Topper for Windows Server Management

Performance Objects Topper can monitor the overall health of any Windows performance object (a performance counter registered with Windows by either the operating system or any software/hardware vendor). TOPPER enables you to set up continuous monitoring of these objects tailored for your own environment. Each performance object is configured such in a fashion that makes sense (i.e., for disk space, an absolute set of thresholds are configured whereas for CPU utilization, thresholds would be specified over time. This unique configuration scheme helps ensure that alerts make sense and eliminates the possibility of false alerts. As with other TOPPER testing, once an alert situation is uncovered, a notification is sent to the appropriate staff.

Windows Services - Topper has the ability to monitor each critical service on your server and alert when the service is not running.

Performance Sets - Performance sets are pre-configured groups of performance objects that may be copied and used to monitor multiple servers with a common set of monitoring points. Performance sets may be built by the Administrator or by using the performance sets provided with the TOPPER software. Currently, TOPPER comes with two pre-defined sets, Microsoft Exchange and Server General Monitoring, Other pre-defined performance sets for Notes, SQL and other applications will be added in future releases. These performance sets allow for rapid configuration and customization for your environment. Here is an example of the performance set configuration for Exchange monitoring.

Event Log Filtering - Topper can filter Windows Event Log events in real-time to help uncover problems as they occur. The Windows Event Logs store individual status records about processes and services running on Windows workstations and servers. An Event is actually a status record written by some process running on the PC providing status and diagnostic information. Each of these logs can be filtered against two types of criteria:

• Each event in the logs has been categorized by the providing vendor and classified as either a Warning or Error. These can be automatically captured by Topper and mapped to Topper's Minor and Major error conditions, and alert notification rules can be established for each. Additionally, TOPPER provides the ability to exclude certain of these conditions, that for your enterprise, are not considered as important conditions to monitor against. This capability allows you to configure filtering in a matter of seconds.
• Secondly, for specific errors not flagged by the vendor, a text string entry can be configured that TOPPER will use to filter against the event logs. When a record contains the text string, an notification will be made to the appropriate staff.

Generic Log File Filtering - TOPPER can perform real-time monitoring of any log files created by applications of services running on your servers. These log files must be ASCII sequential files. TOPPER will filter the records as they come in to the log. If there is a match between a filter entry and the log record, then TOPPER will display that as an alert in the severity defined in the filter entry. If desired, TOPPER can notify the appropriate staff of the problem.