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<title>CMS Features</title>
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  <h1 class="top">CMS Features</h1>

  <h2>Problem Specification</h2>

       <h3>Original Problem</h3>

       <p>
        This is the original specification given to us when we
        started the project. The i-scream central monitoring
        system meets this specification, and aims to extend it
        further. This is, however, where it all began.
       </p>
       
       <h3>Centralised Machine Monitoring</h3>

       <p>
        The Computer Science department has a number of different machines
        running a variety of different operating systems. One of the tasks
        of the systems administrators is to make sure that the machines
        don't run out of resources. This involves watching processor loads,
        available disk space, swap space, etc.
       </p>
       
       <p>
        It isn't practicle to monitor a large number of machines by logging
        on and running commands such as 'uptime' on the unix machines, or
        by using performance monitor for NT servers. Thus this project is
        to write monitoring software for each platform supported which
        reports resource usage back to one centralized location. System
        Administrators would then be able to monitor all machines from this
        centralised location.
       </p>

       <p>
        Once this basic functionality is implemented it could usefully be
        expanded to include logging of resource usage to identify longterm
        trends/problems, alerter services which can directly contact
        sysadmins (or even the general public) to bring attention to problem
        areas. Ideally it should be possible to run multiple instances of
        the reporting tool (with all instances being updated in realtime)
        and to to be able to run the reporting tool as both as stand alone
        application and embeded in a web page.
       </p>

       <p>
        This project will require you to write code for the unix and Win32
        APIs using C and knowledge of how the underlying operating systems
        manage resources. It will also require some network/distributed
        systems code and a GUI front end for the reporting tool. It is
        important for students undertaking this project to understand the
        importance of writing efficient and small code as the end product
        will really be most useful when machines start run out of processing
        power/memory/disk.
       </p>

       <p>
        John Cinnamond (email jc) whose idea this is, will provide technical
        support for the project.
       </p>

  <h2>Features</h2>

       <h3>Key Features of The System</h3>
       
       <ul>
        <li>A centrally stored, dynamically reloaded, system wide configuration system</li>
        <li>A totally extendable monitoring system, nothing except the Host (which
          generates the data) and the Clients (which view it) know any details about
          the data being sent, allowing data to be modified without changes to the
          server architecture.</li>
        <li>Central server and reporting tools all Java based for multi-platform portability</li>
        <li>Distribution of core server components over CORBA to allow appropriate components
          to run independently and to allow new components to be written to conform with the
          CORBA interfaces.</li>
        <li>Use of CORBA to create a hierarchical set of data entry points to the system
          allowing the system to handle event storms and remote office locations.</li>
        <li>One location for all system messages, despite being distributed.</li>
        <li>XML data protocol used to make data processing and analysing easily extendable</li>
        <li>A stateless server which can be moved and restarted at will, while Hosts,
          Clients, and reporting tools are unaffected and simply reconnect when the
          server is available again.</li>
        <li>Simple and open end protocols to allow easy extension and platform porting of Hosts
          and Clients.</li>
        <li>Self monitoring, as all data queues within the system can be monitored and raise
          alerts to warn of event storms and impending failures (should any occur).</li>
        <li>A variety of web based information displays based on Java/SQL reporting and
          PHP on-the-fly page generation to show the latest alerts and data</li>
        <li>Large overhead monitor Helpdesk style displays for latest Alerting information</li>
       </ul>
       
       <h3>An Overview of the i-scream Central Monitoring System</h3>

       <p>
        The i-scream system monitors status and performance information
        obtained from machines feeding data into it and then displays
        this information in a variety of ways.
       </p>
       
       <p>
        This data is obtained through the running of small applications
        on the reporting machines.  These applications are known as
        "Hosts".  The i-scream system provides a range of hosts which are
        designed to be small and lightweight in their configuration and
        operation.  See the website and appropriate documentation to
        locate currently available Host applications.  These hosts are
        simply told where to contact the server at which point they are
        totally autonomous.  They are able to obtain configuration from
        the server, detect changes in their configuration, send data
        packets (via UDP) containing monitoring information, and send
        so called "Heartbeat" packets (via TCP) periodically to indicate
        to the server that they are still alive.
       </p>
       
