Page 1 of 13 Nimsoft Cloud User Experience Nimsoft Monitor Solutions v7.2 Introduction The Purpose of this HOWTO guide: This HOWTO guide will get you started with Nimsoft Cloud User Experience (CUE) performance monitoring. It will guide you step by step, through the main settings and reporting pages. What will you learn? You will learn to do the following: Navigate the Nimsoft CUE console pages Create alert contacts and escalation groups Set up your monitoring definitions (monitoring rules) Interpret monitoring results in the reports Define custom email reports Update your preferences (language and checkpoints) Manage your payments For whom is this HOWTO intended? This HOWTO is written for anyone using the Nimsoft CUE monitoring service, either as a free trial subscription or as part of a monitoring package. Note: This guide does not cover advanced topics or services other than Nimsoft CUE monitoring. Before you Start Make sure to have the following details before you begin:
Page 2 of 13 A list of the web pages and on line services that are going to be monitored. For example, you may want to monitor your corporate home page and other important web pages, API services, web site application transactions, DNS queries, and email server checks. A list of email addresses and mobile phone numbers for the people in your organization who are to receive alerts and/or (SLA) reports. For paid subscriptions, you will also need financial contact details, address, payment order reference, VAT/TAX number and credit card or bank account payment details. The 8 Steps to Performance Monitoring STEP 1: Logging In and Updating Your Profile Enter your account by using the 'LOGIN' button in the top right hand corner of http://cloudmonitor.nimsoft.com. When you login for the first time, your account is activated. Please take a minute to complete the account details form. Note: Your login credentials (email and password) can be found in the confirmation email you received when you signed up for a Nimsoft CUE account. If you have lost these details you can request a password resend by clicking the Forgot password? link in the loging area. If you don't have an account and would like a 30 day free trial, sign up at http://cloudmonitor.nimsoft.com/trial. STEP 2: Navigating within Nimsoft CUE and Using Menus The website is structured in a logical and simple way. All related tasks are grouped within Menus. Every Menu item contains tabs, organized to help you navigate and complete your tasks quickly and easily. The Menus menu is the black boxed menu at the right side of the home page. Available Menus and the subordinate tabs are: Reports: Within this Menu you can set up your monitors and have a close look at the checks performed on your websites. Settings Performance Chart: An overview of your monitors on an hourly basis Current Status: A complete overview of the status of your servers Graphs: Data about the performance of your sites in a single view Log Files: Detailed information for each check Download: Download all your report. Access: Give access to your log files and graphs. Custom Reports: Set up a customised report Message Log: A complete log of the messages sent to you and your contacts.
Page 3 of 13 Monitors: Set up any type of checks on your server or website Tags: Assign text labels to organise your monitors Contacts: Create alert contacts and escalation groups Public status: Set up a public page to display your logs as well as any announcements or information you want. Tools: Within this Menu you will find a range of useful tools offered by Nimsoft CUE. Check Host Ping DNS Analysis Traceroute Send Message: Send a message to one of the addresses or groups in your account Subscription: This Menu enables you to manage your Nimsoft CUE subscription and payments Subscription: See information and also edit/change your current Nimsoft CUE subscription Account Details: Change your accounts details, and/or add a financial contact (for invoices) Preferences: Change your accounts preferences Accounts: View your sub accounts Payment: See the balance of your account and insert you payment details Recent Transactions: Check all your recent transactions with Nimsoft CUE Recent Invoices: Check all your recent Nimsoft CUE invoices Credits: Buy more credits and enhance your checks You can easily browse between Menus using the black colored drop down menu on the right side of the tabs on each page. The menu at the bottom of each page let you navigate to any page within the website using a single click. Rest the mouse cursor over a menu to display the pages under that menu: The Settings pages are covered in step 3 and 4 of this guide, the Reports pages in step 5 and 6, and the Subscription and Payment pages in steps 7 and 8. The Products pages contain information about all Nimsoft CUE product groups, including pricing, free trials, demonstrations etc. The Tools pages are home to some useful free tools. The Help pages are home to the FAQ's and the Nimsoft CUE helpdesk. The About pages contain Nimsoft CUE news, terms and conditions, privacy policy and more...
