Product Reviews

Be Proactive in Event Log Monitoring

TNT’s Event Log Monitor offers consolidated log entry viewing, plus numerous notification methods.

• By Michael Feuda
• 02/01/2001

How many times have you found yourself poring through the Event Viewer, only to feel as if you’re searching for a needle in a haystack? Or, maybe you’re trying to track down a series of events for troubleshooting purposes. Most likely, you’re being reactive, not proactive, to a problem. That’s where the true value of TNT Software’s Event Log Monitor lies.

Shortly after installing Event Log Monitor, my normally quiet Windows 2000 Server started barking at me. Event Log Monitor was sending out audible alerts related to Error-type events occurring on my server. The package offers other notification methods as well, including pager notice, e-mail and SNMP trap generation, and posting of alerts to a Web page. You can even let Event Log Monitor automate the work for you to restart a halted process or run a batch file. Now that’s real network administration!

When using Event Log Monitor, the biggest difference you’ll immediately see is that the standard Application, Security and System Logs, which are viewed separately with the Win2K Event Viewer, are now consolidated into a single pane. This pane can be changed in a number of ways, from using hotkeys to quickly accessing standard event log events (Error, Warning and so on). You can even create your own pane view to include or exclude just about any event imaginable.

Being able to create filters efficiently is one of my favorite Event Log Monitor features. With a few mouse clicks, you produce meaningful and powerful filters from a series of option boxes. In fact, there are so many options for making filters that a “filter wizard” would really be handy. Perhaps in a future release? And after you’ve created a filter, you can easily assign a notification method along with that filter to stay on top of a particular event. In the past, I’ve had to use a combination of scripts and resource kit utilities to achieve the same effect.

Event Log Monitor allows you to choose from a variety of notification methods for mission-critical events.

Aside from being an Event Viewer on steroids, Event Log Monitor provides you a single launch point for daily administrative tools. You can start the Registry Editor, Server and User Managers, Performance Monitor, and a host of other everyday tools. This launch point can easily be customized to add other tools.

Event Log Monitor also incorporates a free Remote Viewer add-on, which runs on Windows 2000, NT, ME, 9x and CE. Event Log Monitor Enterprise Edition provides additional features for monitoring Win2K Cluster Servers and storing collected event information in a SQL Server 7.0 database.

Event Log Monitor could become your most important administration tool for servers. From a single pane, you can create a variety of alerts, monitor critical events with customized filters, and launch administration tools. Event Log Monitor helps you, as a network administrator, be proactive.