As a Windows network admin, you know that one of your key duties is to monitor the health and status of your network. There are a lot of ways to do this. You can manually check each machine each day, but unless you have a exceptionally small network, this isn’t a realistic option. What you need is a network monitoring solution that can provide you with real time information about your network. That solution needs to be able to detect when systems or services are down, and then information the appropriate people that there’s a problem.

This is where ipMonitor from SolarWinds comes in. ipMonitor provides you a secure-real time network monitoring system that allows you to proactively monitor, alert and recover systems and system services. And ipMonitor does this around the clock, in the background so that you don’t have to worry about watching the console all the time.

I had a chance to install and test ipMonitor 9.01 recently. I consider one of the key features of a good software product is that installation and initial configuration is transparent. I shouldn’t have to read the manual to do the initial setup and installation. If there’s a problem, I expect the software to let me know about the problem and provide guidance on how to correct the problem.

ipMonitor didn’t let me down. The installation was smooth and there were no errors when I installed ipMonitor on my Windows XP SP3 management station. After a clean setup, the initial configuration tasks wizard began. The configuration wizard walked me through adding an administrator account, adding alert settings for the administrator, including an email address that can be used to alert the administrator when an event is triggered.

Then the device detection screen appeared and gave me the option to scan the network using an IP range, Network Neighborhood, a DNS zone or a HOSTS file. Since I was interested to see what network devices I had on my home office network, I decided to scan the entire class C range I’m using on my network. I was then offered the opportunity to enter a user account that could be used to connect to machines on my network, but I decided not to use that option since the machines belong to multiple domains and workgroups and don’t have common user account names and passwords.

The initial scan was lightening fast! ipMonitor found 27 devices on my network in about 3 minutes. During this lightening quick discovery process, ipMonitor found all the running network services on the devices it discovered. What I found interesting was that there were some devices discovered that I wasn’t even aware of. It turned out that some of the unknown devices were virtual machines running on virtual servers that I had forgot to turn off. This was an important finding, since unknown machines with listening network services could easily be used to launch an attack against my network.

After the discovery was complete, I was presented with the dashboard. The dashboard is very intuitive and easy to use. The Dashboard page provides you would sections that make it easy to find the status of all the machines on your network, or groups of machines. Quick summaries included Devices with Down Monitors, Summary Counts for Devices & Monitors, Devices, Group by Properties, Monitor, Group by Properties, My Reports, Top 10 Devices by CPU Utilization, Top 10 Devices by Ping and Top 10 devices by Disk Utilization.

The NOC view of device groups is very cool. You can immediately see if there’s a problem because the device “card” turns red. Of course, we always want to see green in our NOC views!

One of the coolest features is the network map. There are many types of maps to select from. Some of the maps include All Managed Devices, Down Devices, Routers, Servers, Warn Devices, Warn Monitors, Workstations and many more. Another thing you can do with the network map is edit it so that you can create connections between the devices. For example, you can model data connections between devices such as network switches or firewalls.

The Alerting feature was easy to discovery and configure, and alerts can be configure to apply do individual devices, default groups, or “smart” groups that you can create on your own, based on Properties of the devices, which can be populated based on RegEx expressions run against discovered properties of those devices (which is a very cool feature and significant speeds up populating smart groups). Alerts can be configured to be sent to cell phone, email, SMS, text pager, numeric pager, or simple beeper.

All in all, I found ipMonitor to be easy to install, configure and customize. I didn’t run into anything unexpected or arcane, something I really appreciate in a software product. For anyone who’s interested in a flexible, powerful, yet easy to use and cost effective network monitoring solution, I highly recommend SolarWinds ipMonitor.

Download a fully functional 21-day trial version of SolarWinds ipMonitor, WindowsNetworking.com Readers’ Choice Award Winner for Network Monitoring in 2008!

Last night, we became aware of a code issue with the recently released update to ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 (Update 2). 

When the time clock in a server running ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5 Update 2 hits 12:00AM on August 12th, 2008, the released code causes the product license to expire.  The problem has also occurred with a recent patch to ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5 Update 2.  When an ESX or ESXi 3.5 server thinks its license has expired, the following can happen:

• Virtual machines that are powered off cannot be turned on;
• Virtual machines that have been suspended fail to leave suspend mode; and,
• Virtual machines cannot be migrated using VMotion.

