If you're like most VARs, you're supporting a variety of clients geographically distant from your office. The majority of these clients will have some type of network and Internet connection.
How can you monitor the health of your clients' key hardware, without it costing thousands of dollars in equipment and software for both you and your client? George Orwell had the answer: Big Brother. And no, if you misbehave it doesn't send rodents after you. Big Brother is the creation of Sean and Robert-Andre Croteau of BB4 Technologies of Beaconsfield, Quebec. It is a series of scripts based on PERL that act as client and/or server.
Big Brother currently supports either Unix/Linux or NT as a server. It can monitor, as a client, Windows NT, Novell NetWare, Mac OS, AS/400, VAX OpenVMS and Unix/Linux. Installation of the client is quick and painless (at least on NT and Unix/Linux).
However, server installation, on Unix/Linux is a bit more complicated. Big Brother requires multiple configuration files to be modified, based on the functions you need to utilize. But once configured, it runs like a champ.
Out of the box, Big Brother can monitor routers, computers, modem banks--essentially any item that has an IP address. It will monitor CPU usage, disk space, connectivity, system messages and services such as DNS, FTP, HTTP, IMAP and SMTP POP3, to name a few. There's even a script to monitor your favorite stock price.
With a large number of third-party plug-ins (also free, and located at www.deadcat.net), Big Brother is able to monitor every aspect of your extended computer network. Results are sent to Big Brother display servers, which enable you and your users to monitor their systems via a Web browser. The current version of Big Brother (Unix/Linux is v1.07) also permits status information to be displayed in wireless markup language (WML, for WAP-enabled devices).
The visual code used by Big Brother's display server is quite simple. Green is good, yellow is a problem, red is bad. By clicking on the color-coded icon, you can see what the problem is. In addition, you can view the history of not only the event, but of all the events for that particular device and status.
Not near your Web browser or don't have WAP-enabled device? Don't fret--Big Brother can be configured to send SMS messages, e-mail or pages based upon event criteria of your choosing. You can even create paging groups, so that not only are you, the VAR, paged, but the client is also notified.
In a world where privacy is sacred, I'm glad there is at least one Big Brother.
Wayne Spivak is the president of SBA Consulting LTD of Bellmore, N.Y.
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