       <p>
        It is then fed into the i-scream server.  The server then splits
        the data two ways.  First it places the data in a database system,
        typically MySQL based, for later extraction and processing by the
        i-scream report generation tools.  It then passes it onto to
        real-time "Clients" which handle the data as it enters the system.
        The system itself has an internal real-time client called the "Local
        Client" which has a series of Monitors running which can analyse the
        data.  One of these Monitors also feeds the data off to a file
        repository, which is updated as new data comes in for each machine,
        this data is then read and displayed by the i-scream web services
        to provide a web interface to the data.  The system also allows TCP
        connections by non-local clients (such as the i-scream supplied
        Conient), these applications provide a real-time view of the data
        as it flows through the system.
       </p>
       
       <p>
        The final section of the system links the Local Client Monitors to
        an alerting system.  These Monitors can be configured to detect
        changes in the data past threshold levels.  When a threshold is
        breached an alert is raised.  This alert is then escalated as the
        alert persists through four live levels, NOTICE, WARNING, CAUTION
        and CRITICAL.  The alerting system keeps an eye on the level and
        when a certain level is reached, certain alerting mechanisms fire
        through whatever medium they are configured to send.
       </p>
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Revision:	1.4
Committed:	Tue Mar 23 20:22:31 2004 UTC (21 years, 7 months ago) by tdb
Branch:	MAIN
CVS Tags:	HEAD
Changes since 1.3:	+0 -0 lines
State:	*FILE REMOVED*
Log Message:	Move to .xhtml files instead of .shtml. They still use SSI. We're now validating as XHTML 1.1 (or, at least we will be when I've tested every page of the site to make sure it validates). I've put the necessary frigs in the webserver so it returns the content-type as text/html if the web browser doesn't make any claims to know about application/xhtml+xml (which is the content type defined by the XHTML standards).
#	Content
1	<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
2	"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
3
4	<html>
5
6	<head>
7	<title>CMS Features</title>
8	<!--#include virtual="/style.inc" -->
9	</head>
10
11	<body>
12
13	<div id="container">
14
15	<div id="main">
16
17	<!--#include virtual="/header.inc" -->
18
19	<div id="contents">
20
21	<h1 class="top">CMS Features</h1>
22
23	<h2>Problem Specification</h2>
24
25	<h3>Original Problem</h3>
26
27	<p>
28	This is the original specification given to us when we
29	started the project. The i-scream central monitoring
30	system meets this specification, and aims to extend it
31	further. This is, however, where it all began.
32	</p>
33
34	<h3>Centralised Machine Monitoring</h3>
35
36	<p>
37	The Computer Science department has a number of different machines
38	running a variety of different operating systems. One of the tasks
39	of the systems administrators is to make sure that the machines
40	don't run out of resources. This involves watching processor loads,
41	available disk space, swap space, etc.
42	</p>
43
44	<p>
45	It isn't practicle to monitor a large number of machines by logging
46	on and running commands such as 'uptime' on the unix machines, or
47	by using performance monitor for NT servers. Thus this project is
48	to write monitoring software for each platform supported which
49	reports resource usage back to one centralized location. System
50	Administrators would then be able to monitor all machines from this
51	centralised location.
52	</p>
53
54	<p>
55	Once this basic functionality is implemented it could usefully be
56	expanded to include logging of resource usage to identify longterm
57	trends/problems, alerter services which can directly contact
58	sysadmins (or even the general public) to bring attention to problem
59	areas. Ideally it should be possible to run multiple instances of
60	the reporting tool (with all instances being updated in realtime)
61	and to to be able to run the reporting tool as both as stand alone
62	application and embeded in a web page.
63	</p>
64
65	<p>
66	This project will require you to write code for the unix and Win32
67	APIs using C and knowledge of how the underlying operating systems
68	manage resources. It will also require some network/distributed
69	systems code and a GUI front end for the reporting tool. It is
70	important for students undertaking this project to understand the
71	importance of writing efficient and small code as the end product
