Ipswitch Forums / WhatsUp Gold/WhatsUp Professional / Ipswitch Products / Stand up and request features !!! / Latest Posts

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

MoreDakka — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:27:51 GMT

Well we have been using an old version of Zenoss forever and it's devices scanning abilities are superior to WUG. Also being able to sort devices in more then one level (Zenoss can organize in 3 levels).

A huge annoyance is adding passive monitors. I really dislike having to go to each machine and manually add on each one a passive rule to alert me on a trap that comes in. 200+ devices, if I have to make a change to a passive rule then thats at least 400+ clicks to get it done. Bulk change on that would work.

Also, I think it was mentioned in the poll but having alerting thresholds for performance monitors (90% CPU, 95% HDD utilization). Don't frickin' hardcode those numbers either, make the alerts custom so I can put an alert if I want to see 10% hdd utilization, this would also be able to be custom per device or per device group. This is where grouping comes in handy again.

Anyways, I also am a little annoyed that IPSwitch haven't said anything in this topic yet (that I can see). Ha, Zenoss=Free and they will answer your questions in the forums, WUG=$$$$ and they don't answer...nice.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

Sergio — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:04:23 GMT

Have you tried polling the wug server itself with wmi ? Have a look at it. Wug does give a number of counters about its own behaviour.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

pb — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:54:36 GMT

[quote][b]klaus_f (5/14/2008)[/b][hr]An other good idea...

if you would build one Monitor to Display the Load ofthe WUPPolling Engine! So we have every time, when we add Devices to try or error, will the Polling Engine handle this additional Load ?

[/quote]
This is a great idea, I would also like to see different polling Queues. Split the type of monitor into different Queues, ICMP, SNMP, WMI, Active Script. This would also allow for more polls per minute by being able to split the queues. And each Queue would not affect the others if it is overloaded.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

njohnson — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:21:05 GMT

I'd like to be able to have the following:

1. Alert on performance monitors
(Found an active script for disk space, but this should be included for all performance monitors)
2. Kick off a traceroute in an action and include that in an email notification
3. Have a checkbox in the "Edit Action Policy" on Down notifications to notify when the device is back up
(This makes much more sense than having to add an Up notification for each down notification)
4. Another checkbox to keep notifying until the device is back up, with an adjustable wait period between notifications
(In other words, keep bugging me until it is fixed)

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

pb — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:45:16 GMT

There are alot of things I would like to see added or imporoved on the 2 primary would be:

1) ADS monitor similar to Spotlight on Active Directory [url=http://www.quest.com/spotlight-on-active-directory/]http://www.quest.com/spotlight-on-active-directory/[/url]

2) Citrix monitoring Number of sessions per server, licensed used, registry size, is the server locked out (Users cannot login to server)

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

rdoove — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:11:01 GMT

My wishes:

1. Better handling of syslog:
- Able to do something with severity levels and facility
- Letting a syslog message impact the status of the device
- Have a real live tail of syslog.

2. Much better templating: take a look at Cacti for example
- Create active monitor templates, with option to archive (turning them into performance monitors)
with a certain retention time (like cacti does with different RRA files; see RRD tool)
- Attaching monitor templates to Device Templates
- Create graph templates, so you can have multiple monitors in one graph (for instance 4 CPU cores in one graph)
- Attaching Graph templates to devices templates

Rene

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

CoolCat — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:40:04 GMT

When using SNMP traps and having your traps defined (they have a name) and imported, you will have to choose between LOOSING TRAPS or have them in DOUBLE.

Or you choose any trap for a device and in the trap log you don't get the name of the trap. Or you choose the name and you miss other (unknown) traps.
Or you can choose any trap AND the specific trap and then you get them in double in the trap log.

Could you, please change this behaviour so that when you use 'any trap' and the name exists in the list of imported traps then the name of the trap is shown in the trap log?

Thanks :P

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

LLS71 — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:47:18 GMT

Antoher feature:

Copy a device to be able to create a new device with very similar properties. For example you could have one device with several Active and Performance Monitors enabled and want to add a device with the same Monitors enabled and just change the name and IP address. There is no functionality for this.