Page 4 of 13 You can also navigate the Nimsoft CUE site using the sitemap and the search box, which is visible on all pages. STEP 3: Creating Alert Contacts and Escalation Groups Now that you know how to move around, let's start with setting up your contacts. A contact should be entered for each individual (including yourself) and group, that needs to receive performance monitoring information. Contacts can receive information in the following formats: Alerts: SMS/text message alerts are sent when problems are detected Reports: PDF email reports contain detailed information about your systems' performance News: General Nimsoft CUE news, Software Vulnerability news, Nimsoft CUE network status, benchmarking newsletters, etc. Internal messages: The group message tool can be used to send simultaneous messages to multiple contacts The above Nimsoft CUE information can be sent through different channels, including: Email Text messages or SMS Twitter Action (URL) To add a contact: 1. Click the Contacts tab in the Settings Menu. 2. Click the New contact button. 3. Select the contact type (one of the channels listed above) and provide the contacts actual address, for example an email address. 4. Give the new contact a name. Choose a name which makes it easy for you to remember what it is for example "Jim's mobile", or "Mgmt Team Email". You can define a working schedule for each contact. This is particularly useful if the channel is for alerts, so that alerts can be sent to a specific contact only during their working days/hours. For SMS/text message contacts there is an additional step. After saving a SMS/text message contact, a confirmation code is sent to the specified mobile number. You need to enter it into the Confirmation code field to activate the contact. If no confirmation message is received within a few minutes, click the Try other routes button. This will generate a confirmation message from all the Nimsoft CUE SMS gateways. The first message you receive is the one you should use. If no message is received, make sure the mobile phone number is correct and then contact the Nimsoft CUE helpdesk). The Escalation Group is a very useful alerting feature. If persistent errors are detected, Nimsoft CUE
Page 5 of 13 sends alerts to your escalation group. This feature ensure that if one individual is unavailable, other members of your organization will be informed of persistent problems, giving you the chance to rectify issues before your customers encounter them. You may like to set up your escalation group to initially send alerts to technical support staff, followed by middle management and eventually your CTO. When the first SMS/text message contact is defined, an escalation group is automatically created. To create a new escalation group, click the new group button in the Contacts overview page. Select the order in which you want alerts to be sent and after how many errors the contact should be alerted. Click the More button to add additional contacts into an escalation group. Tick the Default contact checkbox to make the contact or group the default contact. This means that this contact is pre selected during the definition of monitoring rules. STEP 4: Setting Up your Monitoring Definitions (Monitoring Rules) Monitors are used to perform certain type of checks on your server or website. For instance, you can set the type of a rule to ping if you want to check your servers availability across the network. To add monitors: 1. Go to the Monitors tab, in the Settings Menu. 2. Click the Add rule link. You could start with an http type rule, to check on your website's uptime and performance. 3. Name the rule. It is always useful to assign a name that will remind you of the specifics of this rule, for example 'Website home page'. 4. The next field is the type of the rule. The available types are: connect: Checks if a TCP connection at the specified port is available. ping: Checks whether your server is reachable across the network. http: Checks the HTTP protocol response from your website. pop3: Checks if the POP (incoming mail) protocol is working on your server. smtp: Checks if the SMTP (outgoing email) protocol is working on your server. imap: Checks if the IMAP (email retrieval) protocol is working on your server. ftp: Checks the FTP protocol response from your server. ldap: Checks the LDAP protocol response from your server. scp: Checks the SCP protocol response from your server. plugin: Monitors your server behind a firewall. dns: Checks DNS servers. https: Checks responses from the https protocol, which is used on ssl secured web sites.