72	will really be most useful when machines start run out of processing
73	power/memory/disk.
74	</p>
75
76	<p>
77	John Cinnamond (email jc) whose idea this is, will provide technical
78	support for the project.
79	</p>
80
81	<h2>Features</h2>
82
83	<h3>Key Features of The System</h3>
84
85	<ul>
86	<li>A centrally stored, dynamically reloaded, system wide configuration system</li>
87	<li>A totally extendable monitoring system, nothing except the Host (which
88	generates the data) and the Clients (which view it) know any details about
89	the data being sent, allowing data to be modified without changes to the
90	server architecture.</li>
91	<li>Central server and reporting tools all Java based for multi-platform portability</li>
92	<li>Distribution of core server components over CORBA to allow appropriate components
93	to run independently and to allow new components to be written to conform with the
94	CORBA interfaces.</li>
95	<li>Use of CORBA to create a hierarchical set of data entry points to the system
96	allowing the system to handle event storms and remote office locations.</li>
97	<li>One location for all system messages, despite being distributed.</li>
98	<li>XML data protocol used to make data processing and analysing easily extendable</li>
99	<li>A stateless server which can be moved and restarted at will, while Hosts,
100	Clients, and reporting tools are unaffected and simply reconnect when the
101	server is available again.</li>
102	<li>Simple and open end protocols to allow easy extension and platform porting of Hosts
103	and Clients.</li>
104	<li>Self monitoring, as all data queues within the system can be monitored and raise
105	alerts to warn of event storms and impending failures (should any occur).</li>
106	<li>A variety of web based information displays based on Java/SQL reporting and
107	PHP on-the-fly page generation to show the latest alerts and data</li>
108	<li>Large overhead monitor Helpdesk style displays for latest Alerting information</li>
109	</ul>
110
111	<h3>An Overview of the i-scream Central Monitoring System</h3>
112
113	<p>
114	The i-scream system monitors status and performance information
115	obtained from machines feeding data into it and then displays
116	this information in a variety of ways.
117	</p>
118
119	<p>
120	This data is obtained through the running of small applications
121	on the reporting machines. These applications are known as
122	"Hosts". The i-scream system provides a range of hosts which are
123	designed to be small and lightweight in their configuration and
124	operation. See the website and appropriate documentation to
125	locate currently available Host applications. These hosts are
126	simply told where to contact the server at which point they are
127	totally autonomous. They are able to obtain configuration from
128	the server, detect changes in their configuration, send data
129	packets (via UDP) containing monitoring information, and send
130	so called "Heartbeat" packets (via TCP) periodically to indicate
131	to the server that they are still alive.
132	</p>
133
134	<p>
135	It is then fed into the i-scream server. The server then splits
136	the data two ways. First it places the data in a database system,
137	typically MySQL based, for later extraction and processing by the
138	i-scream report generation tools. It then passes it onto to
139	real-time "Clients" which handle the data as it enters the system.
140	The system itself has an internal real-time client called the "Local
141	Client" which has a series of Monitors running which can analyse the
142	data. One of these Monitors also feeds the data off to a file
143	repository, which is updated as new data comes in for each machine,
144	this data is then read and displayed by the i-scream web services
145	to provide a web interface to the data. The system also allows TCP
146	connections by non-local clients (such as the i-scream supplied
147	Conient), these applications provide a real-time view of the data
148	as it flows through the system.
149	</p>
150
151	<p>
152	The final section of the system links the Local Client Monitors to
153	an alerting system. These Monitors can be configured to detect
154	changes in the data past threshold levels. When a threshold is
155	breached an alert is raised. This alert is then escalated as the
156	alert persists through four live levels, NOTICE, WARNING, CAUTION
157	and CRITICAL. The alerting system keeps an eye on the level and
158	when a certain level is reached, certain alerting mechanisms fire
159	through whatever medium they are configured to send.
160	</p>
161	</div>
162
163	<!--#include virtual="/footer.inc" -->
164
165	</div>
166
167	<!--#include virtual="/menu.inc" -->
168
169	</div>
170
171	</body>
172	</html>