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Reports Centre
(Web)
The i-scream reports centre provides a central access point to all
web-based reports that are provided by the i-scream system. Reports
are available to display information about the current status of an
individual machine and any alerts pertaining to either an individual
machine, or a summary of alerts for all machines. Historical
information about monitored machines may also be accessed from this point.
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Latest Information
(Web)
Here we are viewing the latest information provided by a host. Bars
are used to represent values such as disk space and free memory as this
makes it easier to spot casual problems. The small graph icons link
to historical reports of each field for the previous day. The choice
of fields to display on this page is stored in a separate configuration
file.
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Conient (Multiplatform
real-time client)
Conient is a real-time client that
can hook into an i-scream server to allow the user to view host
information as it passes through the server. The client displays
information provided by the hosts as well as the results of service checks
performed by the server on each host (eg FTP, Telnet, etc). Conient
is written in Java and can thus be run on most operating systems.
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Conient (Viewing
extra data)
Less important host information may be viewed in a seperate window to
avoid clutter in Conient's display. Details of the protocol for
host-to-server communications are freely available to developers.
The protocol itself is extensible and client programs such as Conient
display even unrecognised data from modified host programs.
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Conient
(Configuration)
Conient is fully configurable from within the program itself.
Multiple configurations may be saved. Conient can also be configured
to connect to a server through a firewall via an SSH tunnel or suchlike.
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ihost (Unix/Linux
host)
The ihost is currently the main Unix/Linux/FreeBSD host application for
i-scream. ihost is centrally configured by the server it connects to
and periodically sends information about the machine on which it is
running. The ihost is written in Perl, so can be easily altered to
send extra information to your i-scream server.
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WinHost (Windows
host)
The WinHost is similar in concept to the ihost, however, this one runs on
Windows NT/2000 servers. Again, the configuration is dynamically
obtained from the server. The WinHost is typically only present in
the Windows system tray. Double clicking on the system tray icon
will bring up a small window that allows data to be viewed and to force
reconfiguration with the server.
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Alerts (Email)
The i-scream server includes many alerting mechanisms. Simple email
alerts may be sent out if desired. Alert levels and frequencies may
be configured for the server. This screenshot shows the format of a
typical alert; the contents of which are of course configurable.
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Alerts (IRC bot)
Another i-scream alerter comes in the form of an interactive IRC bot.
This may reside in an IRC (Internet relay chat) channel and broadcasts
alerts if told to do so. This screenshot shows a typical interaction
with a user in the "Bersirc" IRC client.
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Alerts (Web page)
Individual alerts and a summary of all alerts raised by the i-scream
server may be viewed on the alerts web pages. These show the
different levels of alerts in configurable colours and provides specific
details about the alerts being raised for each machine.
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Alerts (Public
helpdesk display)
The reports centre also provides a
page that may be useful in configuring non-interactive public displays of
alerts. These displays automatically refresh the page periodically
and supported web browsers may also automatically scroll the page to allow
a large font to be employed for easier reading from a distance.
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Conient (Server queue
monitoring)
The Conient client may also be used
to monitor information about the i-scream server itself. Here we are
viewing the status of the internal queues within the server. This
shows that the server is performing healthily and that there are no
bottlenecks. |
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Historical reports
(Web)
Historical information is collated
by the i-scream server into (typically) a MySQL database. A separate
program is used to produce the historical web reports These may be browsed
via this web-based interface (see screenshot). The reports to be
generated for each machine and the size of the page are of course
configurable.
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Historical reports
(Metadata)
The historical report generation
also produces a number of other files that may be useful for third party
analysis tools. The chart itself is written as a GIF image, as well
as a small file suitable for including on PHP pages that specifies the
minimum and maximum values during the 24 hour period. A file
containing the raw plot data is also produced to enable the use of third
party on-the-fly plotting tools.
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The i-scream server
The server is distributed and may
therefore have multiple points of data entry and run on more than one
machine. This helps to reduce the amount of host traffic over large
networks and reduces potential bottlenecks. The server is written in
Java to allow it to run on most operating systems. This exciting
screenshot shows the i-scream server running ;-)
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