Vunetrix Manual: Architecture and User Interfaces

Vunetrix Network Monitor consists of different parts which can be divided into three main categories: System parts, control interfaces, and basic administration interfaces.

Core Server

The core server is the heart of your Vunetrix system and performs the following processes:

• Configuration management for object monitoring
• Management and configuration of the connected probes
• Database for monitoring results
• Notification management including a mail server for email delivery
• Report generator and scheduler
• User account management
• Data purging (culling data that is older than 365 days, for example)
• Web server and API server

The built-in, fast, and secure web server (no additional IIS or Apache is required) supports HTTP as well as secure HTTPS (via SSL). It serves the web interface when accessed with a browser and also answers Vunetrix Application Programming Interface (API) calls (for example, for user scripts or the Enterprise Console).

Note: Core server and probe(s) are configured as Windows services which are permanently run by the Windows system without the requirement for a logged-in user.

Probe(s)

On a probe, Vunetrix performs the actual monitoring with the sensors created on a device (for example, computer, router, server, firewall, etc.). The probe receives its configuration from the core server, runs the monitoring processes, and delivers monitoring results back to the core server. On every system running a Vunetrix core server, there is always a local probe running with it on the same machine.

Vunetrix Core Server and Local Probe Monitoring a Local Area Network

The actual monitoring is performed by Vunetrix probe processes which run on one or more computers. During installation, the system automatically creates the so-called Local Probe. In a single-probe installation—which is the default setup—the local probe performs all monitoring.

The Vunetrix core server inside the corporate LAN (bottom right in the figure above) is able to monitor services and servers in the entire Local Area Network (LAN). Note: Core server and probe(s) are configured as Windows services which are permanently run by the Windows system without the requirement for a logged-in user.

Vunetrix automatically monitors system health of its own core server and of each probe in order to discover overloading situations that may distort monitoring results. To monitor the system status of the probe computer, Vunetrix automatically creates a few sensors. These include Core and Probe Health, System Health, Disk Free, and a bandwidth sensor for all installed network cards. We recommend keeping these sensors, but you can optionally remove all except the Health sensors. They measure various internal system parameters of the probe system hardware and the probe's internal processes and then computes a resulting value. Frequent or repeated values below 100% should be investigated. Please check the channels of a particular sensor for details.

Additional so-called Remote Probes can be created by the user in order to achieve monitoring of multiple locations, or for several other scenarios. They are using SSL-secured connections to the core and allow to securely monitor services and systems inside remote networks which are not openly accessible or secured by firewalls. For more information, please see Remote Probes and Multiple Probes section.

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