Regards, LLS71

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

disorganizer — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:23:05 GMT

what distrurbs be about ipswitch is that they dont seem to listen.

webalerting still doesnt work with firefox
webalerting still uses popups and acknowledgements
date format sill uses / only as separator instead of simply adding . as date seperator

all of those topic would need minimum development..... (well, for the first i cant tell but i can not imagine it being too much effort) but are not even tried.
even escalating those feature requests through support doesnt help.

instead ipswitch focuses on implementing additional plugins (for additional money of course).
and gives no comment at all on those requests (not to mention all the other requests....)
even a "no, we cant do that" would be better than staying silent.

so for my part we propably will leave the whatsup community for our upcoming global NOC.
either going into a professional solution or open sourced solution, depending on mgmt decission.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

StanJohnson — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:53:46 GMT

Control how individual device state is reflected in group state: Currently, as soon as ONE device in a group is down, the group becomes red. But in a given group, you might have more important and less important devices. As a quick visual clue of your network health, being able to define how an individual device will impact the group status would be nice.

Here's a semi-workaround this issue: I've configured the Device State for "Down (Not Responding -0) to the same color that I have for up (green). This, of course, has nothing to do with my action policy schedules, but it does keep my NOC view green when that remote server fails a single ping.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

StanJohnson — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:37:07 GMT

I've been away from these forums for a long time and missed out on a lot of this conversation. I think the poll idea is great and I've dropped my top 4 votes onto the list.

Here are my most wanted, sorry if I've repeated any.

"Occurances within a period of time" and or limiter paramaters for passive monitors. That is, if 500 identical messages come in from server X in less than a 5 minute period then only a single action (along with an occurance count) is required. Or don't bother notifying me unless passive monitor X is triggered 10 times in a 5 minute period.

The ability to have a passive monitor put a device into an error state until acted upon by a user. (For example: An virus notice was just sent by server X. Put the device into an error state until my security team reviews it.)

Give us an agent component for remote servers so that we can run scripts using local securities.

Build import/export features that would allow us users to easily share the work we've put into Item types, Home and Device Views, passive/performance/active monitors, actions, etc.

Give us a true Plug-in API so that we can write add-ons to the product for free or re-sale.

Give us graphs that can display more than 1 device's statistics at a time.

Fix the timeout issue that occurs when polling gets behind. (Explanation: when the polling process gets behind it starts marking devices down because they don't make it to the polling queue within their required window. This eventually snowballs and all devices end up being marked as down. We currently fix the situation when it occurs by restarting NMService.exe.)

Oh, and I haven't installed version 12 yet but, if Ipswitch hasn't fixed the sort order under Passive Monitor properties to alphabetical I would really prefer it.

Give us the ability to configure the notification message from within the apply actions definition. (I have 5 to 10 email actions defined for every member of my teams. These include special treatment for passive vs active events and for custom messages from multiple event types on a single device.)

Let us apply individual actions "in addition to" action policies.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

LLS71 — Tue, 27 May 2008 06:29:56 GMT

WUG12 has been released. I don't see Ipswitch react on many messages in the forums. I don't even know if they really care what the users are demanding... In the IBM forums you often get answers from IBM technicians. I would like to see this happen in the Ipswitch forums!

Regards, LLS71

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

MB - NS — Thu, 22 May 2008 04:52:38 GMT

We have gone above 100 votes on this, may we have a feedback from Ipswitch ?

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

Sergio — Thu, 15 May 2008 04:46:19 GMT

Klaus,

Wug does expose lots of data about itself through WMI. Just try to create a wmi perf monitor, then browse to your wug server... You'll find "Ipswitch Engine" and "Ipswitch web server"...

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

klaus_f — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:40:36 GMT

An other good idea...

if you would build one Monitor to Display the Load of the WUP Polling Engine! So we have every time, when we add Devices to try or error, will the Polling Engine handle this additional Load ?

Regards

Klaus Fillbach

System Administrator

Frankfurt, Germany

http://www.fiebig-team.de

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

Elipsis — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:03:23 GMT

Merging active monitors and performance monitors would be excellent. I don't see why there needs to be one monitor for the graph data and one monitor for the threshold.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

DonC — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:08:45 GMT

Here is one that i have stuggled with -

I would like to be able to do a "Select All" for certain things. For instance - We have a stack of Cisco 3750E switches - 5 of them. When I need to setup a Performance Monitor on a specific interface, I have to UNCHECK each interface that i DONT want to monitor. With this stack of switches, that roughly 150 interfaces i have to manual click on to get to the 1 interface I DO want.

Very frustrating.