Page 6 of 13 sip: Checks the SIP protocol which is used for multimedia communication sessions (VOIP, instant messaging etc.). script: Allows support for custom multi step scripts and full page loads. Note that not all types are available in all subscription packages. 5. To check your website uptime, select rule type http from the drop down menu and add the address (URL) of your website e.g http://www.mysite.com/ or http://www.mysite.co.uk/index.html You have now finished the required fields for a basic configuration. The other optional fields are: Match string: Use this if you want to check for specific text in your website or to check if your webpage generates what it should (error messages etc.). Simply fill in the text you would like to search for. Warn me: Use this drop down box to specify the conditions under which you wish to receive alerts. Your options are: Never Immediately After 2 consecutive errors After 3 consecutive errors After 4 consecutive errors After 5 consecutive errors Alert Contact: Select the contact who should be informed if problems are detected for this rule. Your subscription email is the default here but you can choose any of your contacts. You can save your rule and Nimsoft CUE will start checking your website. Click the Expert Mode button to see more configuration options. They include the following: Port: Define the port to check, this field has always a default value. For http type monitors the default is 80. Post variables: Specify the variables that will be POSTed to the web server. Input should be of the form: name=value, name2=value2. User name: Specify a user name in case the host requires authentication. Password: Need to be specified as well if he host requires authentication. First limit: Define the limit in milliseconds, under which you think the server is performing well. Second limit: Define the limit in milliseconds above which you think he server is performing badly. (Note: if the total time stays between the first and second limit then the server is performing poorly).
Page 7 of 13 Time out in seconds: Define the maximum time a rule should wait for a response. If the time limit ends without a response an error is registered. Max number of bytes to download: If the documents to check are very large, then the timeout from the previous field might not be sufficient for a complete download. In this case you can set the maximum number of bytes to read. Delay between checks: Specify the delay between the subsequent checks of the rule. Check period: Define a specific time interval to check the rule. Check on these days only: Define which days of the week you want the rule to be checked. Remind me again after an alert in: Select the interval between the subsequent reminders of a persisting error. Alert when up again: Check the box to receive a message when the rule is working again as specified. Maintenance schedule: Specify maintenance schedule for this rule. Errors that occur during this maintenance time slot are shown, but are marked as 'errors during maintenance'. Folder: Folders can help you organise your monitors and group them. This can be very useful, for example you can activate/deactivate many monitors that perform checks in the same network at once. You can add folders in the main screen of the rule settings as follows: 1. Click Add Folder 2. Click the newly created folder to change the name and status. 3. After you save, select a rule by ticking the action box. From the action menu (drop down box) select move to folder your folder's name. Tags: Assign text labels to organise your monitors. Tags can be used regardless of the folders. User agent: Defines the user agent announced by the Nimsoft CUE monitoring stations whenever they visit your server. Checkpoint order algorithm: Here you can influence the use and order of the Nimsoft CUE worldwide checkpoints used by your rule. The options are: Random: Random checkpoint is chosen every time the rule is checked. Master: First check is done from a checkpoint specified by you. Sequential: Use all checkpoints in the order you specify. Sticky: When a checkpoint detects an error the rule will be checked only from that location until the error disappears. Checkpoint Selection: Define which checkpoints you want your rule to be checked from. Notes: This is your personal notepad. You can add any note you like. This option doesn't have any effect in the scanning procedure. You can easily customize your monitors. Moreover, you can set up any type of rule you want and
Page 8 of 13 configure it according to your needs. To check what each field offers, click the icon on the right hand side to see the corresponding help text. For further questions, contact the Nimsoft CUE helpdesk. STEP 5: Discovering and Understanding Reports All performance monitoring checks are logged and stored in the Nimsoft CUE database. This information is accessible via Nimsoft CUE reports. Divided into the Monitor and Reports Menus, the following report formats are available: Performance chart Current Status Graphs Log files Download Access Custom reports Message log This section briefly explains the different types of reports. Performance Chart At the Performance chart tab in the Monitor Menu, you see an overview of your monitors on an hourly basis. You can configure reports to display different groups (folders) or individual rules, and the date and hour. Clicking on an individual "hour" lets you drill down to the individual checks for that specific time frame and rule. Further options are available by clicking the Expert View. Use the expert view toset the refresh rate of your report, or choose rules according to their tags. If you rest the mouse cursor over the hourrule grid, balloons appear with information about the performance during the selected time. The legend at the bottom explains the colors in the grid. To see the log file report for a particular hour, click the required hour rule boxes in the grid. Log Files In the Log files tab you can find more detailed information for each check, including the following: Date Time Rule Description:The status of the check; for example, OK if all went well, or an error description