The issue was caused by a piece of code that was mistakenly left enabled for the final release of Update 2.  This piece of code was left over from the pre-release versions of Update 2 and was designed to ensure that customers are running on the supported generally available version of Update 2. 

In remedying the situation, we’ve already released an express patch for those customers that have installed/upgraded to ESX or ESXi 3.5 Update 2.  Within the next 24 hours, we also expect to issue a full replacement for Update 2, which should be used by customers who want to perform fresh installs of ESX or ESXi. 

I am sure you’re wondering how this could happen.  We failed in two areas:

• Not disabling the code in the final release of Update 2; and
• Not catching it in our quality assurance process. 

We are doing everything in our power to make sure this doesn’t happen again.  VMware prides itself on the quality and reliability of our products, and this incident has prompted a thorough self-examination of how we create and deliver products to our customers.  We have kicked off a comprehensive, in-depth review of our QA and release processes, and will quickly make the needed changes.   

I want to apologize for the disruption and difficulty this issue may have caused to our customers and our partners.  Your confidence in VMware is extremely important to us, and we are committed to restoring that confidence fully and quickly.

Thank You,

Paul Maritz
President and CEO
VMware

SIGGRAPH 2008—LOS ANGELES, CA—August 12, 2008—3D models and datasets have become too large for the standard desktop workstation to handle. To help combat the problem, NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in visual computing technologies, announced today the D Series of NVIDIA Quadro Plex® Visual Computing Systems (VCS) available in deskside or rackmount configurations. Engineered to provide the most robust NVIDIA Quadro® GPU visualization performance to date, the Quadro Plex systems are ideal for the styling and design, geosciences and scientific visualization industries, working with extremely large 3D models, datasets and power walls. The new Quadro Plex series provides performance improvements of up to 100% over previous versions and offers massively parallel processing capabilities using multiple Quadro graphics cards for visualization, large-scale projection and display, or computation with the NVIDIA® CUDA™ Parallel Computing Processor.

The Quadro Plex D2 will be featured in technology demonstrations of real-time NVIDIA GPU-based raytracing, large scale CAD modeling and 4K HD power walls at SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles, August 12-14, 2008 (NVIDIA Booth 554).

The NVIDIA Quadro Plex 2200 D2 VCS, with two Quadro GPUs, 4 dual-link DVI channels, and 8 GB of frame buffer memory, is designed for advanced visualization of extremely large models and datasets, as well as high-performance computing processes. Its partner, the Quadro Plex 2100 D4 VCS with four GPUs, 8 dual-link DVI channels and a 4 GB frame buffer, is optimized for multi-display applications.

A Quadro Plex D series VCS can turn workstations and servers into visual supercomputers. Easily connected to a host workstation via a low-power PCI Express adapter card, the Quadro Plex VCS gives workstations the massively parallel processing capabilities of multiple Quadro graphics cards and features an ultra-quiet design, allowing the system to be deployed deskside. It can also be deployed in a standard 3U, 19-inch rackmount configuration, for maximum visual computational density.

The new Quadro Plex 2200 D2 VCS houses two Quadro FX 5800 GPUs, providing 480 NVIDIA CUDA Parallel Computing Processor cores and 8GB of graphics memory. The thermal and power management capabilities of the chassis offer up to 20% performance improvement over standard add-in graphics, making it the most powerful visual computing system available. The Quadro Plex 2200 D2 VCS houses up to four Quadro FX 4700 GPUs, powering up to four displays via its dual-link DVI outputs, and up to eight displays with its high-resolution projection capabilities.

“For the first time, the Quadro Plex D Series, with our latest Quadro GPU technology, brings visual supercomputing to the deskside, combining advanced visualization and computational performance together in a Quadro system,” says Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions, NVIDIA. “From the unprecedented power of the Quadro Plex to our Quadro FX mobile notebook solutions, professionals across multiple markets can now get the level of Quadro performance that best meets their individual visualization needs.”

The Quadro Plex D Series VCS will be available in September 2008 with prices beginning at $10,750.

HP today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Colubris Networks Inc., a Waltham, Mass.-based, privately-held global provider of intelligent wireless networks for enterprises and service providers.

HP plans to integrate Colubris’ extensive product line into its ProCurve Networking product portfolio. This will expand HP ProCurve’s reach into vertical markets such as hospitality, transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, service provider and education.