I would also love to see a Gui for Dynamic groups, and more customizable reporting features.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

miken32 — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:54:10 GMT

[quote][b]jtam (5/5/2008)[/b][hr]I would really like to see someone add Mobile cabilitys to the Web Interface. I don't need to be able to do anything more than just view my network status.[/quote]

[url=http://forums.ipswitch.com/Topic42102-14-1.aspx]http://forums.ipswitch.com/Topic42102-14-1.aspx[/url]

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

jtam — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:00:43 GMT

I would really like to see someone add Mobile cabilitys to the Web Interface. I don't need to be able to do anything more than just view my network status.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

doak — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:35:15 GMT

What i like to see:
- Sending HTML e-mails
- Quick way to find the variables that are available
- Multiple-device dependencies
- Map view showing only the display name
- Easy to use performance counters with threshold settings

Good luck with the next release

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

clapeters — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:46:12 GMT

How about a GUI for creating dynamic groups?

How about a custom reporting feature (so we don't have to develop them with asp)?

How about being able to combine items into one report (i.e. CPU for multi processor/core systems)?

Better security for users. I don't want users who are assigned a group to be able to see anything outside that group (top 10 reports show for all devices, not limited to specific group unless you go in and manually set it to do that).

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

mattm — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:35:42 GMT

I would like them to keep up with the current SQL. We are not going to keep a SQL 2000 server around for them. Because of the jerking off tech support was about it we are looking into other products.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

securitypeople2007 — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:47:13 GMT

Dear all,

I would like to suggest that What's Up Gold should provide a webpart for SharePoint Server/Service for reporting.I would like to suggest that What's Up Gold should provide a webpart for SharePoint Server/Service for reporting.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

WU — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:24:34 GMT

I am a supporter of What's Up Gold, recently I find a test report compare between What's Up Gold 11 and ipMonitor. It said that What's Up Gold 11 did not support or limited support of the following feature:

1. All product functionality is provided from a web-based interface

2. Monitoring policies are automatically configured for specific application- or ervertypes, such as MS Exchange or web servers

3. End-to-end synthetic transaction testing, trending and reporting for applications including Exchange, SQL Server and others

4. Dynamic mapping of monitors, devices, and groups of devices, including full web-based map editing and configuration changes

5. Built-in NOC views for instant visual updates of up/down status, response time, and
critical system details

6. Groups may be defined for any combination of monitors regardless of physical device

http://www.solarwinds.com/resources/reviews/Miercom_Report_ipMonitor_WhatsUp_Gold_Comparison.pdf

I hope the What's Up Gold 12 will support those feature.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

Sergio — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:39:41 GMT

Yes, back to basics, I would just *love* to see some Ipswitch feedback now that a few people voted in the poll :)

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

MB - NS — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:56:21 GMT

It should be possible, if you just request one page after another, specifying a specific relative URL each time.
But it could time out.
BTW, if you have further questions, please make a new thread so we don't spam this one.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

doak — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:41:40 GMT

I just found it !!! thx. Foreach site i have to make a new active monitor, correct me if i'm wrong. Is it also possible to make one monitor and check 8 sites running on that server?

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

MB - NS — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:41:03 GMT

[quote][b]doak (4/17/2008)[/b][hr]I would like to see if websites are up. I know, you can monitor the webservices but that doesn't guarantee that the sites are running. I think a lot of people uses other programs because it's not possible (without making scripts) in WhatsUp. The only thing it needs to do is comparing a given string in the source code of the site. I hope this can be included in the next release.
gr[/quote]

I don't understand, are you talking about verifying that a site returns the right page ?
Because that is defintely possible through Content monitoring.
TCP scripts allows you to request a page and match the page returned against a specific string you choose (even regexp are supported).

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

doak — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:35:58 GMT

I would like to see if websites are up. I know, you can monitor the webservices but that doesn't guarantee that the sites are running. I think a lot of people uses other programs because it's not possible (without making scripts) in WhatsUp. The only thing it needs to do is comparing a given string in the source code of the site. I hope this can be included in the next release.
gr

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

musekmkr — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:01:14 GMT

I have a laundry list of items that I would like to see in WUG. My company has been using WUG for years now and I have been spending a lot of time with it as of late since I am now sort of responsible for all of our monitoring. We were using WUG to monitor both Network devices and Servers but our Network team switched over to Solarwinds so we just use WUG for server monitoring. I have a few application funcionality/feature requests that I would like to share. Sure, some of them may not apply to everyone and you may not see the true purpose but I think they would be hugh assets to the product.

In no specific order...

1. Multiple views

Not only allow tabs for Device and Map view but also add the ability for Topology view and Physical view. Your Map view can be used for your geographical views, the Topology view can be used for the network map views and a Physical view could be used for a Visio type view.

2. Device count

Tell me how many total devices are in a group (status bar). Sure if you click the group it will tell you x devices are Up, x devices are Down, x devices in Maintenance blah blah blah...but they cant have a status bar with a total number of items?

