Windows NT Monitoring Software with e-mail notification and web reporting

By 1998, the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) had grown to a large network of Microsoft Windows NT computers serving as desktop workstations, data servers, and data collection hosts. Due to the addition of many data sets and many computers, monitoring earthstation and infrastructure activities in a timely manner became increasingly difficult. An automated monitoring system was needed to notify the staff in the event of satellite transmission problems, telemetry and hardware failures, and software errors. Therefore, three network monitoring software tools were developed to automatically detect, alert, and record the aforementioned events. These tools use e-mail and web browsing to take advantage of existing popular technologies.

The network monitoring software tools are generic applications. Any real-time distributed system, where constant monitoring for process control in a low-cost environment is a consideration, would benefit from this system.

This paper discusses the design and implementation of the three network monitoring tools developed at CIRA: Ingest Monitor (IngestMon), Data Collection Monitor (DCMon) and Network Monitor (NetMon). Topics discussed include ingest monitoring details, data collection monitoring topology, network-monitoring issues, e-mail integration, and web page creation and layout.