Page 9 of 13 Code:The code of the description of the previous field Checkpoints:The location of the Nimsoft CUE station that performed the check You can customize your report by selecting any rule(s) you want to see. Simply choose a monitor or a group of monitors in the field above the log table. Rest the mouse cursor over an individual log record to see more detailed information for that check. Graphs At the Graphs tab, found in the Monitoring Menu you can check data about the performance of your sites in a single view. You can choose which real time graphs you want to see via the Display drop down box. The options include the following: Availability: Compare the Uptime and Downtime of your server or site. Performance: Check in milliseconds the resolve, connect, processing and transfer time at your server. Uptime: See the percentage of your site's Uptime. Resolve time: The resolution (translation) of your Domains name in milliseconds. Connect time: The time required for the connection to your server. Processing time: Measured in milliseconds the processing time. Transfer time: The time for the completion of data transmission. Download time: See the download rate per second. Total time: The sum of connect and download time in milliseconds. Download size: The size of downloads from your server in bytes. Transfer speed: Bytes per second of the transfer speed of your servers. Download speed: Bytes per second of the Download speed of your servers. Probes and errors: The number of probes and errors, for easy comparison. Checks and Confirmed errors: Watch in more detail the probes and confirmed errors relation. Error frequency: Take a closer look at the errors and the confirmed errors of the above graphs. Site Performance index: This graph gives an overview of the visitors experience when using your website. It shows the speed (loading time) and availability of your web page in a single number. All Graphs: Display all the above graphs. After you have selected the graph you require, you need to choose a monitor (or monitors) and time period. Further configuration options are available by clicking the Expert view button. Nimsoft CUE offers three different type of graphs: Google, Image or Flash charts. Using the expert view, you
Page 10 of 13 can select the type you prefer from the Use chart type drop down box. Current Status The Current Status report, also in the Monitoring Menu, gives you a complete overview of the status of your servers. In this page you can select automatic refresh time and view recent statistics for all your monitors. You can also create custom status graphs by clicking the Add button. Position your graphs anywhere on the page by dragging and dropping them from their status bar. It is a good idea to position the graphs most regularly refreshed at the top of your status page. If you want to reconfigure a graph click the pencil icon ( ) on the left hand side of its status bar. To delete a graph, click the delete ( ) icon on the status bar. Download You can download your reports via the Download tab, in the Reports Menu. When you are in the download page choose the rule you want to download, and set the time period, either by choosing one of the options at the Period drop box or by customizing it at the From and Until fields. You can also select monitors according to the tags you have set. Select the format you want (the options are: Microsoft Excel 2003 XML, tab separated values or comma separated values) and click the Download button. Access On the Access tab in the Reports dashboard, you will see a table which lists the Nimsoft CUE customer(s) that have access to your log files and graphs, followed by a list of the log files and graphs which you have access to. Below this is an area in which you can grant permission for others to see your Nimsoft CUE logs and graphs. Customers that have been given access can immediately see your graphs in their 'Graphs' page by selecting one of your monitors from the Of drop down box. If you have access to other customers' logs, you can see their graphs in the same way. Message Log The Message log tab in the Reports Menu provides a complete log of the messages sent to you and your contacts. The date, time, contact, type, status and a short description for each message can be seen and sorted by day, week or page. STEP 6: Defining Custom Email Reports To set up a custom report, click the Custom reports tab in the Reports Menu. Click the Add button, enter a report name, and select the kind and number of graphs you want. When adding a graph you need to configure it. The configuration options include: title, the type of the graph, the Monitors and /or Monitor group(s), and a specific graph type configuration. You can reconfigure or customize
