding. In case of a failure, you can be notified via various methods such as Beeper, Alpha Pager, Audible Alerts, Launch Applications, and more.

IPSentry General Feature Set

IPSentry provides a rich feature set for usability and performance. Configuration is performed through a standard windows desktop application maintaining a secure environment for your administrative access. No open holes for a potential security breach and straight forward Windows application based user interface.

This list represents a basic summary of general features within the IPSentry application and user interface not categorized under the Monitoring, Alerting, and Reporting section.

Runs as an NT System Service or Desktop Application.

Setup and start Monitoring in just a couple of minutes.

Straight forward user interface.

Copy configuration to and from new and existing entries.

Template based configuration options.

Monitoring schedules and downtime overrides.

Set the order of notification and alert.

Dependency based monitoring to avoid unnecessary alerting.

Monitoring groups with frequency definition and override.

Grouped and ungrouped views for efficient navigation.

Critical and recovery alerting options.

Reversed state alerting and notifications.

System tray notification of critical items.

Self monitoring capabilities.

Record detailed statistics data to back-end SQL database for custom reporting.

Real time status display and notifications.

Suspend and Resume monitoring of individual items on-demand.

Configuration data stored in central data store within XML files.

Pre-test monitoring configurations before inserting to live monitoring schedule.

Test all monitoring and alerting configurations individually.

Embedded Backup and restore of configuration data.

As always - the Basic Black IPSentry Active Display Console.

Monitoring Features - Summary

IPSentry provides a multitude of customizable monitoring capabilities in a sleek and compact application with the focus on ensuring that your network servers, devices, file systems, and other aspects are functioning properly and efficiently.

Monitoring Features - Details

Network Latency and Connectivity

With the basic IPSentry TCP/IP Network monitoring functionality, you can monitor latency via ICMP/Ping and Connectivity to various TCP/IP servers using a Connect/Send/Expect dialogue test.

While the basic Ping monitor is useful for preliminary connectivity testing, many routers and firewalls are now disregarding ping request packets. This leaves you with a requirement to connect directly to the remote host to validate connectivity.

With this functionality, you can monitor Web pages, web servers, standard TCP ports such as HTTP, FTP, POP3, SMTP, and even custom TCP ports for connectivity as well as proper response.

For example, instead of just pinging your web server or simply connecting to port 80, IPSentry will request the page specified and check the response to ensure that the expected data is being received within the timeframe specified.

IPSentry provides pre-configured Send / Expect settings for 16 different standard TCP ports.

Disk Drive Available Space

With he basic IPSentry Disk Drive Space monitoring feature, you can be alerted when the space available on local and remote disk drives reach your defined low-water mark.

Running low on disk space can cause enough problems - but when disk space completely runs out - the problems can be catastrophic.

Use IPSentry to make sure that unknowingly running out of disk space is a thing of the past.

Windows System Service Monitoring

The IPSentry NT Service Monitoring functionality allows you monitor the running state of critical system services and be alerted should a service stop.

IPSentry can be configured to monitor a single service or sets of services in order to trigger the appropriate action or notification. Use the built-in Launch Application alerting functionality to issue a start request as an attempt to start the service, or in a last case situation, you can attempt a programmatic shutdown and restart of the remote system using the included shutdown tool.

Back Reference Monitoring

Unique to IPSentry Network Monitor is the Back Reference monitoring functionality allowing you to trigger alerts, notifications, and actions based on the current state of one or more existing entries. (And yes, even on other Back Reference Monitors...)

This functionality alone adds and unprecedented amount of flexibility for alert and notification functionality to the IPSentry application allowing you to replicate alerting functionality, trigger different alerts for multiple device failures, schedule downtime and overrides on alert and notifications.

The flexibility provided here can be the answer to just about any "If I want..." situation.
If I only want UserA alerted Wed/Thu/Fri between 1900 and 2300 but UserB 24/7...
If I want to be alerted only if both networks are not responding...
If I want to be alerted when the CPU is at 100% and memory usage is over 2gb...
If I don't want devices C,D,E in Group 2 monitored if Group1 device A is down...
- the list goes on - again, as simple or as complex as you like.

Probably one of the easiest monitors to configure is by fare the most powerful in terms of customizing IPSentry alerting and notification to fit your specific needs.

Add-In Functionality

IPSentry allows for the incorporation of Add-In components to further extend the functionality of IPSentry to limitless proportions.

All of the additional features included in the IPSentry package bundle are in fact add-in components developed by RGE, Inc. with the definition provided in the IPSentry Add-In SDK Documentation.

This is the feature that allows you to add other features on an as-needed basis as well as develop your own add-in components for proprietary or customized monitoring and alerting functionality.

It's impossible for one company to provide everything that every other company may need, so we do the next best thing. Provide you with a method of integrating your own features from your development efforts.

IPSentry HTTP/s Enhanced Web Monitoring

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 and 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.

IPSentry Event Log Monitoring

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.

IPSentry Performance Counter Value Monitoring

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.

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.

IPSentry SNMP Device Monitoring and Trap Alerting

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.

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.

IPSentry Database Connection and Query Monitoring

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.

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.

IPSentry DNS/RADIUS/UDP Server Monitoring

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.

IPSentry IT Environmental Monitoring

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.

IPSentry Mail Transaction Monitoring

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:

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.

IPSentry File and Directory Monitoring

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:

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.

IPSentry File Content Scanning and Monitoring

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.

IPSentry Inbound Mail Queue Monitoring

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.

IPSentry Modem Connection Monitoring

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:

**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.

IPSentry Network Time Monitor and Synchronize

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.

IPSentry MRTG Counter Data Value Monitoring

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.

IPSentry Scripted TCP/IP Custom Network Monitoring

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.

IPSentry Add-In SDK

The IPSentry Add-in SDK is a documentation set and code sample for developers to create their own Add-In components for use with IPSentry.

The documentation is available for free in our download area and outlines the basic control interface that IPSentry uses to perform monitoring and notification using your custom add-ins.

The Add-In SDK documentations helps developers add limitless power and capabilities to IPSentry by allowing you to perform alerting, notification, and action alerts based on any monitoring functionality conceivable.

IPSentry v5 Network Monitoring Package Bundle