Common uses

Article created 2003-05-14 by Rainer Gerhards.

Solving Problems

Solving problems is closely related to alerting. As with alerting, actions are to be executed if a trigger condition exists. With problem-solving, these are actual corrective actions. Samples are deleting temporary files when disk space goes low or blocking an external IP address in a firewall in case an attack is detected.

MonitorWare itself does only provide limited "canned" actions for problem-solving. However, it contains the "execute program" action, which is a very powerful tool in solving problem conditions.

The basic idea behind this concept is that the MonitorWare agent detects correctable conditions and then executes an external program (or a batch file!) to correct the problem. With the power of external program, batch files and scripts, many minor conditions can be solved before they cause deep trouble. Many routine tasks can be solved without operator intervention which also means they can be solved while no operator is available.

Problem-solving logic can be put on any Agent. However, Adiscon highly recommends placing it on the each of the machines that will use problem solving logic. This not only ensure quick response time and reliability, it also guarantees that actions are carried out as quickly as possible.