Commercial Products. ABB MicroSCADA

31 could be very useful because many problems occurring are caused by stopped or unwanted services.

At the end of the file there are the running programs of the system. The list tells the name of the program, memory usage of the program and user of the program.

This information is similar with the services; much unusual behavior is caused by unwanted programs like third party software installed by the user of the system or computer virus.

5.3 SNMP

SNMP is a simple network management protocol that almost all devices used in the industrial networks support. All important statuses of the devices in the network can be monitored with SNMP. These devices include e.g. computers,

GPS devices, network switches, printers and many more. Some settings of the devices can also be changed through SNMP. /12/

SNMP is widely used in the MicroSCADA systems to monitor the devices within the network, but MicroSCADA has no built-in support for SNMP, so a third party program is needed for transferring the information to MicroSCADA. The most used program for this in the MicroSCADA systems is MOXA EDS-SNMP OPC

Server Pro.

If SNMP is used in the system, it should be relatively easy to gather different information from the system and add it to the maintenance report.

5.4 Commercial Products

There are a number of commercial products available that are designed to monitor the condition of the server computer. Usually these server management programs also have much of other features, from which some can be useful, and others are not. There is usually a feature that sends e-mail notifications when a parameter, such as memory usage, exceeds a predetermined value. It is also often possible to generate a scheduled report of the condition of the system. These programs could be very useful, but often their price is relatively high. Of course if the customer

32 especially buys a maintenance service with demands of this kind of service, it may be easiest to accomplish with an already existing commercial product. /11/

There are also many good freeware server management programs available, but unfortunately they are almost always only for servers running Linux or UNIX operating systems. Linux and UNIX are the most used operating systems for servers, but MicroSCADA currently runs only on Microsoft Windows operating system, so these programs are out of the question.

Here is a brief list of some of the tested programs and features in them.

PA Server Monitor

This program developed by Power Admin has many inbuilt features and it is fairly easy to use due to the simple graphical interface. Some of its features include remote monitoring of servers across the Internet, disk space monitoring, event logging, performance and server temperature monitor, executing of scripts and many more.

The program has a wide variety of reporting features. Almost all of the parameters can be seen in a form of report. These reports can be generated automatically and sent to the server administrator. The triggering feature allows sending an e-mail notification if a parameter exceeds a predetermined value. The pricing of PA

Server Monitor is quite reasonable with a price of $125 per server. This price includes Ultra License and 1 year support and maintenance. /13/

GFI MAX RemoteManagement

Similar to PA Server Monitor, this software is able to do performance monitoring, disk space monitoring, event logging and more. It is also capable to send SMS or e-mail notifications in a case of a problem. Automated reports can be created and they can be sent to the administrator by e-mail. The pricing is calculated differently for every customer, but it is said to be competitive. /5/

33

SIW - System Information for Windows

SIW is not really server management software like PA Server Monitor or GFI

MAX RemoteManagement. It is a tool that analyzes the computer and gathers a wide variety of detailed information about the system properties and settings. SIW can create a report file in many formats, like CSV, HTML, TXT or XML. The system information that SIW can gather includes software information, real-time monitors of CPU and memory usage, network information and also sensor information that are measuring the heating of the system components.

SIW cannot create reports automatically or send reports by e-mail so it would require some external program to handle the sending of e-mails and scheduling the creation of reports. The price is $30 which includes “Technician’s Version” of the software and 1 year updates. /15/