Setting Heartbeat Group Options

After adding computers, selecting the group features and configuring the global heartbeat options you can start to define how you want to monitor the computers of a particular group. Although most computers in a group will probably run unique services, you will almost always set some options, such as ping, on the group level rather than setting it individually or each host.

To set the heartbeat options for a group, simply click on the "Heartbeat Options" container of the group you want to configure and you will see a dialog similar to the one shown below:

Since the group in the example above does not have the "Manage remote EventSentry agents" checked, the option to monitor agents is not available.

All settings that are defined on this dialog serve as an initial default for all computers in the group. As soon as you configure the options for any particular computer individually, these settings will no longer apply to this computer.

Only check agent status or TCP ports upon successful ping: If this feature is activated and a monitored host is not reachable through PINGs, then the heartbeat agent will not attempt to check the agent status and/or TCP status, assuming that the host is down. The agent or TCP status of the host will then change to an UNKNOWN status.

Require X attempts before error: When activated requires that a monitored feature (ping, agent or TCP port) be down for X times before an error is written to the event log. Please note that database changes are not affected by this setting, status changes will always be reported to the database immediately.

Repeat Failed Hosts (2nd Attempt): After all hosts have been checked and it is determined that one or more services failed, then those failed services will be retried. If the 2nd scan is successful, then no error will be logged (not even to the database).

To enable monitoring through PING, check the Ping Hosts checkbox. You can then customize how ICMP packets are sent:

Required Success Rate: The percent of packets need to be acknowledged for a PING to be considered successful.

Maximum Roundtrip time: The minimum required average round trip time before the status changes to error.

Log to Database: Check this box to log the round-trip time of ICMP packets to the database. The data can then be viewed through the Ping Tracking web report.

Check this box to monitor the EventSentry agent on the remote computers. If the current service state is anything other than Running, then the agent status changes to error.

In order for the heartbeat monitor service to monitor the EventSentry agent status on remote computers, it needs sufficient privileges to do so. By default, the EventSentry heartbeat monitor service runs under the LocalSystem account, which - starting with Windows Server 2003 - has limited access on remote computers. As such, if you intend to monitor the EventSentry agent status with the heartbeat monitor and have set authentication for a folder or computer, then you should make sure that the EventSentry Heartbeat Monitor service runs under the same account under which the authentication credentials have been set.

In a nutshell, if you are logged into the server where EventSentry was installed as user JoeAdmin and set authentication in the management console on one or more groups, then you should make sure that the EventSentry heartbeat monitor is also running under the JoeAdmin user account. Only then can the heartbeat service use that authentication information.

Verify whether one or more TCP ports are listening or not. You can manage the list by clicking the Edit ... button.

To monitor one or more ports simply select the port from the list on the left (you can select multiple ports by pressing and holding the CTRL button on your keyboard) and click the --> arrow button. To remove one or more ports, click the <-- button. If a port is not listed in the list on the left, enter it manually into the edit field on the bottom left.