PolyMon

New Post: does this sound possible

trothcp — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:53:57 GMT

ok this is cool and scary at the same time I have polymon running as system! please note this was not my original request!
ran powershell as system via the at command
AT sometime /interactive "path\ps.exe"
$Credential = Get-Credential
$credential.Password | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Set-Content c:\drv\pw.txt
this store an encrypted hash within the pw.txt file, yes there are some wierd security issues here!

then within polymon I have a powershell monitor doing the following (sanitized for security sake)
$credential.Password | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Set-Content c:\drv\pw.txt
$password = Get-Content c:\drv\pw.txt | ConvertTo-SecureString
$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PsCredential("remotedomain\username",$password)
if (
(gwmi win32_logicaldisk -computer webs.remotedomain.com -cred $credential -filter "deviceid='c:' and freespace<'100000000000'").freespace
)
{
$Status.StatusText="OK."
$Status.StatusID=1
$Counters.Add("Counter 1", (gwmi win32_logicaldisk -computer sp.johnstonesupply.com -cred $credential -filter "deviceid='c:' and freespace<'100000000000'").freespace)
}

the damn thing worked!

New Post: does this sound possible

smurawski — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:10:32 GMT

Possibly, I haven't tried running PowerShell as the Local System account (or Network Service account). Or you could use a specified encryption key to encrypt the file you are writing to disk and use that to read the password. It really depends on where your security concerns are with that machine.

New Post: does this sound possible

trothcp — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:48:55 GMT

need to monitor a non domain joined https site. I was thinking that I could use powershells get-credential save to file trick. The get-credential would be the the credentials of a given limited permission user on the https web site. The save file can only be decrypted by the user that created it. So in that case I can run powershell as "system" create the text file. Then hopefully my powershell script that runs as system will be able to read/decrypt the encrypted text file then access the remote https site. Does that seem reasonable?
thanks
tr

New Post: the disk cleanup example might be dangerous!

trothcp — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:37:36 GMT

yep in hindsight I was a little harsh on the wording of the subject! sorry about that.
tr

New Post: the disk cleanup example might be dangerous!

fbaptiste — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:37:10 GMT

Depends on what rules you want to follow to delete files. If you wanted to simply delete files that are no longer accessed, then using the last accessed date does make more sense.
This sample was pulled from a production environment on a web server to clean up temporary files created by various apps on the web server. For that purpose, last write time = create date and hence the criteria in the sample.
Of course, you should always review any scripts you download from the web and double check to make sure it does exactly what you expect it to do!!
Either that or very good reliable backups :-)

New Post: the disk cleanup example might be dangerous!

trothcp — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:12:59 GMT

correct me if I'm wrong but by using the LastWriteTime you might delete files that are still actively being used. Using lastaccessedtime might be a better alternative.
tr

New Post: Always get 'SNMP Value=NULL'

yesa — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:56:15 GMT

I try to use the SNMP monitor but I always get 'SNMP Value=NULL'. There is definitely a number value in the specified OID (e.g. '.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.1' or '.1.3.6.1.2.1.1.7').
I appreciate any help.

yesa

New Post: Error while saving operator

JHouck — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:48:46 GMT

I recently upgraded to the latest version of Poymon. I love the new features, but I'm having issues with editing Operators. It seems that there is a new field for sending Summary Notifications (Heartbeat). If I don't have that field checked I receive the following error and am unable to save the changes to the Operator:

Error Occured while saving Operator: Cannot insert the value NULL into column 'SummaryNextNofigyDT', table 'PolyMon.dbo.Operator';
Column does not allow nulls. UPDATE fails.
This statement has been terminated.

Is there any fix someone can suggest to this error?

New Post: Reporting Services

TreeStryder — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:09:53 GMT

Has anyone written any Reporting Services [1] reports for PolyMon, they'd be willing to share?

Fred, have you given any thought in to hosting RDL reports in PolyMon?

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/technologies/reporting/default.mspx

Created Issue: Monitor Fails until Executive restarted

SQLGuru — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:43:23 GMT

I've noticed that sometimes Polymon will start to have monitors that fails until the PolyMon Executive service is restarted. At that point it works fine again. If I run the monitor manually running as the same user as the Executive service, it also works fine. It seems to be related to systems (hosts) or services being restarted. Sometimes when a server/service is restarted it can't monitor it properly until the executive service is restarted.