Page 11 of 13 your graphs at any time by clicking on the pencil icon ( graph, click the delete ( ) icon on the status bar. ) in the top right hand corner. To delete a To add recipients to a graph, click the arrow next to your report's name. You can select yourself or any of your contacts from the drop down box and specify how often they receive the report. You can add more contacts to the list by selecting the + more link. When you finish adding contacts click Save. Your custom report is now ready. In the Actions drop down box on the right hand side of your report, you have the following options: Edit: Lets you reconfigure your report. (This option is also available by clicking on the report name). Rename Deactivate: Deactivating a report instead of deleting it gives you the option to easily activate it again from the Actions drop down box. Delete Preview: Download a preview of your report for the time period you want. STEP 7: Updating your User Preferences and Payment Details This step shows how to configure your account. Use the Account Menu to change your preferences, your details and update your payment details. User Preferences On the Account Menu, click the Preferences tab and select any of the following configurable options: Regional settings: Select your default language from the language drop down box, and also set your local time zone. Default settings for monitors: Set a default time out (in seconds), for all your monitors and enter a first and second limit (defined in milliseconds). Note: If the total time for a check remains under the first limit, the server is performing well. If it remains below the second limit but above the first, the server is performing poorly. If it exceeds the second limit, it is performing very poorly. You can also define these values for each individual rule when, configuring them at the Monitors pages. Charts settings:select the default charts type. Your options are: Google charts: Generated by Google's API Image charts: PHP generated graphs Flash charts: For more interaction with the user Checkpoints selection: Here you can choose the default checkpoints Nimsoft CUE will use to check your monitors. Click a continent to choose all the checkpoints from that continent or
Page 12 of 13 select All to choose all the worldwide checkpoints. To change your selection, click the Clear link before selecting different checkpoints. You can also define checkpoints separately for each rule within the Monitors pages. Payment Details At the Payment tab in the Account Menu you can see the balance of your account and insert you payment details. You can choose either of the following: Online credit card payment: Nimsoft CUE accepts Visa, American Express and MasterCard. After entering your credit card details, you can specify the period (in months) for which you want to receive Nimsoft CUE invoices. Bank transfer: To pay by bank transfer, click the Make Payment link. The bank details for Nimsoft CUE appear. Note that you need to specify your account ID with each payment. This ID is located at the bottom of the Bank transfer page. You will also see there a link to Change subscription, where you can change the invoice period. STEP 8: Managing your Subscription This area lets you manage you subscription in the following ways: Change your subscription package Customize your add ons Read information about your monthly price and invoices. At the Subscription tab in the Account Menu, you will find information about your current WatchMouse subscription. The Nimsoft CUE packages vary with respect to several features such as the number of protocols checked, number of checks per day, and number of servers checked. You can upgrade or downgrade your package at any time by clicking on the Edit button under your subscriptions package. When changing your subscription, ensure you read the Nimsoft CUE warnings at the top of the page (especially when downgrading) as some features in your existing package may not be supported in the newly selected package. If you wish to see and compare details for all the Nimsoft CUE packages, follow the Compare packages link. On the top of the Subscription tab, you can see a basic summary of the selected package including billing information. Features you can add to your monitoring package include the following: Extra monitoring rules Transaction monitoring rule Other monitoring extras Messaging extras
Page 13 of 13 Security extras Click Finish to save your changes. The Subscription tab also lists all your add ons and their total monthly price. Click Edit to go to the add on page and make any adjustments needed. You can also view information about value added tax (VAT). Click the Edit link next to your VAT information if you wish to change your account details. At the bottom of the page you will see your credit details, including: SMS credits Pages credits Vulnerability scan credits API credits Check credits You can purchase more credits by clicking at the Buy credits button. Also at the Account details tab in the Account Menu, you can update your personal details, email, company name, address, VAT number, and so on. After completing your personal details, enter a financial contact. This contact will receive Nimsoft CUE invoices. Finally, you can upload your company logo which will be displayed on each page and in the public status pages. Click Change to save your account details. Copyright 2011 CA. All rights reserved.