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Hi All, What solutions do you use to remotely monitor the health of network client PC's? -

As part of the action we're taking on the climate crisis and working towards getting our organisation to net zero, we want to start a pilot programme of monitoring energy usage in certain areas of the college. Initially we were thinking of using equipment similar to the emonTx/emonPi (e.g. see here: https://shop.openenergymonitor.com/energy-monitoring/) with clip-on CT sensors that can clip on to the distribution board cables in the area we want to monitor. However we want to make sure we look around at other alternatives as well and I was wondering what equipment other organisations use for this? Key points are: We need something that can feed the data into a central database so it can be queried and reported on - so something that's just a portable meter with an LCD display is no good. As it's just a pilot programme, we don't want anything that's invasive and requires actually wiring in to the electrical circuit by an electrician - hence the clip-on CT sensors When searching I did come across IoTaWatt as well but this seems to be an America-only system, does anyone know of any others? Thanks, Dan Jackson (Network & Systems Engineer) Long Road Sixth Form College Cambridge, UK.

We're using HP Procurve manager to track network traffic over our 100Mbps intersite link. We run one AD based network over both sites. Before half term everything was fine. Since half term there have been periods of activity where the link becomes saturated one way, sending data from the site with our main servers on it to he other site. All we changed over half term was printing. Each site's PCs print to a local print server so it shouldn't be a print related issue. There is no pattern to it either, it mainly happens at lesson changeover but not always. We have 200 staff so asking all of them if they are using a large files at these times would be too onerous a task especially as few would actually know if the files they use are large. We're using wireshark to try to track packets but we've not found a way of analysing the stats this collects to see who or what is creating these packet bursts. Does anyone know how we can analyse/track the packets to identify source and destination of the top 10 so that we can then look at these machines to see what the data is? We suspect is there is a way to track this on the servers too. Our "video" server is on the main site so teachers viewing videos would create this large volume one way traffic. We're in the process of replicating this to a local server to reduce this intersite traffic but we need to prioritise which resources to replicate. Is there a way on a windows 2008 server to see who has which files open so we can study these during a "period of saturation"? I tried the sysinternals tools (Procmon (used to be filemon)) but had no luck. Any help appreciated. ChrisJ

Hi all, First post here. I've completely run out of ideas. I'm a VLE Manager for five schools in Northumberland. 3000 students, 800 members of staff. Before I was appointed, the Trust decided to purchase Frog. I've spent the past 6 months project planning and developing, getting the staff on. So on, so forth. I've put off getting the students on to the platform because contrary to what I'm telling staff/students, Frog has zero ability to monitor student behaviour. It's OK in terms of checking a user's history - nothing can be deleted from the platform, an individual user's e-mail/status update/wall post history can be seen/deleted. Discussion Forums aren't such a big deal either. However, if Student X decides to swear on the social networking aspect of the platform, or decides to bully Student Y, I won't know about it unless a friend of Student X reports him. Only a user's friends can see their social networking activities on the platform - even though I'm a moderator. Partially due to our catchment area, partially due to school ethos, this simply won't work. We can't, in any way, rely on students reporting each other. Suggestions to date have been... Close the social networking - possible, but this is my absolute last line of defence, as I want to use these features to engage our students Set up a proxy to filter POST/GET data - not possible with our current network infrastructure Use our existing monitoring software (Policy Central) to scan the network - will be doing that during the day, but the number of false positives is absolutely vast and it doesn't cover Frog access outside of our schools Run a PHP script on the MySQL database - I could do that easily and effectively, but I have no access to the Frogserver's MySQL DBs. We would have to sign a waiver for that, which would mean Frog offering limited support and possibly manual platform updates. So, I'm wondering if anyone else has any ideas? I was thinking along the lines of a website scanner, but I'm not even sure what that is! I think I've got a search engine robot in my head. Something which follows links and checks each page's source code for a list of bad words. That would suffice! Hmm, I wonder if we could embed Google Analytics then use that... Thanks in advance.

I'm reconfiguring my Nagios box as I move it over to a VM. I want to add DHCP monitoring but I can't quite get my head around it. I have 1 DHCP server (a Server 2003 box). I also have a WDS server - WDS makes this act as a DHCP proxy. What I'm trying to figure out is this.... should I always receive my DHCP offer from the WDS box (as it appears from manually running check_dhcp) or will I sometimes get a lease from the DHCP server? Also, how should I set up the dependencies? It's far too early to be thinking about this stuff!

