Vat of Knowledge

Your servers!  In all the years of administration, I can’t believe I overlooked this great monitoring tool.  It was originally developed on the Linux platform, but now has support for the Windows platform as well as a Big Brother server. Clients can be of any flavor platform, including SNMP devices.  It’s time I worked up documentation as we are using it at our office, and plan on rolling it out to all of our data centers to monitor mission critical operations.

Local Tests

Big Brother is capable of monitoring all the basic functions of a server including:

• CPU utilitzation
• Disk space utilization
• Connectivity (via ping or fping)
• Memory utilization
• Pagefile (Windows)
• Processes
• Services (Windows)
• Messages (any log file in *nix and event logs in Windows)

These are the basic features BB monitors for any client, and thresholds can be set for notification.

Network Tests

Additional tests can be easily configured for http, ftp, smtp, pop3, dns, ssh, telnet and any port you want to define and monitor.

Switches can be monitored for port usage using MRTG.  As well, local tests can be run to monitor CPU, fans, memory, power and temperature through the use of custom scripts.

Notification

Notification can be configured so that any particular test on any particular server can notify an individual, or group of individuals (paging groups).  Servers can also be grouped (host groups) and notify individual admins or groupings, depending on time of day and day of week for on call schedules.  This is very useful when you have a worldwide team, so that responsibilities can be delegated across the globe for day only operations, if you are so equipped with adequate staff.  Notification also supports problem escalation.

Maintenance

Servers can be put into maintenance mode for any length of time, and with notes, describing what is being done to the server.

Linux/Unix
./bb $BBDISP “disable:code ‘host regular expression’ ‘duration’ [reason]”

Sample: bb.exe 192.168.1.1 “disable ServerName* 10 Server will be out for ten minutes”

Valid durations are hours (h) and days (d)

Reporting

Reports can be pulled to show server uptime, and histories are kept to see trouble histories and help with root cause analysis.  This tool also ensures that servers are within their service level agreement in terms of up time.

Graphing

BB has graphing capabilities when used with MRTG and LARRD.  This is especially useful when you are monitoring SNMP devices such as Cisco switches, so you can see port usage, both in and out, over a period of time, including hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.  Graphs make it easy to see such things as drive capacity on servers as well in a quick view.

Scripting

Many 3rd party scripts have been developed to extend BB capabilities at www.deadcat.net Such scripts include monitoring any log file in Windows (Perl script which requires ActiveState Perl on the Windows server), monitoring your domains for DNSBL listings, and many many more.  These scripts are external and can be configured on every client or server.

Web display

Big Brother also has a web display that can be viewed to show the condition of all the servers, groupings of servers, as well as departmental groups for different departments.  They also have a flash based configurable dashboard with their professional product.  Security can also be implemented on the Apache or IIS side, by requiring a username/password to access the site if it’s being hosted with an external IP address and/or host entry.

Product versions

Big Brother has a BTF (better than free) version of their product, which is a scaled down version compared to Big Brother Professional 4.1.  The professional version also offers support from the company that owns BB, Quest Software (www.quest.com).   Big Brother can be downloaded at www.bb4.org.

This is a great “best practices guide” put out by Quest.  BB Best Practices Guide

The following is a good guide to get Big Brother installed and working, however it is written for the BTF 1.9e version, it can be adapted for use with the professional 4.1 version.  This guide is for *nix servers only! Big Brother Configuration and Installation Guide