CEO's Blog

Tuesday, March 31 2009

PRTG Network Monitor 7.1 - Official Release

This is an exciting day for everybody here at Paessler AG: After seven months of hard work we have finally uploaded the V7.1 release binaries of PRTG Network Monitor.

This new version contains more than 800 new features, enhancements, changes, and bugfixes since version 7.0.9. Upgrading to the new version is recommended for all users of previous PRTG versions.

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Friday, March 27 2009

New Features in PRTG 7.1 (Part 7): "Official Support for PRTG Virtualizing"

During the beta test of PRTG Network Monitor 7.1 I am posting a number of blog articles about new features in the new version.

Virtualization has become a fundamental part of the IT eco-system. Many of our customers have already moved or will soon move considerable parts of their computer systems into virtual servers. Of course we also use virtualized systems heavily in our own software test lab together with a lot of real hardware.

With version 7.1 we now officially support running PRTG Network Monitor on virtualized platforms. PRTG already supports native monitoring of VMware servers since last October. Now it is a logical step to support running PRTG virtualized, too.

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Thursday, March 26 2009

Almost There: Announcing the Release Candidate of PRTG 7.1

The official beta test for version 7.1 of PRTG Network Monitor is approaching its final stage. Today we have uploaded the Release Candidate!

During the public beta test (ongoing since January 30th 2009) PRTG Network Monitor version 7.1 was thoroughly tested by our own team as well as hundreds of beta testers. Internally we called this intense test project the "mother of all software tests" and we are quite satisfied with the results: we are now convinced that the upcoming release of PRTG 7.1 is

• 1. the best software we have ever created and
• 2. the best tested software we have ever released.

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Thursday, March 26 2009

How PRTG computes CPU Index, Traffic Index and Response Time Index for your network

In order to provide graphs that show a quick status overview of your complete network (or a part of it) PRTG computes so-called "index" values based on the measurements of all sensors. The "index" graphs are synthetic values between 0% and 100% based on current sensor measurements and their historic maximum values. The calculation of these index values works similar to a stock index which is computed using the current values of selected stocks.

For each group and device PRTG shows four values in a graph.

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Wednesday, March 25 2009

New Features in PRTG 7.1 (Part 6): "SNMP Trap Notifications"

During the beta test of PRTG Network Monitor 7.1 I am posting a number of blog articles about new features in the new version.

In PRTG V7.1 we have added a new option for notifications: If an event occurs (e.g. a sensor's state changes from up to down) PRTG can now send SNMP Traps to a computer where a so-called Trap Receiver is listening. Trap receivers usually store these messages for later analysis and/or forward traps to the administrators using other means of alerting.

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Tuesday, March 24 2009

New Features in PRTG 7.1 (Part 5): "Automatic Probe Updating"

During the beta test of PRTG Network Monitor 7.1 I am posting a number of blog articles about new features in the new version.

Another new break-through feature of PRTG 7.1 is the automated probe updating. PRTG users who have set up one or more remote probes in their configuration will love this feature.

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Monday, March 23 2009

New Features in PRTG 7.1 (Part 4): "Email Round Trip Monitoring"

During the beta test of PRTG Network Monitor 7.1 I am posting a number of blog articles about new features in the new version.

Another interesting new feature in PRTG 7.1 is "Email Round Trip Monitoring". Two new sensor types ensure the end-to-end delivery of emails and make it possible to monitor availability and performance of a complete email delivery process.

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Thursday, March 19 2009

New Features in PRTG 7.1 (Part 3): "Copying Devices by Cloning or Using Device Templates"

During the beta test of PRTG Network Monitor 7.1 I am posting a number of blog articles about new features in the new version.

After configuring a device with one or more sensors there are two options to copy it:

• Cloning a device: Is the best option to simply duplicate a device only a few times with all its sensors and settings.


• using a device templates: Is the preferred option if you have many similar devices and if you do not want to create all devices manually through the web interface. This is also the better option if the devices do not have the same number of ports.

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Monday, March 16 2009

Beta 3 (aka "Final Beta") of PRTG Network Monitor 7.1 is available

Today the final beta of PRTG 7.1 is available. This new version includes more WMI improvements, again more speed improvements for the web interface as well as many other changes.

The next step on the way to the official release of PRTG 7.1 will be Release Candidate 1, scheduled for next Monday. Here is our current roadmap:

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Monday, March 16 2009

What to do when PRTG's ESX sensors show "Connection hangs. Check SSL on VMware server, then restart probe." message

When monitoring VMware ESX 3.5 servers with PRTG 7 we have seen situations where the HTTPS webserver of the ESX server crashes (i.e. the management interface is no longer accessible). In PRTG 7 all ESX sensors show a red alarm state as well as the message "Connection hangs. Check SSL on VMware server, then restart probe."

In order to revive the web server on the ESX server please perform the following steps:

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Monday, March 16 2009

What to do when PRTG’s ESX sensors show "Connection hangs. Check SSL on VMware server, then restart probe." message

When monitoring VMware ESX 3.5 servers with PRTG 7 we have seen situations where the HTTPS webserver of the ESX server crashes (i.e. the management interface is no longer accessible). In PRTG 7 all ESX sensors show a red alarm state as well as the message "Connection hangs. Check SSL on VMware server, then restart probe."

In order to revive the web server on the ESX server please perform the following steps:

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Thursday, March 12 2009

Installing a Trusted SSL Certificate for PRTG Network Monitor

PRTG Network Monitor comes with a default SSL certificate so you can securely use the web interface through HTTPS out-of-the-box. But because it is not an official certificate that matches the domain name or IP address of your PRTG installation a web browser will always show an alert ("the certificate is not correct") when it connects to this server (although the transmission is already secure).

If you want this dialog to disappear you must create, order, and install a trusted certificate. Our latest knowledge base article explains how you can do this by getting a certificate from Comodo InstantSSL. Apart from official paid-for certificates they also offer free 90-day-certificates that work well for PRTG 7.

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Thursday, March 05 2009

How to Set Up a PRTG 7 Core Server or Remote Probe on The Amazon EC2 Cloud

Two days ago Amazon announced support for virtual Windows servers in their European EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) datacenter. Together with the US-East datacenter (which offers hosting of Windows systems since last fall) Amazon now offers two locations where you can run Windows servers on their cloud hosting systems.

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