The system administrator starts by adding new servers that should be monitored to the application. Required information are a unique name, the server address and the monitoring type. Available monitoring types are TCP / IP, Ping or Services. Additional information might be required depending on the type selected. A TCP / IP monitoring for example requires a port that can be added in the same interface.

The events and notifications that can be configured are quite extensive. Events can be configured for positive and negative results. Positive results – meaning the remote server is up and running – are limited to playing a sound or running a command while negative results (server down) include the additional options to reboot the computer or start a service.

Three notification types are available. The administrator can be informed by email, message box or net message.

Specific parameters for every server can be configured in the Configuration View tab. It allows the user to change the monitoring interval, configure the connection timeout, set the mail server and enable the logging of events.

DreamSys Server Monitor can be used as a Internet or network monitoring software. It lacks some of the features of advanced monitoring applications that offer website or database monitoring but could be enough for administrators who do not need that functionality.

IT Service View is probably the server monitoring software with the broadest range of monitoring possibilities. They range from monitoring websites to Linux and Windows Server 2003 / 2008 servers to Microsoft Exchange Servers to Oracle servers and log files. The server monitoring is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003. It will display a wizard after installation that is walking the user through the configuration of the program.

The less complex monitoring services take only a few seconds to setup. Setting up a website monitoring service in the software that monitored the Ghacks database did not take longer than a minute. It has to be noted that the script that checks the database is already installed on the Ghacks server, the implementation itself was straightforward.

Several parameters can be configured in the setup phase. It is for example possible to define a maximum response time, time out, expected http codes, error texts and text that the website has to contain.

The even responses are highly configurable as well. They are divided into the possible scenarios “no response”, “error”, “error text”, “text not found”, “time out” and “slow web page” when configuring the website monitoring service.

Each of these can launch a series of responses including sending emails, running local programs, shutting down or rebooting windows, managing a Windows service and launching a Windows process.

Some or all of these event responses are displayed whenever configuring a new monitoring service in the server monitoring software.

The monitoring software displays various statistics about each configured job including graphs, log entries and script outputs.

The server monitoring services can monitor key variables on the servers including free computer memory, cpu utilization, service and process statuses and free disk space. Some of the services require that a script is running on the server so that the information can be analyzed. A Linux server has to run the net-snmp suite for example for It Service View to receive the data.

IT Service View is a sophisticated server monitoring software for IT professionals and small businesses who want to monitor their websites and servers.

The Server Monitoring Software however is offering a wealth of tools and options to monitor networks, servers and websites of which some are restricted to the commercial version of the monitoring software. The user can add a number of IPs or domain names that should be monitored by the software. It monitors response time and packets in real time and graphs that display the data as well.

Alerts can be set if the host is not responding or if the server response time or packet loss rate reaches a certain number. Four events can be configured: Message on the desktop, send an email, play a sound or show an icon in the system tray.

The free version of NetTools provides access to several network tools like Ping, Lookup or Trace but also more advanced tools like network and host scans.

I personally think it’s a bit unfortunate to mix free and commercial versions into the free version which might confuse the user at the beginning. Networking Monitoring Software Look@Lan offers most of the features as well but is completely free.