There’s an easy way to monitor Windows services from the System i

How long has the Windows print server been locked up? Why can’t we coordinate our System i backups with shutting down Windows services? Why didn’t we know the e-mail server was down?

If your System i operations team is saddled with the additional chore of monitoring Windows servers and batch processes, they’re not alone. It’s difficult enough to coordinate processes across a network of i5/OS systems, without adding multiple Windows servers. Unfortunately, most System i monitoring tools for Windows services don’t offer much help.

So, today you might have your network team monitoring these systems through freeware or through periodic manual checks. Do your operators wander through the server racks checking for unavailable services? Or, has your development team generously offered to write some code to help manage these issues?

Automate Windows service monitoring
Help/Systems has the simple solution: Robot/CLIENT. Robot/CLIENT can monitor Windows services with a command from the System i. The Monitor NT Service (RCLMONSVC) command (see Figure 1) can check for unavailable services, at regular intervals, from your most reliable server, the System i. When Robot/CLIENT detects a failed service, you can start a scheduled job, use the RCLSTRSVC command to restart it, react with another batch process, or send an e-mail to an operator.

Robot/CLIENT also has commands that let you start and end Windows services. These commands can release Windows services that have locked an i5/OS file, preventing a successful backup. All you need to do is start your backups with the command that ends Windows services (see Figure 2). When the backup completes, just restart the service using the start services command. Backups are just one example of when you might want to end a Windows service.

Let Robot/CLIENT go to work for you
As many of our customers have learned, Robot/CLIENT provides the tools necessary to maintain control of your network monitoring. It monitors and manages Windows services automatically, so you don’t have to worry about them. Let us help you automate Windows integration with the System i. Call for your Robot/CLIENT 30-day free trial. You won’t be disappointed.

Contributed by Tom Huntington, Vice President of Technical Services

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 9:52 am and is filed under Resource Monitoring, Robot/CLIENT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.