Smart Configuration
The Smart Configuration feature is a favorite among network administrators. The concept is you specify one or more servers, and the monitor modules inspect the server(s) and then create appropriate monitors for each server based on default settings.
You can access the feature by right clicking an existing computer and selecting "Smart Configuration".
Or, for the ultimate in quickly configuring a system,
press the Smart Configuration button to be shown the dialog below. You can paste
a list of server names or IP addresses into an edit box. You can specify
a username and password to use when accessing the server by entering any line
in the form:
server_name,username,password
(for another example, open the
dialog below in the Console, and let your mouse hover over the server list
window for a helpful hint).
If no username/password is given, the configuration procedure will try to connect to the servers using the currently logged in user, and the when the service runs, it will attempt to connect to the server using the service's Login As user (which can be changed in Preferences).
The next step is to select which monitor modules should inspect the server(s)/device(s) and press "Begin the Smart Config Process". In a few moments you'll have monitors automatically configured for your specific environment. Naturally the auto-created monitors can be changed or deleted just like any other monitor in the system.
In addition to auto-configuration, the dialog below lets you save a particular server's configuration (list of monitors and actions) to a file. You can then import that file to be used as the default configuration for existing computers or new computers entered as a list like the example above.
For both the auto-configuration process and the importing of an existing configuration, existing monitors and actions are not modified--new monitors and new actions are created while leaving the existing monitors and actions alone.
Pressing the green button labeled "Discover" in section 1 of this dialog allows PA Server Monitor to scan the network for servers and devices without having to manually gather this information. To use this feature, press the "Discover" button. The following dialog will appear on top of the Smart Configuration dialog.
The following options are available to you for Server Discovery:
- Query Windows for servers it knows about: Windows has its own network discovery process that is used by Windows networking, and PA Server Monitor will inquire it to determine any servers currently unknown to the program.
- Ping the following IP Address range: A TCP/IP message will be sent to each address that can exist in the range of IP addresses that are entered into the text boxes. Note that entering different numeric values for the third octet values (the ones shown as zeroes in the screen shot above) may dramatically increase the time required to complete the scan.
- Send ping to .0 and .255 addresses: these address values have special use in the TCP/IP protocol. The program will set this checkbox to disabled. You may enable this feature if you have reason to believe that these addresses are in use by computers of interest for monitoring.
- Servers to add: these are the IP addresses at which responses were detected by the Server Discovery process.
- Servers to ignore: at the completion of a scan, these will be the server names and IP addresses that PA Server Monitor has found that overlap those that are currently being monitored by the program.
Pressing the Ok button at the completion of the scan will close this dialog and will cause the servers that are listed in the "servers to add" list to be transferred to the list of servers in section 1 of the Smart Configuration Process dialog.