MonitorWare Knowledge Base

Future of EventReporter - Parsing of data for console reporting and SETP
Do you plan to provide the parsing functionality in a future release of EventReporter similar to MonitorWare Agent 2.0 for robust eventlog reporting with MonitorWare Console? (See http://www.mwconsole.com/en/faq/Empty-C ... eports.asp) Any plans to support SETP with future versions of EventReport?

Let me explain the reasoning behind the questions above. In my environment, Monitorware Agent is overkill as I already monitor services, disk space, etc.. using an SNMP agent collector. But EventLog consolidation and reporting is still needed, and the delivery reliability and robust reporting possible with the MWAgent is a necessity. With MWAgent priced at over 2.5 times the cost of EventReporter, cost does become an issue. Having MWAgent as a central collector , and using EventReporter on all the servers is a much more affordable configuration for a small company like mine, and we are not paying for any features we do not use. Basically, we need the reliable and robust data collection features for only the Windows eventlog features, but cannot afford to put MWAgent on all the servers in our environment at the current cost of MWAgent.

Not trying to complain here...just explaining our individual situtation and requirements. Any information you can provide as to the future of EventReporter would be helpful in planning for future budget and implementation requirements.

Hi,

thanks for your thoughtful post. I fully understand you reasoning and please be assured that we are always trying to not artifically make customers pay for things they do not need. Actually, this was one of the main reasons for creating MWAgent and EventReporter. I see, however, that we missed one point.

Fortunately, we already received other feedback pointing in this direction and we are currently working on it.

We will have two ways to handle this hopefully soon (our goal is to move this into a 6.2 release):

There will be two different versions of EventReporter "Basic" and "Professional". Basic will be the product you know. "Professional" will have support for SETP as well as some new syslog-reliable based event transmittel mechanism. The Professional version will be priced moderately higher, at $59 (at least this is our current view - it is not finalized yet).

The alternative would be to include the new functionality into the core product, but as we need to somehow fund the additional development, we would need to raise the price a little for the basic product, which we don't like. So I hope this is a reasonable compromise.

The receiver side must be MonitorWare Agent with SETP. If the syslog-based approach is used, it may also be another syslog-based product, for example WinSyslog Enterprise Edition (5.x product line). Of course, it could also be any other syslog server supporting our vendor extension AND the newest syslog standards. In the long term, we will most probably focus on the reliable-syslog based transport, as the standards are now becoming mature and feature-rich enough so that we do not need to roll a vendor-specific solution. From the user's point of view, SETP vs. reliable-syslog (w/ Adiscon extension) is more or less the same.

If you would like, we could provide a beta version as soon as we have something available.

I am looking forward to your feedback.

Best regards,
Rainer Gerhards
Adiscon

I believe you will greatly benefit in having a rock-solid eventlog agent as many companies already have the service, icmp and snmp monitoring services on existing systems (Whats Up Gold, Big Brother, etc...), but small and mid-sized companies cannot justify the costs you incur when jumping up to the next level (NetIQ, HP, etc...) which often provide the eventlog consolidation and reporting features.

We would certainly be interested in trying out the beta for the professional edition, and paying an additional fee for the SETP and full parsing features.

I greatly appreciate your willingness to take your customers needs seriously. It is a refreshing change!

Thanks for your kind words. I will keep you update. Just as a security precaution, please page me at support@adiscon.com should you not hear anything within the next 4 weeks. Things actually *have* begun to evolve

Rainer

OK, it took some time. But finally it is released There is now a "Professional" edition that supports SETP. Upgrades are available just for the price difference.

Announcment and download is here:

http://www.eventreporter.com/Common/en/ ... -12-11.asp

Rainer