Alchemy Eye v.4.0.6

Reviewed by: Jim Huddle CNE CNE5 CBS MCSE ES-RC, send e-mail
Published by: Alchemy-Lab, go to the web site
Requires: Windows 95 or better; no other requirements listed
MSRP: $199 (download), $210 (package)

Whether you run a small single segment or a large multi-site, multi-segment network you know that you have to keep an eye on your servers. If you're an administrator, you know it's next to impossible to sit and watch the server(s) all day. So you're in a quandary. You don't want your users calling you with the news that the database server is down and you can't afford the time to learn nor the investment to buy a product like Unicenter. Until now your choices were limited. Alchemy Eye gives you another choice.

The program takes a fairly simple approach to watching your servers and at the same time allows you considerable flexibility. If you just want to know the server is up, you can define a simple ping (if you happen to have some older Netware running versions older than 5.x you can use IPX to verify the server is alive). Alchemy Eye also allows you to test services, disk space, database connectivity and others. I set it to test the available disk space on an NSS volume mounted on a Netware 6 box. I set the test size over the available disk space and turned it on. It tested the server and reported the volume as being out of disk space and showed remaining free space. I then edited the properties and set it below available disk space. When it ran the check it then showed the server as being OK. It worked similarly on an NT box.

When the program is opened there are three panes. The left pane starts with a folder called All Servers, when selected it shows the servers you have configured in the right pane. The bottom pane shows a real-time log of whatever server tests are running along with the results of the tests. You set up servers by either clicking the plus button or right clicking in the right pane and selecting Add Server or by pressing the Insert key. In the new server dialog you can set up everything you need to test the server. A basic ping test takes about 60 seconds to set up. In the General section you put in the server's name and select ICMP under Check Type. Click the Ping on the left side and enter the server's IP address. Click OK. How much simpler could it be?

The setup above doesn't do much by itself except log the results in the bottom pane of the main Alchemy Eye screen. But I wanted to show just how simple and quick a live server test can be. While you are configuring the server or by editing the configuration later, you can set alerts. These are pretty flexible. You can tell the program to send an alert when the server wakes up, goes down or both. You can configure the server to send notifications to other machines, send e-mail notifications and to display a message box on the local computer.

By right clicking in the left pane you can add folders. I added a Netware and Linux folder. I then dragged my servers from the right pane to the folders and dropped them in the appropriate folder. This gives you a nice way to group the servers by OS or database type or whatever suits your needs.

You can down load a trial version from the web site. It's definitely worth a look.

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