Server Lists

Caution

You can only do this if you’re a PerformanceGuard administrator.

To manage servers that computers with PerformanceGuard agents installed have been in touch with, select ADMINISTRATION > Server / Port > Server List.

PerformanceGuard automatically detects every server the computers have been in touch with. Such servers are called discovered servers.

Computers may be in touch with a large number of servers (potentially thousands), but only a subset of the discovered servers are typically relevant. Because of this PerformanceGuard lets you select the servers that are relevant for you to keep an eye on. Such servers are called monitored servers.

Monitored Servers

Monitored servers are particular servers that you have selected to focus on when viewing performance data.

Important

Why is it a good idea to monitor particular servers and ports?

The number of servers and ports that your organization’s computers communicate with can quickly grow so large that it becomes impossible to maintain a good overview. For example, it will be difficult to view graphs in the PerformanceGuard web interface if you have to choose between data from thousands of servers every time you want to generate a graph. If you define a smaller number of relevant servers and ports, you only have to choose between those when you generate graphs. You’ll of course still have access to data from other servers and ports—the data is not removed, it is just kept in the background so that you are not constantly overloaded with information. Note, however, that data about such less relevant servers and ports may be kept for a shorter period of time.

A good starting point for identifying which servers to monitor is the PerformanceGuard web interface’s Configuration Wizard. Once PerformanceGuard agents have been running for a while, they will begin to report details about which servers they have been in contact with. The configuration wizard shows these details and helps you quickly identify the most popular servers. See Select Which Servers and Ports You Want to Monitor in.

Alternatively, you can simply select servers for monitoring on the Discovered Servers tab that lists every server that computers have been in touch with. See the description of that tab in the following.

Tip

PerformanceGuard can also automatically populate the Monitored Servers list. See Auto Populate in the following.

Elements on the Monitored Servers tab:

• Remove from monitored: Remove any selected servers from the monitored list
• Name: Server name or IP address with which the server will be shown in graphs, reports, etc.
• DNS Name: Hostname or IP address of server
• IP-address: Server IP address

Important

A server has an IP address that begins with 0. What's that?

That’s a virtual IP address used to join multiple servers into a single IP address in PerformanceGuard. Such virtual IP addresses are typically used when you want to monitor a cloud service (that can involve hundreds of individual third party servers), and you only want to know about the overall performance of the service rather than the performance of the cloud service’s individual servers. Read more in Monitor Cloud Services with Joined Server IP.

• Total requests: Total number of requests against a given port since the port was first discovered
• Auto: Shows Auto if the server was added to the list of monitored servers through the auto-populate feature (see Auto Populate in the following). Shows Fixed if the server was manually added to the list (by selecting it on the list of discovered servers, see Discovered Servers in the following).
• Change name: Lets you rename the server. When you click the Save icon next to this field, the server’s name in the Name column will change.

Important

Example: The resolved hostname of a mail server at your Manchester office is m22_mail_1242_8173091.net. You change that to ManchesterMailServer to make it more meaningful to other PerformanceGuard users.

Caution

The IP addresses/hostnames of servers on the list are automatically re-resolved every 24 hours. However, if you rename servers on the list, the automatic re-resolving won’t apply for those servers.

• Groups: Lets you view server group membership for the server in question.

You can filter the list of servers:

• Exclude agents: Exclude servers/workstations that have PerformanceGuard agents installed. This can be relevant, because in some cases a workstation also serves as a server, for example if using Windows file sharing.
• IP-address: The IP address of the server(s). If you only enter part of the IP address, all matching servers will be shown in the list. For example, 192.168.100 will return all servers in the network 192.168.100.0/24.
• Hostname: Filter on server hostname. Note that the use of wildcards is implicit; searching for the hostname a will return all servers with the letter a in their hostnames.

Click the Lookup button to apply your filter.

Discovered Servers

Discovered servers are servers that computers with PerformanceGuard agents have been in contact with. The list may quickly grow to several thousand servers unless you apply a Berkeley Packet Filter to the agent configuration (see Agent Configuration Group Settings for details).

• Add To monitored: Add the selected servers from the monitored list (see the previous).
• Name: Server name or IP address with which the server will be shown in graphs, reports, etc.
• DNS Name: DNS name or IP address of server
• IP-address: Server IP address
• Total requests: Total number of requests against a given port since the port was first discovered
• Update: Lets you rename the server. When you click the Save icon next to this field, the server’s name in the Name column will change.

Discovered Routers

List of any discovered routers. Specify required criteria and then click the Lookup button to view the results.

Tip

If required, you can rename routers on the list just like you can rename servers on the Monitored Servers list (see the previous).

Auto Populate

PerformanceGuard can automatically populate the Monitored Servers and Server Groups lists. The Auto populate tab simply lets you turn this feature on and off.

The auto-populate feature will find the 30 servers that computers with PerformanceGuard agents have used the most and automatically place them on the two lists.

Caution

Because server usage patterns may change, the auto-populate feature will run every 15 minutes (provided that it’s enabled). You may thus find that content on the Monitored Servers and Server Groups lists may change over time if you use this feature.