What is Device Monitoring?

Device monitoring is checking on the health and performance of an electronic device, which is usually connected to a network.

'Device' is often used as a generic term to refer to computers and servers, network equipment such as routers and switches, printers and scanners, and any other equipment usually found on a network.

Properties of these devices that might be monitored could include:

• Routers and Switches: bandwidth usage (per port or total), internal CPU and memory usage, number of connections
• Computers and servers: free disk space, CPU and memory usage, log entries (Event Log, Syslog, log files), temperatures, running processes and services, application behavior (databases, websites, etc)
• Printers, Scanners and Copiers: ink levels, paper levels, number of pages printed, internal storage, etc
• HVAC systems: temperature levels, air flow values, duty cycle count
• Manufacturing Systems: log file content, operations/pieces per minute, status of batch jobs, configuration file integrity
• Household Appliances (thermostats, refrigerators, etc): network connectivity, internal storage levels, temperature levels

There are many more options and devices that can be monitored. All devices will have some protocol that is used to monitor them. Typical protocols include ping, HTTP, SNMP, WMI, Windows RPC calls, Syslog, CIFS (for file checking), SMB, IPMI, and more.

Device Monitoring with PA Server Monitor

There are many monitoring products that can watch devices using the above protocols. For example, PA Server Monitor can monitor devices using all of the above protocols. So any device that supports any of those protocols can be monitored by PA Server Monitor.

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