The award-winning Colubris Networks Intelligent Mobility Solution delivers wireless integrated access, management and security products as well as 802.11n capability – all of which help enterprises and service providers broaden the reach and impact of voice, data and multimedia applications.

“The acquisition of Colubris Networks will strengthen ProCurve’s hardware, management platform and services, significantly improving the overall performance capabilities of both wired and wireless networks, and will deliver even more best-in-class choices for our customers worldwide,” said Marius Haas, senior vice president and general manager, HP ProCurve. “With our vision and continued support from HP leadership, I am convinced that ProCurve’s impressive growth and market leadership is unlimited.”

The acquisition is subject to certain closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of HP’s fiscal year 2008. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

REDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 6, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the new version of the company’s acclaimed data management and business intelligence platform. This version of SQL Server provides powerful new capabilities such as support for policy-based management, auditing, large-scale data warehousing, geospatial data, and advanced reporting and analysis services. SQL Server 2008 provides the trusted, productive and intelligent platform necessary for business-critical applications.

“Microsoft developed this release of SQL Server with the customer in mind,” said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division at Microsoft. “SQL Server 2008 is the only major database that includes comprehensive, tightly integrated functionality for data management as well as advanced business intelligence out of the box. By offering a complete solution, we save customers time and money and allow them to focus on deriving the most value from their data assets.”

With more than 450,000 customer and partner downloads of SQL Server 2008’s community technology previews (CTPs), more than 75 large-scale applications already in production and more than 1,350 applications being developed by nearly 1,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) on SQL Server 2008, it’s clear that customers and partners are excited about the capabilities now available in SQL Server 2008. Tim Whitehorn, founder and chief executive officer of event management software provider ServiceU Corp., said, “We selected SQL Server 2008 because we can entrust it with our critical business applications. SQL Server 2008 is highly secure and reliable, and offers the best value on the market today. In addition, it accelerates the time frame for deploying new features and enhancements, and that to us makes SQL Server a winner.”

A number of enterprise customers from various industries are testing SQL Server 2008 including Clear Channel Communications Inc., Fidelity Investments, Hilton Hotels Corp., Simon & Schuster Inc., Siemens AG and Xerox Corp., among many others.

SQL Server has been well-received in the analyst community. Noted Forrester Research Inc. analyst Noel Yuhanna wrote in a January 2008 report, “The Forrester Wave: Information-As-A-Service, Q1 2008,” “Microsoft is (one of) the only vendor(s) with top enterprise search and business intelligence reporting capabilities. It offers strong support for aggregation, summarization, search engine and dashboards. Transactions across distributed data sources and long-running transactions are also strengths for Microsoft.”

SQL Server is an industry leader in both scalability and performance. It is the first and only database management system to be proven capable of delivering scalable results on TPC-E, the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s (TPC) newest and most challenging online transaction processing (OLTP) benchmark, with 13 published benchmarks to date.¹ Seven benchmarks are published on Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 by multiple hardware vendors, demonstrating strong price-performance and performance results, including IBM Corp.’s new No. 1 performance result using SQL Server 2008 on a 64-core System x3950 M2 server.² Also demonstrating the performance of SQL Server 2008, Unisys Corp. and Microsoft set a new extract, transform and load (ETL) performance record by loading 1 terabyte of data in less than 30 minutes using SQL Server 2008 Integration Services. In addition, SQL Server 2008 has proven its scalability in large-scale data warehousing, as demonstrated by its recent 10-terabyte TPC-H benchmark.³

“We saw a 35 percent improvement in throughput on the system that we upgraded to SQL Server 2008, with no code changes on our end,” said Gary Oberg, vice president of IT and development at Applied Discovery (a member of the LexisNexis group). “This translates straight to the bottom line for us, as the more documents we can upload, the more we can process.”

Microsoft is setting additional benchmark records with ISV solutions, including a world record on four-socket industry-standard blade servers in a three-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark, and demonstrated the largest benchmark ever on the Siemens Teamcenter digital product life-cycle management solution, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics AX and the Camstar Manufacturing Execution System solution.

SQL Server is a key component of the Microsoft Application Platform, a suite of products and technologies designed to help customers build, run and manage dynamic business applications. SQL Server 2008 is available in the following editions:

Pricing and Availability

SQL Server 2008 is now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers and will be available for evaluation download on Aug. 7, 2008. SQL Server 2008 Express and SQL Server Compact editions are available for free download today at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver. As previously announced, pricing for SQL Server will not increase with SQL Server 2008. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/sqlserver.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (August 06, 2008) - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced an all-new version of the Google Search Appliance™ integrated hardware and software solution, with a new architecture that can index all of an organization’s content—up to 10 million documents—in a single box.