This is status of one of the times I've seen this. Unfortunately I didn't record the others. It is monitoring Type:"Performance Monitor", Category:"SQLServer:SQL Statistics", Counter:"Batch Requests/sec". This box has very low usage and this counter is frequently 0. Running it manually works fine and gets the current counter. It started failing after restarting the system a couple of days ago.
"Fail. The Counter layout for the Category specified is invalid, a counter of the type: AverageCount64, AverageTimer32, CounterMultiTimer, CounterMultiTimerInverse, CounterMultiTimer100Ns, CounterMultiTimer100NsInverse, RawFraction, or SampleFraction has to be immediately followed by any of the base counter types: AverageBase, CounterMultiBase, RawBase or SampleBase."

I restart the Execute service and it works for a while, but it takes about 30 minutes for it to start monitoring everything again. Any help with this would be appreciated.

New Post: Feature request. Notify only on x consecutive failures.

SpeedG33k — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:49:01 GMT

Nice…

I swear that second checkbox was unavailable if the first one was unchecked. I am however, very glad to be wrong!

Thanks,

New Post: Feature request. Notify only on x consecutive failures.

fbaptiste — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:26:57 GMT

You can do this currently by configuring your monitor notification rules as follows:

Select the "Alert after" radion button
Uncheck the "Every OK/Warning to Failure" checkbox
Check the "and every n consecutive Failure(s) threafter" setting the value for n to whatever number of times the monitor should fail before alerting you.

Hopefully this is what you were looking for.

Updated Wiki: Home

fbaptiste — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:45:53 GMT

PolyMon Blog Screenshots Sample Solutions Roadmap System Requirements News Feeds

New PolyMonRT!

PolyMonRT is a real-time monitoring system. Unlike PolyMon it does not persist historical monitoring information and therefore does not require a database.
PolyMonRT provides either gauge or chart representations of various monitors that can be moved and resized on the dashboard surface to create a customizable dashboard.

Recent News

(5/16/2008) Version 1.1.0 has been released. This release addresses various issues as well as new functionality for post-event custom scripting (using PowerShell or VBScript), Heartbeat email notifications and various options for how to handle alert notifications that have queued up during Operator offline times.

(4/16/2008) New PoShMon PowerShell snap-in provided by Steven M. This PowerShell snap-in allows you to interact with the PolyMon back-end system, allowing you to create monitors, associate operators, etc. You can find more info about it here: http://powershell-basics.com/category/poshmon/. Thanks Steve!

Past News

(9/27/2007) If you are following PolyMon's development, don't forget to check out the PolyMon blog here: PolyMon Blog. Includes posts on upcoming releases and various PolyMon related issues.
(6/19/2007) Version 1.0.0 has been released.
(5/14/2007) TCP Port Monitor - 0.9.0.1 (SP) has been released.
(5/3/2007) Sample solutions leveraging PowerShell and SQL Monitors are available in Sample Solutions
(5/2/2007) Service Pack 0.9.0.1 A service pack has been released that fixes various issues and adds some additional functionality. For additional details and to download, please see Service Pack 0.9.0.1.
(3/27/2007) CPU Monitor CPU Monitor (uses Windows Performance Counters) that monitors all CPU instances/cores with warn/fail thresholds and standard historical performance logging. CPU Monitor Release Candidate
(3/23/2007) Disk Monitor Disk Monitor (alternative to WMI or PerfMon) contributed by Avian Waves. Thx! Disk Monitor Release Candidate
(3/21/2007) PowerShell Integration! A new monitor has been released that allows PowerShell integration. PowerShell Monitor Release Candidate

Welcome

PolyMon is an open source system monitoring solution that can be used to generate email alerts and analyze historical trends of monitor counters and monitor statuses. It is based on the .NET 2.0 framework and SQL Server 2005.

It is simple to use and run but flexible enough for many circumstances.

It is made up of three primary components:

A SQL Server database to store monitor statuses, alerts and general settings.
A windows service (PolyMon Executive) that runs monitors on a periodic basis, logs results to the database and sends out email notifications.
A management/monitoring front-end (PolyMon Manager) that is used to manage general settings, monitor definitions, operators, alert rules, etc. and analyze historical trends (both monitor counters and statuses).

