Agent-Less Monitoring and Remote Management
Server (RMS)
The 6.0 release of Server Management Suite (SMS) included a product called “Site
Monitor Solution”. This application monitored resources for Availability. The Site Monitor
Solution is now in an “End-of-Life” status but Symantec realizes the importance of the
ability for our customers to monitor mission critical systems for Availability status. This
important function has been rolled into Monitor Solution in the form of “Agent-Less
Monitoring”.
When Monitor Solution is installed into the Symantec Management Console, the “Altiris
Monitor Agent RMS” is installed by default on the Symantec Management Console
instance where Monitor Solution was installed. The “Altiris Monitor Agent RMS” is the
SAME Agent as the “Agent-Based” agent. The “Remote Monitoring” function needs to be
enabled to support monitoring the availability of remote systems\resources. This
function can be enabled on any system besides the Symantec Management Console.
This can be done by running the command Altiris_MonitorAgentPackage_7_0_x86.exe
/RMS. The Altiris_MonitorAgentPackage_7_0_x86.exe is located on the Symantec
Management Console in the folder path:
“C:\Program Files\Altiris\Notification Server\NSCap\bin\Win32\X86\Monitor Solution
Package”
The \NSCap folder is a Shared folder. You can verify that the “Altiris Monitor Agent
RMS” is installed on the system running your Symantec Management Platform.
You can confirm this by accessing the Altiris Agent Details UI:
To review the scope of Agent-Less Monitoring, click the
icon and
select Monitoring and Alerting  Monitor  Policies  Monitor Polices 
Windows Server 2003/2008 – Agentless.
In this exercise, we will create an Agent-Less based Rule using the “ICMP Availability
Status” metric. From the Windows Server 2003/2008 Agent-Less Based policy, click on
the policy status radio button and ensure that it is set to ON:
Next, we are ready to create our Server Availability Rule. From the Windows Server
2003/2008 Agent-Less Based policy, Click the
icon to initiate the adding of a Rule.
The page showing all Rules for the Windows Server 2003/2008 Agent-Less Based policy
appears:
Click the
icon from the following screen and select
to create
the new Rule. Add “Server Availability” into the Name field and “Server Availability
status” into the Description field as shown below:
Next, click the
link. In this step, we need to associate our Rule
with a Category. (Categories are simply headers which Rules are organized
under). You will see a list of available Categories. This list is based on what
Monitor Packs have been currently imported. In this exercise we want to create a
new Category. Click the
icon and enter “Server Availability” as the
Category name to be used as shown:
Next, Click OK and verify the “Server Availability” category appears:
Click OK to proceed. Next, click the
icon from the Metrics section:
Click the
link. The “Metric Library” screen appears. Select the “ICMP
Availability Status” metric:
Click OK. This will bring us to the New Metric Evaluation page. Change the “Condition”
field to “Is Not Equal To” as shown below:
Click OK. We return back to the “New Metric Rule” page:
From the “Actions section, set the “Set severity to” field to “Major” and the “Reset
severity using” field to “Updated Metric Value” as shown here:
Next, click the
icon from within the “Tasks” section. The Tasks list will appear Scroll
to the bottom of this list and select Email. Enter “Server Availability Notification” in the
Name of the Email Task. Enter the email address of your choice. In this example, we
are using [email protected] . Lastly, enter “SERVER DOWN” in the
“Subject” field as shown below:
Click OK. The “Task Configuration” screen appears:
Click
of the email:
to propagate a list of system variables that can be added to the body
Select and copy the tokens of your choice. (In this example, ALL tokens are being
copied). Click OK. This will return you to the “Task Configuration” screen. Click
to return to the “Server Availability Notification” email template. Paste into
the Email template. In this example, we are deleting all variables with the exception of
the %!MONITOR_EVENT_TIME!% and %!MONITOR_TARGET_NAME!% system variables
from the pasted token list. Edit the system variables into the body of the email with
descriptors as shown below:
Click
. Next, click
to close this window. You will now see the “Task
Configuration” screen in the form of a Token (system variables) verification list as shown
here:
Click OK to return back to the “New Rule Metric” page.
Click OK. You should now see the Rule page appear for the Agent-Less Based Rules.
Click “Save Changes”.
The Agent-Less based Rule creation for monitoring of the availability of a mission critical
Server is now complete.