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Revision: 1.2
Committed: Sat Feb 9 15:00:42 2002 UTC (22 years, 1 month ago) by tdb
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: PRE_WWW_REDESIGN
Branch point for: I-SCREAM_ORG
Changes since 1.1: +2 -3 lines
Log Message:
Some updates to the i-scream website. Particularly the entry page has had an
overhaul. It now has a News section and a Current Work section. This should
slightly help in making i-scream not look quite so dead. Once again, my web
design skills aren't great, so changes are welcome :-)

File Contents

# Content
1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
2
3 <!--
4 $Author$
5 $Id$
6 -->
7
8
9 <html>
10
11 <head>
12 <title>Overview and Features</title>
13 <meta name="description" content="The i-scream Project is a central monitoring system for Unix, Linux and NT servers.">
14 <meta name="keywords" content="i-scream, project, central monitoring system, unix, linux, nt, server, alert">
15 <meta name="generator" content="notepad on acid, aye.">
16 </head>
17
18 <body bgcolor="#ffffff" link="#0000ff" alink="#3333cc" vlink="#3333cc" text="#000066">
19
20 <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
21 <tr>
22 <td valign="top">
23 <!--#include virtual="left.inc" -->
24 </td>
25 <td valign="top">
26 <!--#include virtual="title.inc" -->
27
28 <table border="0" width="500">
29 <tr>
30 <td>
31 <font size="2" face="arial,sans-serif">
32
33 <center><h3>Key Features of The System</h3></center>
34
35 <ul>
36 <li>A centrally stored, dynamically reloaded, system wide configuration system</li>
37 <li>A totally extendable monitoring system, nothing except the Host (which
38 generates the data) and the Clients (which view it) know any details about
39 the data being sent, allowing data to be modified without changes to the
40 server architecture.</li>
41 <li>Central server and reporting tools all Java based for multi-platform portability</li>
42 <li>Distribution of core server components over CORBA to allow appropriate components
43 to run independently and to allow new components to be written to conform with the
44 CORBA interfaces.</li>
45 <li>Use of CORBA to create a hierarchical set of data entry points to the system
46 allowing the system to handle event storms and remote office locations.</li>
47 <li>One location for all system messages, despite being distributed.</li>
48 <li>XML data protocol used to make data processing and analysing easily extendable</li>
49 <li>A stateless server which can be moved and restarted at will, while Hosts,
50 Clients, and reporting tools are unaffected and simply reconnect when the
51 server is available again.</li>
52 <li>Simple and open end protocols to allow easy extension and platform porting of Hosts
53 and Clients.</li>
54 <li>Self monitoring, as all data queues within the system can be monitored and raise
55 alerts to warn of event storms and impending failures (should any occur).</li>
56 <li>A variety of web based information displays based on Java/SQL reporting and
57 PHP on-the-fly page generation to show the latest alerts and data</li>
58 <li>Large overhead monitor Helpdesk style displays for latest Alerting information</li>
59 </ul>
60
61 <center><h3>An Overview of the i-scream Central Monitoring System</h3></center>
62
63 <p align="left">
64 The i-scream system monitors status and performance information
65 obtained from machines feeding data into it and then displays
66 this information in a variety of ways.
67 </p>
68
69 <p align="left">
70 This data is obtained through the running of small applications
71 on the reporting machines. These applications are known as
72 "Hosts". The i-scream system provides a range of hosts which are
73 designed to be small and lightweight in their configuration and
74 operation. See the website and appropriate documentation to
75 locate currently available Host applications. These hosts are
76 simply told where to contact the server at which point they are
77 totally autonomous. They are able to obtain configuration from
78 the server, detect changes in their configuration, send data
79 packets (via UDP) containing monitoring information, and send
80 so called "Heartbeat" packets (via TCP) periodically to indicate
81 to the server that they are still alive.
82 </p>
83
84 <p align="left">
85 It is then fed into the i-scream server. The server then splits
86 the data two ways. First it places the data in a database system,
87 typically MySQL based, for later extraction and processing by the
88 i-scream report generation tools. It then passes it onto to
89 real-time "Clients" which handle the data as it enters the system.
90 The system itself has an internal real-time client called the "Local
91 Client" which has a series of Monitors running which can analyse the
92 data. One of these Monitors also feeds the data off to a file
93 repository, which is updated as new data comes in for each machine,
94 this data is then read and displayed by the i-scream web services
95 to provide a web interface to the data. The system also allows TCP
96 connections by non-local clients (such as the i-scream supplied
97 Conient), these applications provide a real-time view of the data
98 as it flows through the system.
99 </p>
100
101 <p align="left">
102 The final section of the system links the Local Client Monitors to
103 an alerting system. These Monitors can be configured to detect
104 changes in the data past threshold levels. When a threshold is
105 breached an alert is raised. This alert is then escalated as the
106 alert persists through four live levels, NOTICE, WARNING, CAUTION
107 and CRITICAL. The alerting system keeps an eye on the level and
108 when a certain level is reached, certain alerting mechanisms fire
109 through whatever medium they are configured to send.
110 </p>
111 </font>
112 </td>
113 </tr>
114 </table>
115
116 <!--#include virtual="bottom.inc" -->
117 </td>
118 </tr>
119 </table>
120
121 </body>
122
123 </html>