Freebie Network Monitoring Tools for Windows. Suggestions?

[Mr. Slant]

Folks,

I've got a situation where I want to slap an app on one of my Windows PCs that will let me monitor a few hundred hosts.
I'm looking for something that will let me ping my servers and verify that the web server on port 80 is running.
I'd also like something that will let me load the list of servers by means of a CSV file or somesuch. Typing in 1500 IPs is no fun, really.
If I was running Linux, I am certain there would be 25+ viable options.
Unfortunately, as I'm currently stuck on Windows... I can't find anything that fits.

Suggestions?

PS- Mods, I'm looking for suggestions, so I made this an IMHO. My apologies if I misfired.

[eldowan]

Originally Posted by Mr. Slant

Folks,

I've got a situation where I want to slap an app on one of my Windows PCs that will let me monitor a few hundred hosts.
I'm looking for something that will let me ping my servers and verify that the web server on port 80 is running.
I'd also like something that will let me load the list of servers by means of a CSV file or somesuch. Typing in 1500 IPs is no fun, really.
If I was running Linux, I am certain there would be 25+ viable options.
Unfortunately, as I'm currently stuck on Windows... I can't find anything that fits.

Suggestions?

PS- Mods, I'm looking for suggestions, so I made this an IMHO. My apologies if I misfired.

Well, there are a few things you can do.

1) get a Virtual Machine installed, run a livecd distro that will provide the functionality that you need, and you're golden.

2) take an older, neglected PC, boot it up with a livecd distro, yadda yadda yadda.

3) I believe that wireshark (used to be etherape i believe) and nmap may come in handy. both run on windows and should have good installers.


I kind of like the livecd solution (as if you couldn't tell). There should be a few good free virtual machine solutions by now, and I believe VMware still has their VMware server as a freebie (served me wonders, time and time again). If you go that route, you will have some impact on your host system, but with a task oriented install or livecd like you are using, you should see little to no reduced performance of the host system.
The nice thing about VMs is that they can also read an iso and give that to the VM as a physical cd, so you don't have to burn it, and the access time is GREAT.


I don't really know much about wireshark, but I think it is more for packet capturing and analysis than what you are looking for.

nmap, however, is a pretty neat piece of software. I know you can set it up to use CIDR addresses, and can map whole networks with a pretty simple designation. Something like this if I remember correctly: 192.168.0.0/16 would map the entire 192.168.x.x network with a netmask of 255.255.0.0.

[Dragwyr]

Network Analysis is a category we have several reviews for at TechSupportAlert.com.

Here is the link:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best...ysis-tools.htm

[Mr. Slant]

Due to the VPN setup involved, both a virtual PC and and additional PC are right out.
I'm already running my client "PC" as a VM...

Dragwyr:
None of those do what I need. I'm looking for monitoring, not analysis.

[LSLGuy]

Are you looking to just run a >ping and confirm a packet comes back, or do you need to make an http request on port 80 and anaylse the results to confirm you're getting a valid page, not just a 51 or 404 or ... response?

[Mr. Slant]

Any response at all from port 80 will suffice for my http test.

[Mr. Slant]

Mods, it appears that rather than getting suggestions as to the best of breed, my question has now become whether or not such a beast exists at all.
Can I get this moved to GQ?

[Rico]

<mod>

Moved to GQ at OP's request.

IMHO > GQ

</mod>

[Omphaloskeptic]

This is a pretty straightforward script to write. Here's a threaded Python version (you probably want some sort of concurrency, if you have a few hundred hosts to ping); it's straightforward to clean the output up into a presentable form (or do further verification on it), if that's what you want to do.

[Quartz]

Can't you write a simple script? You'll need to chain command files, but it looks relatively straightforward.

Basically you use a FOR /F construct to read the contents of a file containing all the hosts which calls a second batch file which tries to ping the host, checks the result, and behaves accordingly.

You don't need Python or Perl or whatever, just the standard Windows commands.

[Mr. Slant]

Okay.
Question answered.
openNMS now has a Windows version, which seems to meet all of my needs.

[Omphaloskeptic]

Originally Posted by Quartz

You don't need Python or Perl or whatever, just the standard Windows commands

Yes, the CMD scripting language is sufficient for writing a simple for loop. But allowing concurrent pings and collecting all of their outputs is not easy to do (properly) this way, and if you want to do any sort of analysis (e.g., number of hosts responding, average ping times, etc.) or output collation you really don't want to be using such a limited language, unless there's a really good reason not to install a real one. (I'd recommend Python for this job: good multithreading support, mostly platform-independent, available for Windows, easy to learn.)

[ivn1188]

Big Brother is free, works on windows, and will do everything you want and more. It's very customizable, and once you get the idea of how it works, you can make it do almost anything, such as page you, send email, etc. etc.

It also will dump pages into a webserver, so you can have a "war room" view of everything you are monitoring. And it's free! (Though they are annoyingly set on directing you to the professional version, which is not.)

ETA: I've used this for a large server system and related apps servers, and I think it's a much better solution than openNMS.