Ipswitch is a long term player in network monitoring and this latest version of its WhatsUpGold definitely ups the ante with the competition. It achieves this by offering a range of new features, many appealing to larger businesses, as well as SMBs.
WhatsUpGold is built on a very firm foundation, providing a comprehensive toolset for automatic device discovery, network mapping, device monitoring, and alerting and reporting. The Premium Edition adds application monitoring as well as its support for WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation). This allows you to keep a close eye on applications such as SQL Server and Exchange and restart failed services when necessary. The new Email Monitor takes this a stage further using POP3 and SMTP to check for server availability and responsiveness.
WhatsUpGold scans your chosen IP subnet and then populates a map with discovered devices. It offers a variety of scan methods but the easiest is SmartScan, and this queries each devices SNMP MIB, building up maps to reflect the network's hierarchy. A wizard assists with creating actions and setting up alerts to deal with a lack of response from devices selected in the discovery window.
Monitors and actions combine to query devices and services, and the results can be used to carry out predefined tasks, based on the results. All this is set up from the device properties window and you can choose what you want to monitor and how, selecting from active and passive monitors. We successfully tested the Email Monitor with Kerio's MailServer, where we configured a new active monitor which sent secure test emails to one account and then attempted to delete them from the server, to confirm service availability.
The main interface opens with a complete list of discovered devices and their status, and if any item becomes unresponsive, icon colour changes. Dynamic groups can be created for a range of criteria, as can customisable map views with device links. Ipswitch has responded to user demands and now supports Cisco's MIBs, allowing these devices to be monitored.
An extensive selection of reports is offered and they cover areas ranging from CPU, memory, disk and interface utilisation to availability history and SNMP trap logs. To run a report, you just choose a device from the map, select the report option, and display.
The remote web browser interface is very impressive and incorporates workspaces, allowing you to customise views to include multiple graphs and device status information. These can be arranged using drag and drop, and we were impressed with the new Split Second Graphs feature, which adds real time graphs, charts and gauges to the workspace reports. Even better is the ability to place historical and real time data alongside each other to provide a clearer picture of the network or specific device.
Yet another new feature is InstantInfo. You can hover the mouse pointer over a workspace, graph or chart element, and a pop-up with a precise value is displayed. Actions give WhatsUpGold a certain autonomy, as these can be linked with events such as a devices or applications not responding, allowing such actions as a service restart, firing off another application, or running a script. Alerts come under actions and these have also been improved, as you can now send warnings and notifications via SMS as well as email, SNMP trap, pager, beeper, etc.
WhatsUpGold has traditionally been one of the best network monitoring products on the market and the new features simply make it even better. It's capable of providing a huge amount of information about your network and the devices that reside on it, and yet it presents its information in a clear format that is very easy to understand. NC

Product: Ipswitch WhatsUpGold v12 Premium Edition
Supplier: Computerlinks
Tel: 01638 569642
Web site: www.ipswitch.com
Price: Up to 25 devices - £609, up to 100 devices - £1,766 (all prices exclude VAT)