I was told by my company to developed a system that is stored in a server. It can Ping few server in different location daily to check the connection. then it will compile into a report and send to Lotus Notes of selected users. Can this be done? I need to come up with a proposal to my boss if this can be done. please help
Subject: Guidance needed
Yes, it can be done. If I had to do it, I would use Java. If you search the Internet you can find sample code. Note that ping does not tell you very much. You can ping a machine even if the server on that machine is down. It might be better to make connections that require responses from the servers.
Subject: Guidance needed
i just learn lotus rpogramming for about 1 month so i’m not sure in many of the lotus capability. will i be able to store a set of ip in database to use for test connection?
Subject: Guidance needed
Terence,I would use a JavaAgent. There you can open a connection to the server on any port. To check if Domino is alive a port80 connection will do. If the Dominos have their http disabled you would open the 1352 port.
However for server monitoring there are functions build into Domino Admin, so don’t waste your time reinventing the wheel and get your admin to setup a server probe.
If you need to monitor other boxes… Java is the way to go.
Hth
stw
Subject: Guidance needed
Are these Domino servers? i.e. do you explicitly need to know whether Domino is running? If so, a ping won’t be enough. I would look at the following:
For the Notes service try to open a standard database (e.g. names.nsf, log.nsf or catalog.nsf) on the Domino server to check that it’s up and running
For Domino (i.e. web stuff), send an http call to the server’s host name (as Rod advises, Java is your best bet for this one).
HTH
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Subject: RE: Guidance needed
isn’t that ping will return a timeout if the server in other location is turn off. thats mean connection fail.
if i use an http call, will the server respond it self or need a person there to answer the respond?
I try to look for the javascript code here but i cant find a suitable one. can any of u can direct me? thanks
Subject: RE: Guidance needed
A ping will just tell you whether the box is contactable or not. It will not tell you whether the Domino server is running. That’s a specific service in the same way that an Apache task or similar is.
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Subject: Guidance needed
the Domino server probe (er, probes are now called “event generators”) is specifically designed to send an email to specified recipients or use some other notification method when specified server(s) exceed a specified timeout – but only when the problem condition occurs, not on a repeating, scheduled basis.
What you’re being asked to do is generate a chart of the network response time of domino servers throughout the day. Since this number has little to do with Domino and more to do with network conditions, it won’t tell you anything useful about Domino – but it sounds like the first idea that a network person with no knowledge of Domino would come up with. I’d suggest using the built-in statistics collection tool, and looking at the availabity metrics which are already being generated by Domino. This tool gives you your periodic samples, and can even generate charts in R6 w/o exporting to Excel or something.