SNMPc is a tool targeted to Network Administrators that allows you to monitor and manage SNMP compatible devices throughout your network. Available in two flavors, the platform is provided in a stand alone offering (Workgroup Edition) in which all components run on a single system and can be accessed by a single user with a limitation of 1,000 total devices monitored; and an Enterprise Edition, which relies on a distributed architecture. The Enterprise Edition consists of a centralized Server component for data reporting and alarm management; Poller Agents that actually monitor, collect data from, and store information related to the actual SNMP devices being managed; and Remote Consoles, which provide access points to the reporting and management capabilities of the server. Device commands sent from the consoles are routed through the server and then the remote polling agent that is handling that device, allowing for the support of multiple overlapping IP address ranges and NAT environments.

Poller Agents are able to auto discover locally attached SNMP devices (up to 25,000 per poller) as well as the protocols (IP, SNMP, Telnet, and HTTP) that they support. They monitor the status of discovered devices, storing historical MIB statistics in a local database while forwarding status changes and alarms to the Servers. Trend reports are also supported by the pollers; and after having monitored the devices for a time the pollers can automatically signal alarms when device performance deviates from its baseline norms.

In addition to receiving alarms from poller agents, Servers can import remote server device maps and pass alarms to one another via master-slave configurations, allowing for the management of distributed domains. Events received by the server can be managed in several automated ways including Ignore, Ignore Duplicates, Forward, E-mail, Page, Display Alarm Box, or Execute Application.

Each of the components in the Enterprise platform requires Windows based servers; with one exception: The JAVA Console provides viewing capabilities of collected data from Java-enabled machines.

From the Remote Consoles, various data can be examined and reported in real-time and SNMP based commands can be both configured and launched for device management tasks. (Additionally, data can be exported as text or via ODBC; and an open API allows for the polling or retrieving of information by custom apps.) Devices are displayed and navigated visually in a graphical, hierarchical map (cities, buildings, subnetworks) that can utilize imported bitmaps such as geographical maps or floor plans, or manual / automatic placement based on described network layouts (snake, ring, or tree). Color coding indicates alarm or impending alarm conditions for specific devices.

Key features of the latest SNMPc release include:

- Support for live standby servers. In the event that a central server goes down, failover support allows for another server to take over, with the individual poller agents automatically reconfigured to comply.

- "Quick" event filters, allowing administration personnel to define automated responses to specific event notifications.

- Application Service Polling, which allows for the polling of non-SNMP devices via send-reply strings to TCP application ports. Example uses include monitoring Web servers for appropriate page replies, or databases via SQL queries.

The new version of SNMPc is expected to ship on July 1, 2004; with Workgroup Edition pricing set at $995 and Enterprise Edition pricing set at $2950. The base Enterprise Edition includes licensing for one remote poller agent and one remote console; an additional Remote Access Extension licensing option ($1,495) is available which allows for unlimited pollers and consoles.

Contact Castle Rock Computing for further details.