Friday, December 08, 2006
PortSensor 2.0 Released! What's New?
What's New in PortSensor 2.0
At a glance:
* Multiple Notifications per Event
* Nested Alerts
* Sensor Run/Schedule Optimization
* SSH Delegate
* MacOSX (x86) Support
The major focus of PortSensor 2.0 was to add more flexibility to the alarm system. You can now nest alarm rules and configure multiple actions to respond with at any point. That means you can now do a lot of interesting things, especially with SSH sensors, such as escalating alerts on a server disk space sensor every 10%.
The alarm rules system does add some complexity, but every sensor has the option to use 'defaults' which will behave exactly like PortSensor 1.0 -- simply playing a sound if anything is wrong.
Another major focus of 2.0 was the optimization of many concurrent sensors. We set up a much better scheduling system which ensures that the sensors running in any given batch are the sensors that have been waiting the longest to run. In previous builds it was possible to always start from the top of the list, with a small number of runs per batch and short sensor wait times, and not always get full sensor coverage.
An additional aspect of optimization had to do with SSH sensors. In prior builds PortSensor would open an SSH connection per sensor. In 2.0 we use a single SSH connection per server which is responsible for running any attached SSH sensors. This removes a lot of SSH overhead while checking sensors, as well as fixing a potential issue where several monitoring users could tie up the available SSH connections on a machine.
You'll also notice a new graphic at the top of the application window. We felt there were enough boring server monitoring tools -- PortSensor now has some personality!
You can grab the new builds from:
http://www.portsensor.com/download.php
We'd love to hear your feedback, both about the changes and what you think we should be working on next. Drop by the forums or send a message to support@portsensor.com with your thoughts.
Special 2.0 Price: In the interest of growing the PortSensor Community we've also dropped the price of PortSensor 2.0 to $99 for unlimited servers and sensors. (One year of support and upgrades is included)
Thanks for your interest!
--
Jeff Standen, Project Manager
Mike Fogg, Lead Developer
PortSensor Project - http://www.portsensor.com/
WebGroup Media, LLC. - http://www.webgroupmedia.com/
At a glance:
* Multiple Notifications per Event
* Nested Alerts
* Sensor Run/Schedule Optimization
* SSH Delegate
* MacOSX (x86) Support
The major focus of PortSensor 2.0 was to add more flexibility to the alarm system. You can now nest alarm rules and configure multiple actions to respond with at any point. That means you can now do a lot of interesting things, especially with SSH sensors, such as escalating alerts on a server disk space sensor every 10%.
The alarm rules system does add some complexity, but every sensor has the option to use 'defaults' which will behave exactly like PortSensor 1.0 -- simply playing a sound if anything is wrong.
Another major focus of 2.0 was the optimization of many concurrent sensors. We set up a much better scheduling system which ensures that the sensors running in any given batch are the sensors that have been waiting the longest to run. In previous builds it was possible to always start from the top of the list, with a small number of runs per batch and short sensor wait times, and not always get full sensor coverage.
An additional aspect of optimization had to do with SSH sensors. In prior builds PortSensor would open an SSH connection per sensor. In 2.0 we use a single SSH connection per server which is responsible for running any attached SSH sensors. This removes a lot of SSH overhead while checking sensors, as well as fixing a potential issue where several monitoring users could tie up the available SSH connections on a machine.
You'll also notice a new graphic at the top of the application window. We felt there were enough boring server monitoring tools -- PortSensor now has some personality!
You can grab the new builds from:
http://www.portsensor.com/download.php
We'd love to hear your feedback, both about the changes and what you think we should be working on next. Drop by the forums or send a message to support@portsensor.com with your thoughts.
Special 2.0 Price: In the interest of growing the PortSensor Community we've also dropped the price of PortSensor 2.0 to $99 for unlimited servers and sensors. (One year of support and upgrades is included)
Thanks for your interest!
--
Jeff Standen, Project Manager
Mike Fogg, Lead Developer
PortSensor Project - http://www.portsensor.com/
WebGroup Media, LLC. - http://www.webgroupmedia.com/
