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Posted on April 10th, 2012
Overseer 4.1.47 has now been released. This includes a few bug fixes for intermittent problems that a couple users have experienced. I also made a change in the database library that should increase the performance of the database– which may be most noticeable on slower machines. Lastly, I added a quick usability enhancement to not always auto-expand the resource groups on the left– it now remembers which ones are collapsed when refreshing. This was mostly an annoyance, and is now fixed.
Overseer 4.1 is currently in bug-fix status. Overseer 5.0 is currently under development, and will have many usability enhancements, a bit of a face-lift, MSSQL database support, and some new resource types.
Posted on August 17th, 2011
Overseer 4.1.41 has been released. This is primarily for a bug fix that only affects those using EM1 environmental monitors, and monitoring relative humidity with that monitor.
As a side note, I plan on adding support for an inexpensive USB temperature monitoring device soon. These devices will be available for sale on our website at a fraction of the cost of an EM1 unit(probably less than the EM1 probe itself!). The limitation, is that it will have to be physically connected to a computer– but most customers of Overseer Network Monitor have a computer close enough to what they’d like to monitor that this isn’t a big deal. Stay tuned for more information.
Posted on July 22nd, 2011
I have just released Overseer 4.1.37. This is a small version update that includes a check when deleting a resource group to prevent it from being deleted if there are still resources in it. Previous to this change, a user could delete a resource group and be unable to access the resources that were in that group. This required sending the config database to Overseer support to patch the database.
Posted on July 7th, 2011
I’ve just released Overseer Network Monitor 4.1.35. This release adds a Resource Availability report under Reports->Availability Report. This report allows a user to see the uptime/downtime for a group of resources, or any single resource. In the future, this report will support grouping based on hourly, daily, or monthly segments, but for now it shows the total availability for the report period it’s run for. This should satisfy the requirements of many ISPs that have service level guarantees.
Posted on June 17th, 2011
In Windows 2008, Microsoft introduced a new type of event log. This was an extended event log, which is found under “Applications and Services Logs” in the server manager MMC. Unfortunately, this new event log system uses a totally different API to access, and Overseer 4.1 is currently unable to monitor these event logs using it’s Windows Event Log Monitoring capabilities.
I recently looked into adding this functionality for a customer who requested it, and found that Microsoft also requires .NET 3.5 to access these event logs. Overseer has been coded using .NET 2.0 to maintain compatibility with W2K users. Unfortunately, to add this feature, Overseer will need to use .NET 3.5 which is not supported on W2K. This means Overseer, once this feature is added, will also no longer be able to support running on W2K(it will still be able to monitor W2K servers and workstations).
What does this mean to you? Do you still have Overseer running on a W2K box? Is this new event log monitoring important to you? Please weigh in by contacting us at the support link above.
Posted on June 10th, 2011
Today I’ve shipped Overseer 4.1.34.0. This release adds support for reporting to Overseer, and adds one report to start– a resource incident report. This report lists your resources and the incidents within the specified time frame, with start time, end time, and down time for that incident.
This is the first report of more to come. Overseer, our network monitoring software package, has been lacking on reports for many years, and this release lays the foundation to add more reports going forward to Overseer. Next on the list is an availability report, which should be in the next release.
Are you looking for a report for Overseer? Do you need another feature in Overseer? Please let us know using the Support link above and we’ll see what we can do.
Posted on May 22nd, 2011
We do our best to answer every support request in a timely manner– typically in a few hours, but definitely within 24 hours. Email support, initiated by filling in the form at the “Support” link above, is the method used for Overseer support. This is answered by domestic in-house staff and not outsourced to any outside firm. At Overseer’s price point, phone support is not a realistic option– if we were to provide phone support, Overseer would have to be far more expensive.
Posted on April 29th, 2011
Reporting is an aspect of Overseer that has been quite weak for quite some time. There are some ways to get historical information through the ‘Show History’ and ‘Show Availability’ right click options on a resource, but nothing that can easily be printed, and no multi-resource reports available.
I am currently working on adding some reporting functionality to Overseer. I’ll start with some simpler, yet still useful reports such as a Resource Incident report– which can be run for a resource group or an individual resource. Availability reports should be next. All reports will be exportable to PDF, HTML, Excel, and more. Stay tuned for a future release that includes these reports.
Posted on April 22nd, 2011
I have just released Overseer 4.1.31.0. This release adds a simple, yet powerful feature to the management interface. You can now right click on any resource and select ‘Duplicate Resource’, which will open an edit form of a new resource exactly like the one you clicked. You can then tweak a value and click ‘Save’, or ‘Cancel’ to abort the process.
This should enable people to more quickly and easily create new resources that are similar to existing resources. This, along with the recently added resource discovery wizard and text file import, should make it much easier to create your resources in Overseer and monitor all the services, devices, servers, and websites critical to your organization.
If you have any ideas on making Overseer easier/simpler to use, please let me know by using the ‘Support’ link above. Thanks.
Posted on March 12th, 2011
Today I have released Overseer Network Monitor 4.1.29.0. In this release, I upgraded the ‘DevExpress’ library that I use for GUI controls, so you may see some graphical improvements, extra skins, etc.
The core change in this version however, is a change to event log source retrieval. When setting up a resource for Event Log Monitoring, it is possible to setup event log filters(to include/exclude event log entries of different levels, from different applications/sources, etc.). In previous versions, there would sometimes be a long delay when clicking ‘add’ for an event log filer, or double clicking an existing eventlog filter to edit it. After working through this with a customer, I determined this delay was due to some code where it retrieved the event log sources from the remote computer. The logic first retrieved properly registered sources from the registry, and then it read the event log to get any rogue sources from applications that weren’t properly registered with the EventLog service. This code was obviously added per a customer’s request years ago… This was the code at fault for the delay, however.
My solution, was to add a registry key. By default as of 4.1.29.0, this aggressive event log source detection will be skipped, but can be turned on by setting ‘AggressiveEventLogSourceDetection’ to 1 under the Overseer registry key. Now if a customer has a problem filtering on a specific source, I can have them enable this feature in the registry for a more aggressive detection– but the majority of users who have apps that are ‘well behaved’, won’t have to wait for this extra checking.
If you’re seeing some kind of performance problem in Overseer, please let me know using the support link above. It may take a little while to work with you to figure out where the problem is, but most of the time I’m able to determine exactly what the problem is and provide a fix.
Thanks.
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