3. Copy items

Allow Control + C of all the items in Device view so that they can be imported into an Excel spreadsheet. I shouldn't have to run a report just to get a list of devices. I use SQL queries to do this now but that's a pain.

4. Add columns to Device view

In my environment it's important to know what servers are test, dev, dr, production etc... Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to fit all of you important details in a server name and somepeople just refuse to stick to a naming convention... :w00t: How about being able to add a column that would show a particular field or custom attribute so those types of devices can be easilly grouped or detected. Also, how about a column that would tell me which folder the device exists in or what location it's in...? This would be real nice :)

5. Column filters

A textbox above each column in Device view that would perform a filter on all devices. If I where looking for a server that contained certain letters, I could type those characters in a text box above that column and filter by use of a SQL LIKE or = statement instead having to create a dynamic group.

6. Warp to device folder

How many times did you try to delete a device from a dynamic group? Why not be able to just right click the device and click a menu item that would warp to the actual folder that the device resides in or just simply ask me if I would like to delete the device from it's device folder.

7. Disable multiple monitors

Each monitor in a device's property window should be able to be disabled by highlighting one or more montors and then clicking a Disable button. I shouldn't have to edit each monitor one by one. Putting the device in maintenance mode would disable all but what if I just wanted to disable a couple of them?

8. Select monitors from Discovery

When you click the Discover button in a device's propery window, you should get a pop-up window which would allow you to choose (checkbox) which monitors you wanted from the discovery. I have monitors that I like to be used in discovery but not for every device.

9. Set action policies per monitor

I have a list of devices that use a WMI monitor that checks a disk's free space. We sometimes get false alerts simply because WMI just doesn't like to respond or the server is too busy to respond but this usually clears up within 5 or 10 minutes. All of my action policies are configured to alert after a monitor is down for 5 mins and again in 20 mins. I wanted to create specific actions for each of the WMI monitors in each device so that we would only get an alert if the monitor was down for 20 mins. This way we would pretty much know that the alert was legitimate or it would at the very least cut down on the false alerts. What a pain this would be to have to do this for each individual devie...I have hundreds of them. So it would be nice to be able to configure specific actions for a monitor from the Configure>Active Monitors library and apply these settings to all devices using this monitor.

10. Bulk apply Device Type settings

When you configure settings for a device type from the Configure>Device Types window, there is no way to apply those settings to current devices of that type. In fact, the only time that this feature actually works is when a device is detected through Active Discovery and how often do your devices get detected properly? At least for me, most of my devices are detected as workstations or servers but that doesn't help me as I have several more specific device types that I use. I should be able to add settings to a device type and apply all of these setting to devices that are currently using that device type.

...just to name a few :P

I hate to be a whiner but I can't see how these functions would be that difficult to develop, especially when most of them can be found in other apps. It's all about the design, the functionality and development, at least that's what pulls me in. I think that WUG should really start focussing on the ideas that their customers propose as we most likely use the product more than anyone. The more response we get from them, the more popular and user friendly the product becomes. Now that can only lead to goodness ;)

BTW- I voted for all suggestions as I think they are all good ideas...especially the intra-device dependencies which I would have mentioned here if I didn't see so many requests.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

mrocha — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:45:40 GMT

I voted for Intra-device dependencies as well.

Since my company was running a monitoring program that wasn't that great (IP Sentry), WUG is a nice upgrade. But, since there is no intra-device dependency segregation, I may have to continue to run IP Sentry and keep WUG for both the GUI and the reporting that it provides. Unless I can float the idea of several alarms for each server.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

Sergio — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:44:47 GMT

Clayman,

Since the Wug DB is Sql Server, and the database schema is available, you can already use your favourite reporting tool and create whatever report you want. I personally don't think it's a good idea (and I'm 99.999% sure Ipswitch would not do it) to request the addition of a report writer into Wug; there are soooo many out there, both free & commercial, that you really can pick up your favourite.

I may be wrong of course, but generally speaking (and that's not limited to Wug, but applies to any software product) it's a proven fact that prebuilt reports NEVER suit users -at least not 100%. So for me the important thing is to get a set of prebuilt reports AND the ability to create your own. This is already the case today with Wug.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

clayman88 — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:50:07 GMT

I would like to see some major improvements in the reporting features of WUG. I would like to be able to create my own custom reports. All of my other ideas have been mentioned for the most part.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

mz0dw4 — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:30:11 GMT

Please write the snmp data values for total bytes sent and received on an interface so that we (or WUG software guys :) ) can accurately calculate a real-time interface utilization %. The values stored currently do not allow for the correct real-time calculation. Thanks

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

Sergio — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:31:35 GMT

Well, it's not as simple as that... (And by the way Wug V8 did have ping as a monitor; the way these "intra-device dependencies" were handled was that for each single monitor, you had a flag you could set saying : "if this monitor goes down, report the device as down". Even more, it was possible to do the same with snmp traps... !)

