What you need to know about AppManager

To help you understand the benefits of using the AppManager WBEM Agent, here's a simplified overview of AppManager itself. We use Windows 2000 as an example because this WBEM version of AppManager provides only Windows 2000 monitoring features. However, keep in mind that the AppManager Suite can also monitor Microsoft BackOffice applications such as Exchange and other servers such as Lotus Domino. We also point out differences between the AppManager WBEM Agent and the full AppManager product.

To monitor the health and performance of a Windows 2000 server or workstation, you install the AppManager management client on that computer. The management client runs as an extremely light-footprint service on the server computer. From the AppManager Operator Console, you can schedule jobs, called Knowledge Scripts, to run on the managed computer. In the full AppManager product, these Knowledge Script jobs can run once, or you can schedule them to run on a regular basis (for example "once every five minutes" or "every second and fourth Thursday" of a month). In the WBEM version, we have created default schedules for you.

The Knowledge Script jobs you run on a managed computer can monitor a wide variety of performance information. For example, you can monitor memory usage or the overall CPU load on the computer. In the full AppManager product, you can set up the job to generate an event when a threshold that you specify is exceeded, and these events can trigger an array of actions, such as restarting a service, sending an email, or issuing a pager message. In the WBEM version, we have preconfigured the Knowledge Scripts with common default thresholds.

The Knowledge Script jobs can, optionally, collect data as well. The full AppManager product comes with a wide variety of prepackaged reports that you can run immediately from this data.

One of the key benefits of the full AppManager product is flexibility. AppManager is built with open, industry-standard technologies such as VBA scripting. You can easily tailor Knowledge Script jobs to your needs, or write your own. The performance data you collect is stored in a SQL Server database, making it available for analysis and reporting through SQL or through third-party tools such as Crystal Reports.

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