Hi All, I have done a clean vanilla LAMP install (Ubuntu 7.10 Server) and then install Nagios 3.03 with the plugins. Now all is working fine aprt from emails are not getting sent. This is what I have done; Change the email address in contacts.cfg to mine install mailx as per nagios instructions changed email config in commands.cfg to show /usr/bin/mail and not /bin/mail Now when I bring a host down I get no email, I have always used nagios without email notification, more of a visual thing but Iwould like to get this sorted now. Any ideas of what I need to look for??

Hi guys, we have just set up a DPM 2012r2 server at one of the sites in our trust, what i would like to do is have all DPMs alerts come to my inbox at the primary site, but im not sure how to setup alerts for a remote DPM server... Just wondered what methods if any you guys have come up with thanks Vicky IT Tech Hatton Academies Trust

Hopefully not a strange question. I have been given the job to make sure our filters are in place and to monitor children's use of the internet. I think I have gone down a paranoid route and am taking it too seriously. We are with RM safety net where the children have gone through Ad sync so their names and use are shown. I check this every week or at least every other week and so far nothing has tuned up, all is fine. I am then paranoid about the filtering, RM have their own filtering system but many words such as s*x and Drugs are still getting through so I have added them to the denied list. Now I'm going crazy and typing all sorts of words which let me see things but don't want to go down the route of crazy person who denied everything! Staff are on a different filter and they can see even more! What do you guys filter and how much? Do you test the filters weekly by testing words? Do we have people looking at our filters and typing words in any type of inspection? I'm not sure what it too much/not enough. What do you all do. We are a junior school by the way. Thank you

Hi There, I'm looking for recommendations for software that will monitor and log Internet activity on our network's desktops and iPads. We currently have filtering via SWGfL so I don't need a combined monitoring / filtering solution, just a piece of software that will log Internet activity per device with timestamps and usernames. The iPads are shared devices but each pupil has an iPad number assigned to them so as long as I can identify the date/time I should be able to tell who is using it. I'm happy to listen to different recommendations for PCs and iPads. Thanks in advance.

Hi, new here and just wondered what people were using for keystroke monitoring? We currently have Smoothwall Monitor in place which is coming up for renewal and the deal we are on is ending, which means the price will increase significantly which is not great timing with significant cost pressures across our schools. Schools like the product, but not sure what alternatives exist and we will need to carry out a comparison exercise to ensure we are using the best solution whilst demonstrating value for money. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks...

I see this has been raised a few times but I wanted to see what everyone currently has in place within your Trusts/Schools around monitoring staff. Do you have the likes of Impero/NetSupport on staff PCs/Laptops as well as pupil's? I was looking through the DfE/GOV guidance on Meeting Digital & Technology Standards in Colleges Schools and Colleges HERE. Thanks.

Morning all, Wondering if anyone knows of an application or a desktop widget that would pull through the Meraki Live Data Uplink traffic monitor for an Appliance. Rather than having the webpage open which then times out and logs off after x amount of minutes. Would just like to keep a closer eye on it for awhile. thanks in advance.

I've just stumbled across a great resource on the Citrix Website... Introducing....Citrix XenCenterWeb - Joel Stocker - Citrix Community The XenCenterWeb virtual appliance just drops into your XenServer pool and, after 2 minutes configuration, allows you to perform a lot of management tasks via a shiny Citrix-themed web interface. Well worth a look!

I've installed Nedi and am having a play with it. start · NeDi Seems to be a nice complimentary system to Nagios/Cacti. Here's the screenshots section. gallery:gallery · NeDi

Hello all, I've had this account for a while but not used it much so please let me know if I've posted this in the wrong area. I'm wanting to record a specific pupils screen when a key combination is pressed. Would anyone be able to tell me if this was possible? regards

Lately I've been looking for a way to monitor students when they're taking tests on a computer by automatically making screenshots every 30 (or so) seconds. After a little investigation into monitoring tools like iTALC and Impero I soon came to the conclusion that I would have to make something myself, as I was unable to find anything that resembled my need. I found a freeware utility called nirCmd and created a visual basic script around it. I'm no scripting expert and it probably could be improved a lot, but nevertheless I'd like to share it with the community. You can find it here on github. Sander

When using SNMP to monitor events and metrics of Physical Access Control Systems, what kinds of events and metrics can you monitor?

Hi Guys, We need a email filtering solution hbat will be better at detecting E Safety events instead of exchange having a word list. What do you guys do or use? Thanks Ash