After a piece of software that works like VNC/PCanyware but has the ability to automatically cycle through the different desktops that it is logged in to.

Any suggestions?

We are getting a large plasma screen and want to use it as monitoring screen for all the major systems, cycling through them like a big status monitor.

Im not quite sure what you mean but Remote Administrator (aka. Radmin)

http://www.famatech.com/

We have 10 webservers which run our inhouse netbanking application, and other assorted servers in the farm, each desktop has a quickview health status, red bad green good. Would like to find an application that can do remote administration but also cycle through all 10 servers displaying the desktop for like 5-10seconds at atime automatically.

With Radmin you can have a seperate window open for each Computer... with Alt-tab being able to cycle through.

Or you could re-size the window so that they are all tiled...

Or write a little script to Alt-Tab for you.

So can pcanywhere vnc and the rest, the idea is to have a big arse screen hanging on the wall which loops through all the desktops and displays them for a short period.

Or write a little script to Alt-Tab for you.

Now thats a thought. :) thanks.

EDIT changed my mind, cause if you just alt-tab once you will only switch between the first 2 applications, gets a bit messy adding or removing windows. Still it is a solution thanks.

The winner is Scooter and AnalogX.

http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/autotab.htm

heh gw =D
Thats fairly handy..

I would like to thank.....
Hang on, Where's my prize!

Glad I could help.

http://www.student.smsu.edu/s/san232s/hardfunnypics/winprizedowns.jpg

Why dont you get someone to write a script like we have?

We have a dedicated Linux box that runs a script to ping our customers' firewalls every 5 seconds or so, if it fails, ping again... and if it fails x amount of times, the status bar goes to red (all are on the one screen - which is projected against one of our walls) - and critical (red) firewalls are placed up the top of the screen.

Course this isnt our only method of determining problems. but its a good overveiw :)

we use a combination of

* SNMPc
* Visualpulse
* Servers Alive

to monitor latency, packet loss, system down, app down and services down on boxes in our data centre

all the above trigger email alerts as well as gui displays etc, and sms/pager etc if needed

also, if you have a kvm for your servers you could always get an extension module for it (if its a decent kvm that supports them) and use it to auto scan


of course, leaving servers logged in at the console is one of the naughtiest things any competent sysadmin can do, adn I spank anyone who does it :)

What?

Sif scooter knows anything about computers.

I know enough to not ask you when I need help...

The only help I get from you is for err... my... ummm.... friends computer... Yeah that sounds good.

We have a dedicated Linux box that runs a script to ping our customers' firewalls every 5 seconds or so, if it fails, ping again... and if it fails x amount of times, the status bar goes to red (all are on the one screen - which is projected against one of our walls) - and critical (red) firewalls are placed up the top of the screen.

http://www.ipsentry.com/

Ping the device will not tell us that the serial comms link to the legacy banking system has broken, but we use IPsentry to call a server script that passes a dummy request down and when a response is revieved simple.

The reason for the monitor as it has now been fully explained is to swith between the main monitoring app a net saint like windows app, the help desk ticket monitor and the atm gatways transaction monitors so the operators will have a visual and the managers will be able to masterbate over the big plasma screen monitoring the systems.

guess its a diff scenario then

one-big-screen is really overrated. Looks good when showing client's through, but how usefull is it if for most of the time it's not showing most of your systems?

Go for lots of little flatscreens.

That way if you need to focus on one app you can just go to that monitor, but from a far you can see all 30 and see that's nothing's wrong (30 being roughly what we've got at work).

Gotta love the technical discriptions that the marketing types use to explain what they want, "we want a big screen that show all the desktops of the webservers so we can show the customer that we monitor their system", this will impress them when they visit. I reckon keeping 99.7% uptime would be better.

Something smells about that solution :(

its gotta be big and shiny, thats all that matters to them.

oh and they money you are making them

No its not that bad typo, its just the Marketing Manager is one of the directors and is a "Windoze Expert" cause he can use Windows Update, so he always puts his 2c worth in, funny cause 60% of the business is Unix, and the other 40% the net banking is the most unreliable (harsh cause it managers 95% uptime, and outages are usualyy remote comms issues). Just venting my displeasure at a poorly rushed knee jerk reaction to a problem.

sifn't What's Up Gold on the big screen

Gumby, I didn't mean to suggest that the sky would fall from that solution. I just think it has some smells that need to be resolved.

Does this solution offer any reactive elements to it? Or does it totaly rely on people constantly looking at the giant plasma screen?

Has anybody built any spikes to see how effective this kind of monitoring could be before investing in a big arse plasma screen?

Has anybody studied how effective this kind of solution is going to be using any kind of mockups, or have they just come up with the idea and are going to throw cash at it?

I don't know much about serial connections, specificly with how much they block once they are engaged by another application. I also don't know the entire situation for the problem space.

That being said my natural solution would be for a application that checks everything that you want to check and then sends a man sized packet of information straight at a centralised point.

At that stage the server could update a big arse plasma screen GUI of all of the relitive information, send out alarms, sms the marketing manager telling him he is a fagot or generaly doing some work for you.

I can see all sorts of benifits to that solution, that I would place bets on would increase business value, compaired to the marketing managers plan of "let me put my cock in everybodys mouth" because I am a expert even though I pay you guys to be experts.

Just venting my displeasure at a poorly rushed knee jerk reaction to a problem

bit longer then my thoughts. We have monitoring in place and have had since I last worked here last year, people just don't use it correctly, the visual thing has me mystified to its value because all the monitoring cal be accessed from every desktop. But mine is not to question anymore but to do.

and you cant offer/implement a suggestion. as like typo's suggestion?

Your a bank and you have a monitoring system no-one uses properly?

What bank are you?

OK this is giving the wrong impression here.

We have systems implemented that monitor 24hrs a day 7 days a week that work just dandy. The monitoring we do is network monitoring and status monitoring of netbanking apps running on 30 odd webservers distributed over 2 sites, along with 5 mainframes, and 40 other servers SQL and what not. Everything is monitored and SMS messaging is sent out, everything works just fine, we the admins are usually ontop of everything (bar the odd slept through the phone sms alarm, stupid T100).

Punker you have the wrong perception, the place has more than adequate monitoring of all its systems, the human interaction between Help Desk and these systems was brought into question due to lack of interaction between certain people and the task at hand. Now we are required to implement a hugh monitor so that all the admin/helpdesk staff can see the apps cycling away, pointless springs to mind as my phone goes balistic if there is a real issue with the system, however help desk might be a different issue when seeing the status of how all the fix my printer and bulls*** they deal with. However having written the helpdesk last time I was here, specifically placing a management monitor screen in it so that managers from the luxury of their office can instantly see how the job queue is going.

Where or whom do I work for is of no consequence because ATM/EFTPOS and daily banking has a 99.87% uptime outside of scheduled maintenance, nearly 0% impact on Joe Publics ability to get his money out. Net banking and Bpay not so pleasant with an impact on Joe Public of 2% roughly, however the sam task could have been achieved through Phone Banking which has had a 99.87% uptime.

This is a management request, they have spoken, so long as it isn't out of my budget who cares, jst so long as I can watch sport on it when they aren't here. :)

just the idea of alt tabbing applications on a big arse plasma screen smells funny.

lol... thats fair enough...

i was just gonna say i wouldnt bank there in relation to asking where you worked, was just prodding fun :P

hope whatever they do works out good :)

Maybe you could use multiple instances of VNC and use a script that cycles through them a'la fancy alt-tab style (But I think someone has suggested it already)

Edit: After thinking about it you could use HPopenview instead