Network Monitoring, reporting and charting

Pff… if you ever want to give yourself a headache – try setting up your own network monitoring/reporting/charting stuff. First off, finding anything that runs on Win32 is a challenge – and if you can find a freeware version, you almost found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow so to speak.

Now sure you can use for example PRTG Network Monitor (freeware version is limited to 10 sensors, available at: http://www.paessler.com/prtg) or The Dude (available at http://www.mikrotik.com/thedude.php) but well… you still miss out a bit.

So far I haven’t really found my end-all solution that does everything that I want, which is SNMP monitoring, Syslog, and PING-ing. Now keep in mind that I have a fairly simple network. (2 routers set up as access points, 3 wifi-networks, 2 Ethernet over Power Adapters, 1 security device, 2 PC’s, 1 server, 2 notebooks, and 1 network-disk) so it shouldn’t be too hard.

For the time being I am using Kiwi Syslog Daemon (available at http://www.kiwisyslog.com/kiwi-syslog-daemon-overview/) for Syslog functionality – and PRTG Network Monitor for monitoring / PING.

Let’s hope I find something a bit more workable in the future. Untill then, if you are looking for a simple and free solution, you got 2 that you can use :)

Both are a breeze to setup and configure and well, they do work. Tips, comments and/or suggestions? Let me know!

Posted in Geek Stuff, Just fun, Personal | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

5 Pet peeves in regards to mails that need to go

I just had to post and share this one:

  1. The liberal use of the “VERY HIGH PRIORITY!!!” flag
  2. The 18-line sig about all the Bad Things that will happen to me if I ever reveal the contents of your privileged, confidential (and unencrypted) message
  3. The unrequested press release (and the serial ignoring of the “Unsubscribe” I sent you for the previous seven press releases)
  4. The graphical background, font and table tags, and remaining 14k of HTML cruft associated with every. single. message. you’ve ever sent
  5. The including of my — plus 98 other strangers’ — personal email addresses in the “To:” line of your friendly reminder about Tyler’s birthday party

Source:
http://www.43folders.com/2005/11/07/five-email-tics-id-love-for-you-to-lose?page=3

:mrgreen:

Posted in Just fun, Personal | Tagged , | Comments Off

Virtualization

Well, lately I have been playing around with VMWare Workstation 6.5, and I must admit that it looks and runs really nicely. The performance seems to exceed that of Virtual PC on some points IMHO. But Virtual PC is completely free.

I have also installed Virtual Server 2005 R2 EE (Enterprise Edition) again for testing purposes. I have created these virtual machines so that I can test products, programs and a few other things. I also intend to learn a few SQL 2005 things in the near future so I needed a system that I could ruin completely without getting worried.

I’ll try to post my findings on which program I liked the most later on. I also know that I can play around with VMWare server, but I am giving Virtual Server 2005 a head-start.

The server-editions have the advantage of being able to install it on one machine and then running the client on another. This way my main machine won’t get too tainted or bogged down.

Apart from the above geeky stuff I am doing quite fine myself. The company-trip (for work yes) to Baveno, Italy was great and an amazing experience. It did however mean that I have been working for 12 days or so in a row (with a gap here and there of a few hours) Today I also worked so yeah, no rest for the restless I guess ;)

So all is fine and dandy here. I already look forward to the next weekend since I’ll be going to a birthday-party at that time so… woohooo!

Posted in Geek Stuff, Personal | Comments Off

Upping the ante

Well been a while again I guess. I can honestly say that I have been pretty busy with, well work :) The good news is that as per 1st of June I am being promoted to System Administrator (so no more Junior… :mrgreen: ) But I do know it means that my responsibilites will grow (a lot) but hey, nothing too major and nothing I can’t handle (part of it I was already doing anyway, so no biggy :) )

In other news, at the end of this month I will also be attending our summit in Italy (near lake Magiore) So fun stuff. Not so funny is flying back on Sunday (arriving at Schiphol around 9ish at night) and then going to work again the next day ;-)

Now, in a gripe… Is it just me or is the UPC.nl site (specially the HTTPS part) as slow as can be? Honestly… Pfft :evil: Always nice trying to register with them for an online access account and constantly getting the notification: your session expired (with both IE8 running in IE7 mode, and Opera 9.21) Sheesh

In happier news, I recently bought the Orange Box from Steam. And well, Portal is indeed as addictive as people are claiming it to be :mrgreen:

So, guess where I am off to now? :mrgreen:

Posted in Just fun, Personal | Comments Off

Testing the new Last.FM Quilt…

Posted in Geek Stuff, Just fun, Personal | Comments Off