Current monitor plug-ins:

CPU Monitor
Disk Monitor
File (Age and Counts)
Windows Performance Counters Monitor (built-in Performance Counter browser)
Ping
PowerShell Scripting
SQL Monitor (Can run any stored procedure that returns resultsets in a specific format)
SNMP Monitor
TCP Port Monitor
URL (HTML) Monitor
URL (XML) Monitor
Windows Service Monitor
WMI Monitor (built-in WMI browser and query builder)

Monitors are built using a plug-in architecture and can be added to PolyMon without requiring a recompile of the application. New plug-ins simply need to inherit from a base class. Once compiled and placed in the appropriate directories, new monitors are registered with PolyMon using a plug-in registration form in PolyMon Manager.

In addition, users can create completely custom monitors by using PowerShell scripts. PolyMon now integrates PowerShell scripting allowing Status and Counter information to be passed back from a PowerShell script to the PolyMon PowerShell Monitor. This essentially provides PolyMon a complete integrated scripting language for custom monitoring. Furthermore, because these monitors are created using PowerShell you have full control over what actions to take in the event of a Warning or Failure state.

All questions and suggestions are welcome! Also more than welcome would be suggestions for new monitor types.

Thanks and please let me know if you find PolyMon useful!
Fred Baptiste

Note that the latest release of PolyMon is available for direct download through the nice people at Freeware Downloads

Updated Wiki: Home

fbaptiste — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:44:39 GMT

PolyMon Blog Screenshots Sample Solutions Roadmap System Requirements News Feeds

New PolyMonRT!

PolyMonRT is a real-time monitoring system. Unlike PolyMon it does not persist historical monitoring information and therefore does not require a database.
PolyMonRT provides either gauge or chart representations of various monitors that can be moved and resized on the dahsboard surface to create a customizable dashboard.

Recent News

(5/16/2008) Version 1.1.0 has been released. This release addresses various issues as well as new functionality for post-event custom scripting (using PowerShell or VBScript), Heartbeat email notifications and various options for how to handle alert notifications that have queued up during Operator offline times.

(4/16/2008) New PoShMon PowerShell snap-in provided by Steven M. This PowerShell snap-in allows you to interact with the PolyMon back-end system, allowing you to create monitors, associate operators, etc. You can find more info about it here: http://powershell-basics.com/category/poshmon/. Thanks Steve!

Past News

(9/27/2007) If you are following PolyMon's development, don't forget to check out the PolyMon blog here: PolyMon Blog. Includes posts on upcoming releases and various PolyMon related issues.
(6/19/2007) Version 1.0.0 has been released.
(5/14/2007) TCP Port Monitor - 0.9.0.1 (SP) has been released.
(5/3/2007) Sample solutions leveraging PowerShell and SQL Monitors are available in Sample Solutions
(5/2/2007) Service Pack 0.9.0.1 A service pack has been released that fixes various issues and adds some additional functionality. For additional details and to download, please see Service Pack 0.9.0.1.
(3/27/2007) CPU Monitor CPU Monitor (uses Windows Performance Counters) that monitors all CPU instances/cores with warn/fail thresholds and standard historical performance logging. CPU Monitor Release Candidate
(3/23/2007) Disk Monitor Disk Monitor (alternative to WMI or PerfMon) contributed by Avian Waves. Thx! Disk Monitor Release Candidate
(3/21/2007) PowerShell Integration! A new monitor has been released that allows PowerShell integration. PowerShell Monitor Release Candidate

Welcome

A SQL Server database to store monitor statuses, alerts and general settings.
A windows service (PolyMon Executive) that runs monitors on a periodic basis, logs results to the database and sends out email notifications.
A management/monitoring front-end (PolyMon Manager) that is used to manage general settings, monitor definitions, operators, alert rules, etc. and analyze historical trends (both monitor counters and statuses).

Current monitor plug-ins:

CPU Monitor
Disk Monitor
File (Age and Counts)
Windows Performance Counters Monitor (built-in Performance Counter browser)
Ping
PowerShell Scripting
SQL Monitor (Can run any stored procedure that returns resultsets in a specific format)
SNMP Monitor
TCP Port Monitor
URL (HTML) Monitor
URL (XML) Monitor
Windows Service Monitor
WMI Monitor (built-in WMI browser and query builder)

New Post: Feature request. Notify only on x consecutive failures.