“It is now easier than ever for companies to give all employees a Google.com search experience inside their business,” said Dave Girouard, president of Enterprise for Google. “With the improved architecture for the search appliance, businesses can provide secure search across the largest enterprise content repositories—such as Documentum, Filenet, LiveLink, and Sharepoint—all from one easy-to-maintain appliance.”

Typical enterprise search solutions require several servers (such as multiple front-end web servers, index servers and database servers), each of which need to be separately maintained.

For large volumes of content, a traditional implementation might require 10 or more servers. As content in an organization grows, the effort to maintain the investment in hardware and software becomes exponentially more costly and time consuming—demanding increasing numbers of servers along with the additional personnel to manage and configure them.

The new Google Search Appliance—Google’s iconic yellow box that provides universal search capabilities across an organization’s content—is designed to make it easy to deploy and administer enterprise-wide search, even as content grows. The scalable architecture and core relevancy algorithms used by the Google Search Appliance ensure users get a high quality search experience across more enterprise content.

“We were invited to participate in the beta program for the new Google Search Appliance and were extremely pleased with its simplified deployment architecture,” says Renée Nocker, Director of Enterprise Business Intelligence for Kimberly-Clark. “Being able to search 10 million documents in a box not only makes maintenance and deployment across our domestic and international locations much easier, but we also get the same fast, reliable and relevant search results we’ve come to expect from Google.”

In addition to capacity and performance improvements, the new Google Search Appliance offers improved search quality, enhanced personalization, security and language support.

Capacity and Performance

• Indexes 10 million documents in a single appliance – A new architectural design that takes advantage of improvements in hardware and software increases the single appliance index capacity to 10 million documents.

Improved Search Quality and More Personal Experience for Users

• Search across all enterprise content – Universal search capabilities for secure access to web servers, portals, file shares, databases, real-time business data, and enterprise content systems including EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, OpenText Livelink, and Microsoft SharePoint.
• Personalization – New scoring policies allow administrators to adjust search results for different user groups, based on department or function. For example, engineers can choose to receive code and design documents at the top of their result set, while results for the marketing department can favor marketing documents.
• Advanced Biasing – Administrators can now bias results based on metadata (in addition to biasing based on source, URL or date). For example, administrators can promote one type of document (such as ‘Whitepaper’) over others (such as ‘Log file’).
• Alerts – Employees can subscribe to email alerts for topics and documents of interest, choosing an hourly, daily, or weekly alert schedule.
• Advanced reporting – The search appliance now offers advanced search analytics for every query, including reports on which queries receive no clicks by a user and how often users are clicking on sponsored links in comparison to organic search results or OneBox modules.
• Enterprise Labs Search Innovation – The Google Enterprise Labs™ site gives businesses early access to the latest search experiments in order to evaluate and provide feedback. Recent innovations include Do-It-Yourself Keymatches, Search-As-You-Type and Google Sites Integration. These experiments and others are available online: http://www.google.com/enterprise/labs/index.html.

Enhanced Security and Language Support

• Native Support for Kerberos – Google Search Appliance supports Kerberos to provide single authentication for Sharepoint, file shares and non-Windows-based content systems, in addition to Windows-based systems.
• International Expansion – International support expanding to include: administrative functions in four new languages (English-UK, Portuguese-Portugal, Turkish, Vietnamese); contextual spell checking for all end users in Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch; and contextual query expansion for all end users in Dutch.

“For us, choosing an enterprise search solution came down to two factors: getting the quickest and most relevant search results. Not only does the Google Search Appliance deliver fast and relevant results, but our employees and agents don’t need anything more technical than a few keywords to find what they need,” said Kenneth Hittel, VP Corporate Internet, New York Life Insurance Company. “And the new personalization, biasing, and alert features represent the type of user-focused innovation that makes the Google Search Appliance a good fit for our agents and for our organization.”

The Google Search Appliance is available in a variety of standard configurations with capacities from 500,000 to 30M documents. Custom configurations in excess of 30 million are available upon request. For more information, please visit http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa/index.html.