The problem with what you say is that "Ping" can't always be considered a critical monitor. For instance, I'm monitoring a website using its public IP address, and firewalls are set up so that it does NOT answer to ping. Therefore HTTP is the critical monitor for that box; a website is made to serve web pages and when it does not serve them anymore, well the box has a critical problem. In the same way, I'm monitoring a mail server; in that case smtp is the critical monitor.

Actually, the (many) documents and cases I sent to Ipswitch about this issue suggested to go back to the Wug V8 behaviour, and add a flag to each active monitor on each device, that could be set or cleared at your will, and that would declare that specific instance of that particular monitor as critical for that device.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

Juriy — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:07:40 GMT

thank you Sergio...hm, it's interesting I'll try.

yesterday I was thinking about intra-device dependencies... I suppose lot of problem will be solved if Ping will be removed from Active Monitors - like it was in WuG 8. there was no ping active monitor and there weren't a lot of problems.

Now if I watch a group icon I don't really know if some devices are down or only one (not so important) Active Monitor is down. It's really problem of our NOC center...

And it's because of Ping is Active Monitor.

If device have more than one AM - we have more than one alarms when it's getting down(intra-device dependencies). And it's because of Ping is Active Monitor.

Maybe return to WuG 8 logic resolve problem?

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

Sergio — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:18:46 GMT

Juryi,

Although it's really a dumb workaround (and although, I must admin, I didn't try myself, because this nDeviceId bug is not really an issue for me, and because I'm lazy), could you try maybe the following workaround : choose a different default ip address for the two "copies" of your device. This should be feasible since your devices are routers.

My idea is that, since Wug seems to "find" the device using the IP address, maybe if both devices don't have the same default IP, it will find the proper DeviceId ??

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

Juriy — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:44:18 GMT

of course you're right

I really do understand, that my problems

a) not so big and important like 7 ones

b) I doubt whether will be resolved in nearest future

And of course we shouldn't share attention of IPSwitch guys.

I support request all seven features and just tell my own mind

Because my three problem is REALLY important for me. Lot of things I can't do because one little bug. It's a pity.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

MB - NS — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:16:51 GMT

Ok, I understand your point.

But still, the purpose of this topic is to ask for features that can't be achieved without core coding.

Whereas what you ask for is :

1- a scripting feature, for more comfort
2- something that can be done using SQL queries, except in certain cases [u]because of a bug[/u]
3- the resolution of a bug

I'm not saying your demands are not legitimate, it's just that here we want to focus on certain type of requests, because we want to make sure they get maximum chances to be satisfied for the next release.

RE: Stand up and request features !!!

Juriy — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:07:55 GMT

MB-NS

Thank you for your answer.

>Well, can't you just use If Then Else to do that ? Unless I misunderstood something.
You understood all right. Sorry my english,it's not native, I have to improve...

Yes I use this structure but it's not very comfortable.

Example.

I need to get some SNMP values from device and make some calculations and decide is there a problem on device or not. At first I have to check if device responding and SNMP attuned. If not - there is no reason to do other actions.

i.e.(JS,schematic)

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

if (DeviceNotResponding(nDeviceID)) {Context.SetResult(1, "Device is not responding!"); exit()}

getSNMPValues();

if (someValuesnotSatisfyed()) {Context.SetResult(1, "Problem on device!");}

else {Context.SetResult(0, "OK!");}

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

But now I'm compelled to use "workaround" - I cover this code in function body and use return() to get out of function. It works, but it's not proper. I believe that it's not so hard to add one simple function "exit" in Active Script handler.

>This can be done using a SQL query.
no. It's can't be. Because of #3 - if I have more than one device with the same IP address I'm not sure that I work with proper device.

The other words - in this case I will always get one and the same device ID.

3. intra-device dependencies is really needful thing. But there are more reasons to resolve this

Example

I have router, that has central(or main or core) links and user(not important) links. For monitoring I created 2 maps "Core" and "Customers" on both I make different routers with the same IP. On Core map I monitor core links, on Customers - user links. But I can't use Active Script Monitor =(

well in general I think it's really bug that device is identified by IP address and NOT by ID