SpeedG33k — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:05:05 GMT

Great project, nice architecture, very well thought out. I did not see a place for feature requests so I just made my own.

It would be nice if you could notify only after a preset number of failures.

The ping monitor has this, but there are a lot of other situations where that would be useful.
As an example :
I have a powershell monitor that uses telnet to test a remote smtp server. I don't want to know if it fails 1 time, if it fails 3 times I probably ought to go look though.
I could build this into my script but it seems like the notification rules should be a little more flexible.

And again, I really like the project.
I have not considered writing code for a project like this in quite a while, but yours is very tempting.

New Post: Multiple monitoring executives

tianqi — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:45:15 GMT

First thanks for your great product! I've never seen so much monitors in a solution. :)
We use wmi to monitor windows server,and snmp for linux server, about 30 servers (20 counters per server). Now we are suffering the perfromance of monitoring executive. In the document , you mentioned the "Multiple monitoring executives" .This is the point which we have been expecting.

New Post: installation error

tholp — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:12:51 GMT

Hi Ed:

I have SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition. I tried installing on 2000 but I saw the error there also. I then upgraded the server to 2005 STD.

The text of the error message is:

Error- 2147217900: faile to execute SQL string, error

detail: Line 7: Incorrect syntax near '('., SQL key:

DBSetup_Integrated SQL string: CREATE TABLE

[dbo].[OperatorRole](

[RoleID] [tinyint] NOT NULL,

[Role] [varchar](100) NOT NULL, (Two sqaure boxes) CONSTRAINT [...

ed300900 wrote:

what vcersion of SQL 2005 are yuo using ..express or standard ??

tholp wrote:
Hi Ed:
Thank you for getting back to me on this. I tried a reinstall over the existing installation and I did not see an option to set the case insentitive option. Do you need to perform this installation from the Command Prompt, or from the Add Remove Programs? I am surprised that this is an issue for me. I have not seen many other issues, so I am wondering if this is some type of a conflict with my configuration.

I am hesitant to do a complete ininstall and reinstall of SQL because I have several other databases running in this instance.

ed300900 wrote:

tholp wrote:
I a having the same issue. Can this case insentitive option after installation?

ed300900 wrote:

groucho007 wrote:
Situation:
Windows 2003, SQL 2005, MDAC 2.8, .Net 2.0 and 3.0
installing with all default settings
Error Message during "executing SQL strings:
Error -2147217900: failed to execute SQL string, error detail: Must declare the scalar variable "@Uptime"., SQL key: DBSetup_Integrated SQL string: CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.agg_UpdateStatusTables
@MonitorID int,
@EventDT datetime, etc.

After pressing OK, the installation rolls back.

Any clue what I do wrong?
Tnx in advance

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Had a similar problem ..mine was looking for an invalid column TimeSpan....

Ensure you choose the case insentitive option in SQL 2005 install

Hope this helps

Cheers

Ed300900

Hi really you are better re-installing SQL2005 and ensuring you DO NOT choose the CASE SENSITIVE option.

The sql script its trying to run has a variation of entries..Timespan , TimeSpan .. so if you choose case insensitive..its all good

New Post: installation error

ed300900 — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:52:12 GMT

what vcersion of SQL 2005 are yuo using ..express or standard ??

ed300900 wrote:

tholp wrote:
I a having the same issue. Can this case insentitive option after installation?

ed300900 wrote:

New Post: installation error

tholp — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:01:59 GMT

Hi Ed:
Thank you for getting back to me on this. I tried a reinstall over the existing installation and I did not see an option to set the case insentitive option. Do you need to perform this installation from the Command Prompt, or from the Add Remove Programs? I am surprised that this is an issue for me. I have not seen many other issues, so I am wondering if this is some type of a conflict with my configuration.

I am hesitant to do a complete ininstall and reinstall of SQL because I have several other databases running in this instance.

ed300900 wrote:

tholp wrote:
I a having the same issue. Can this case insentitive option after installation?

ed300900 wrote:

New Post: installation error

ed300900 — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:02:06 GMT

tholp wrote:
I a having the same issue. Can this case insentitive option after installation?

ed300900 wrote: