The larger networks become, the more important it is to have an overview. IT decision-makers and IT administrators are faced with the question: "What is the right solution for my infrastructure?" This question cannot be answered in one sentence, because many factors play an important role. First, it should be considered which information a monitoring solution must provide and how high the level of detail should be.
Industrial IT has seen many changes over the past decade, with IT/OT convergence, Industry 4.0, and increased digitization all shaping the way the production floor connects and interacts with IT. And while we’ve already seen a lot of transformation in the industrial sphere, it’s also clear that it’s not stopping any time soon: By 2025, the IIoT market will be worth $110.6 billion, and this will only further drive the digitization trends we’ve seen so far.
Industroyer, NotPetya, EKANS, Triton, LockerGoga. If those five words just sent a chill down your spine, chances are you work in the industrial control sector. For decades the OT world relied on “security through obscurity” to guarantee its safety – it’s difficult to attack a network that you can’t connect to. Unfortunately, for most companies, completely isolating their ICS environments from the outside world is no longer an option. Increased need for IT/OT convergence, remote access support demands from equipment vendors, and the need to collect, analyze and store sensor data from IIoT applications all mean that industrial networks are increasingly connected to the outside world. Therefore, they are vulnerable to attack.
Ok, now that we have your attention… We are not kidding!
If you are anything like me, you probably remember the smell of your old school building. As I write these lines, I have the distinct scent of my school's gym mats in my nose, as clearly as if I’m right now facing the terrible task of performing some stupid gymnastic exercise. The same goes for my former classroom: it was somehow musty, stale, steamy. And there was a reason for that: the air was fabulously bad. We know today that an excessively high proportion of CO₂ in the air can have disastrous consequences for concentration and that the levels become critical much earlier than instinctively suspected – depending on how many people are in a room, how old they are, how large their lung capacity is, and other factors. An already degraded air quality starts at 1,000 to about 1,400 ppm CO₂ in indoor air – we know that this value is often exceeded many times over in classrooms, even values of 2,000 up to 5,000 ppm can occur. This poses a risk, in the winter of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic as well as during normal school operation.
Storage performance monitoring should be a standard part of every intelligent monitoring solution as it can have a major, positive impact on daily business. Find out why PRTG Network Monitor is the ideal solution for storage performance monitoring below.
Have you heard about Paessler Certified Monitoring Expert? It is a technical certification that goes hand in hand with our technical PRTG training. Our focus through our training and certification program is to empower and give our partners and customers enough knowledge to properly plan, demonstrate, install and to provide first-level support. Also, as a Monitoring Expert you can help your customers to choose the best license for certain architecture and sensor strategy design.
We at Paessler are running heterogeneous network infrastructure powered by different physical servers such as Dell PowerEdge, HPE ProLiant, Fujitsu Primergy and IBM xSystem. Some of them are running as standalone servers and some are part of the cluster. One of the things I very much appreciate about managing my servers is the possibility to do it remotely, without even going to the server room and getting frozen, especially during the winter season. The remote management (hardware configuration, firmware upgrade or OS upgrade) can easily be done via management platforms/controllers/ports: iDRAC, iLO, iRMC and IMM – depending on the vendor.
Wow. 2020 was quite a hell ride for all of us! And I don't just mean us at Paessler, but really all of us. The whole planet experienced a rather exceptional year!
So, what happened to the photovoltaic system on our company roof? In short: It is still there. In a little longer: We couldn't be happier that we as a company are reducing our footprint on this earth by generating a significant portion of the electricity we use. We have been tracking our photovoltaic system, its output and our specific consumption for over a year now, and would like to give you a brief overview of our many insights.
I regularly tell you here about the changes in the PRTG versions and the new sensors and features the software provides.
Frequent visitors, (that’s all of you, right?) may have noticed we’ve recently become very interested in technologies outside of traditional IT-focused monitoring. That’s not to say that we don’t still feel the love for all things “LAN, WAN, server & SAN”. But as most of us at Paessler are hardcore, self-confessed, uber-geeks, we just can’t resist the lure of shiny new tech to play with. That’s why many of our recent blog posts have an IoT or Industrial IoT focus. It’s not just blog posts either: our last few PRTG releases have included new sensor types, specifically for this exciting field – MQTT, Modbus and OPC-UA sensors are now all available in PRTG, and we’ve written extensively about enabling technologies that can help with the sometimes difficult task of merging the IT and OT worlds.
PRTG Network Monitor release 20.4.64 is our 10th scheduled version this year, and it includes a lot of great stuff! PRTG 20.4.64 comes with three new sensor types, including the first one for Veeam, major improvements for our already delivered IoT sensors, some fixes and a bunch of other improvements. In more detail, you can be excited about our first native Veeam sensor that monitors the status of backup jobs, the Microsoft Azure Subscription Cost sensor, and the Dell EMC Unity Enclosure Health v2 sensor. So let's have a closer look into the new features.
At the recommendation of a client in 2010, Clair Global’s network architect Ben Harris downloaded Paessler’s free 100-sensor version of its PRTG Network Monitor software to monitor RealTime media networks events to provide peace of mind to their clients that the AV was running properly during events. When he moved into a larger networking role within the company, he said that Paessler’s PRTG Network Monitor was the clear choice from the price point and feature perspectives. “The interface is straightforward; the usability and price are great; and the flexibility to deploy custom plugins sold it for us. We haven’t looked back since.” When they could not find a company to help them deploy an enterprise-level temporary audio distribution network for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Clair Global decided to build it themselves and selected PRTG to monitor it. This kickstarted a new revenue stream for the company and a new department that specializes in rapidly deployable, portable and high-density IT networks to support concert tours, music festivals and sporting events – all monitored by PRTG. Now, several years later, Clair Global has significantly expanded its use of PRTG to benefit its clients.
MikroTik provides routing, switching and wireless equipment for all possible uses – from the customer location up to high-end data centers. Back in 1997, MikroTik developed a RouterOS software system that provides extensive stability, controls, and flexibility for all kinds of data interfaces and routing. Five years later, MikroTik created their own hardware called RouterBoard which today in combination with RouterOS supports all the necessary features for an ISP - routing, firewall, bandwidth management, wireless access point, backhaul link, hotspot gateway, VPN server, and more. Their products are not only used by ISPs, but also by individual users and companies for building data network infrastructures all around the world.