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Posts on Jan 1970

Nagios XI keeps you in the know

As technology expands, the need to monitor it all increases as well. They say that knowing is half the battle, but we say, “Why should knowing be a battle?” Nagios Enterprises offers Nagios Core and Nagios XI as their main products. The Core version is free and open source while XI comes with support, updates, more features, and a much simpler interface for adding and maintaining your monitored services. We have recently transitioned from Nagios Core to XI for our own data center and assisted other enterprises do the same.

When something important on your network is acting up, knowing about it as soon as possible is the only way to a speedy fix. Let’s say your company email goes down on a Saturday afternoon. A few employees might check their email and get an error but assume the IT department is aware of the issue. When Monday morning rolls around the service has already been down for more than a day and a crisis sets in. The email partition has run out of space. Now the IT admin has to reactively scramble to free up more space. Feeling pressure from all sides, the admin applies short term bandages to bring services back to life but will then have to some up with another long term fix at a later date. The company has lost money in productivity, the admin looks bad, and the management is upset.

If the company had a monitoring solution, the admins would have known weeks before that the server was running low on storage. The on-call tech could have been alerted of any issues with the server via a text message and taken care of them before most of the company knew there was ever a problem. How many IT problems could have been prevented with a little advance warning?

Nagios is our preferred monitoring solution for several reasons. The biggest being it is the most adaptable solution we have seen. Monitoring software has massive compatibility requirements for any enterprise. It must be able to communicate with routers, switches, servers, PCs, Internet connections, wireless equipment, printers, power infrastructure, environmental conditions, and more. All of these devices may also be running different versions and operating systems. This is where the real power of Nagios kicks into top gear. There are tons of modules available for Nagios that let it talk to a wide array of devices. Given the open nature of the software, programmers from around the globe are constantly contributing to the project.

MCS is a Premier Nagios Reseller, and the only Nagios partner in the United States with that distinction. Not only can we provide the licenses, but also specialize helping companies plan, setup, and migrate to this solution. Please let us know how we can help your organization move forward with a complete monitoring solution with Nagios.

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HP to Release Thin Client Game Changer

HP is about to release a new all-in-one thin client, the t410. It works off of a single network wire at 13 Watts. This also requires no configuration. Just plug it in and it finds the correct server. It is compact, saves a ton on energy, powerful, and will save time for IT professionals. We feel this is a game changer in the thin client space and are very excited to get our hands on one. It is rumored to be released sometime this summer in the $429 price range. Considering the money a company will save on energy, IT services, and security, this has the potential to save a lot of money over its lifespan.

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