NetFlow Domain Reporting: Part 2
In the prior NetFlow Domain Reporting blog, I outlined how to view URLs using a NetFlow Probe called nProbe. In this post I’ll explain why 174.123.133.232 doesn’t show up for theplanet.com.
Answer
The server that hosts theplanet.com is not hosted on 174.123.133.232, but 70.87.6.117, as we can see in the above command window below.
NetFlow Domain Reporting: Part 1
I decided to do some IPFIX reporting on our NetFlow Probe (i.e. nProbe) that is hanging off of a spanned/mirrored port on our Enterasys switch. The new nProbe is kind of neat because it exports latency and URL information via IPFIX. I wanted to see if it caught all the URLs I was looking at so, I filtered on my IP address and ran a Top Domains report as shown below. Click to expand the image.
I didn’t remember browsing to some of the domains listed, so I clicked on View Raw Flows to look at the URLs I had hit in a 3 minute period. One of the URLs started with ‘trashminer.com’ and I was surprised, because I didn’t see this host in the top domains report above.
Data Center Monitoring to Save You Time
Filed under: Data Center, environmental monitoring, SensorProbes
If you work in the IT field, chances are that you’re constantly busy putting out figurative fires, but you also know the importance of protecting your company’s network infrastructure and data center. Regardless of the size of your business, there aren’t enough hours in the day to continually monitor your data center. 
Assign those tasks to Ravica’s SensorProbe so you can focus on other facets of your job, like playing with your new email reporting software, Mailinizer Email Log Analyzer from Plixer International. Read more
Avoid Damage Caused by Data Center Humidity
Filed under: Data Center, environmental monitoring, humidity monitoring
Agricultural experts in my hometown regularly uttered the phrase, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” In the data center environment, humidity can be an overlooked hazard. Both heat and humidity are threats that require attention in data centers.
Understanding how humidity in data centers affects electronics is an obvious requirement for Data Center Managers because it has a direct effect on a company’s bottom line. Ensuring that your business has ideal data center humidity levels impacts the lifespan of equipment and can decrease utility costs. Read more
Monitor your Network with nProbe and nBox
It seems that today’s Network Managers are continually putting out fires while conquering challenges of modern technology. Networks have become more complex than ever before, requiring Network Managers to become even more proactive and efficient. 
Effectively monitoring and maintaining a network has become a requirement, and NetFlow allows that to happen successfully.
Luca Deri founded ntop in 1998 because he wanted to solve his employer’s network monitoring problems but had no tool to provide simple and efficient answers. Through ntop, he offers nProbe and nBox to serve as visual insight into network utilization. Read more
Kansas Department of Health & Environment’s IT Infrastructure Failure is Recovering
Filed under: Data Center, environmental monitoring, Notifications, SensorProbes
A recent news article reported on an IT infrastructure failure at Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE). The issue was compounded by the fact that it occurred as students were preparing to enter school and needed birth certificates, immunization
records, and other state documents. Because they were no longer electronically accessible, approximately 120,000 of these records had to be retrieved from storage in a central Kansas salt mine, no doubt adding significant man-hours to workers across Kansas.
According to the Healthcare IT News article, the technical problems stemmed from a storage area network (SAN) failure, the hardware which stored agency records. Read more
Raising the Temperature Bar
On the heels of the Earth Hour campaign that occurred this past Sunday, I’d like to give a shout out to the Green IT website. The website was launched last week and is in preparation for International Green IT Awareness Week, scheduled for June 1-7. Check out the site for some great tips for making data centers, and IT in general, more energy efficient. Almost all of the 100 ideas will end up saving a company some money, some require an initial investment in more efficient equipment, but some are just simple changes in behavior and require little more than a shift in thinking to make a sizable dent in energy costs. Read more
~JessicaFollow Me on Twitter
Voltage Monitoring and Detection
We often think of temperature monitoring and humidity monitoring first. Some of us are even concerned about smoke detection and water detection, but what about power detection? I have to admit, it wasn’t first on my list of environmental conditions to monitor either.
Is an environmentally sustainable data center possible?
One of the biggest concerns for IT facility managers is monitoring the temperature in data centers and server rooms to make sure that the excessive heat produced by hardware is not accumulating to dangerous levels that can overheat the servers. This is an important task for the obvious reason that overheated equipment can lead to expensive hardware damage and loss of data. However, conventional HVAC systems that use chilled forced air to cool data centers are highly inefficient with regards to energy consumption and therefore indirectly effect CO2 emissions. Being a bit of a green building geek, I looked up some examples of data centers that are using new (and old) technology for lower impact cooling. Read more
~JessicaFollow Me on Twitter
SNMP Temperature Monitoring
Filed under: airflow monitoring, Data Center, environmental monitoring, SensorProbes, temperature monitoring
Whenever we buy anything for the company, I always ask if it can be connected to the network and monitored with SNMP. For example, when a new HVAC system was installed in our building, I asked if it was going to be SNMP manageable. The contractor looked at me like I was speaking Greek. Out of curiosity, I decided to search on the idea and found this company called Chipkin that makes an SNMP gateway, as does the s4group.
Why do I care about SNMP?
I care about SNMP because I want to manage everything from a central location. We use MyView in Scrutinizer. From a central location, we can monitor the network, the call center and, if we wanted to, the coffee pot.
BTW: Fugoo is considering a marketing plan for their network connected coffee maker, however, it lacks support for SNMP and the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol.