Product Reviews

Ipswitch has reverted to the original "Gold" name for the latest release of its successful network-monitoring system. WhatsUp Gold Premium Edition sets out to monitor the state of devices and applications running on the network rather than the traffic flowing through it.

In order to achieve this, it supports both Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) 1/2/3 and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). Provided the networked systems are configured to supply these services, the full range of monitoring options are available. Windows XP and Server 2003 install WMI as standard, but SNMP is provided only as an installable option. However, the combination of both allows for detailed monitoring and reporting, especially if you take advantage of the WMI scripting facilities available with WhatsUp Gold to monitor individual applications as well.

There are a number of improvements over earlier incarnations. Support for IPv6 has been expanded, and the web server and polling engine features have now been split into separate services to improve performance. The web interface is organised into workspaces, which can be customised as required to focus on areas of specific interest. It also allows remote administration and monitoring,

Reporting has been improved, and the switch from a local file to Microsoft's MSDE SQL server software allows the system to collect and store volumes of data. The database can also be held on a different server to the WhatsUp Gold software, giving more flexibility and the chance of greater security.

Pop-up messages can be configured for device state changes, with sounds if needed, and email notifications can be sent to designated users when various events occur.

Network scans can be configured to look for SMTP responses, but can also test for responses on known ports, so that systems which aren't running either SMTP or WMI, but are running applications such as a webserver, can be detected. Applications using non-standard ports pose more of a problem, but WhatsUp Gold also offers options to use Windows Network Neighbourhood and even hosts files if needed.

Although the emphasis tends to be on Windows systems, there are still extensive device-detection and performance-monitoring options available for other types of equipment, such as routers and Linux-based servers. Some devices can't be detected using the default network-scanning methods, however. Our firewall, which uses non-standard ports for its administration interfaces, resisted all attempts at discovery and remained invisible. Using the advanced options while scanning revealed it, but this mode takes considerably longer to run.

We use Microsoft's Virtual Server software on some of our systems, and we thought this might lead to some confusion. It's an indication of the software's effectiveness that both the virtual servers and their hosts appeared in the network scan, even when both systems shared the same Ethernet adapter and only one had SNMP enabled.