TM1 Forum

Comrades-in-arms,

I'm proud as punch to release a InfoCube Spark - a complimentary TM1 monitoring service which encorperates TM1Top, HDD & Ram Monitoring, Server Logs, Alerts and Notifications and much more still in development. Best of all its free. See a real account which is monitoring InfoCubes Development CX Servers here:

http://monitor.infocube.com.au
Username: tester
Password: abc123

Hope you like it. I would love some feedback - please either post here, on the blog or email me - ben [dot] hill [at] infocube.com.au.

Thanks again,
Ben

This looks good, Ben, nice work. It has an attractive visual design, simple intuitive interface and useful functionality for monitoring servers.

I couldn't quite work out how to get a copy to try it out on my own servers, can you clarify the process?

Also, do I need a particular web server installed to run it, if so, which -- or does it have its own embedded web server?

Thanks Lazarus,

The steps to getting this to monitor your servers can be found here: http://monitor.infocube.com.au/guide/

All you need to do is:
1. Register an account
2. Add a server entry to the portal (which will give you a server key)
3. Download the spark updater
4. Schedule it to run as often as you want to see updates online
5. Add the server key into the spark updater config file.

This will give you:
TM1 Top Data
CPU Usage
HDD Capacity
RAM Capacity
TM1Server.log
Some really cool charting - we presently have more data then the dashboard shows so we are looking at what other visualisations we can add in the future.

Thanks again for testing it out. Dick Smiths, Endeavour Energy and Cerebos among many others are all using this to monitor utilisation of their servers.

B

This is really great - is that a Bootstrap theme? Looking forward to seeing how you evolve the monitoring - are you thinking of extending it into more of an analytical tool?

Kyro wrote:The steps to getting this to monitor your servers can be found here: http://monitor.infocube.com.au/guide/

Man, I thought I was smart, but I didn't realize I could click on those to expand the info. Thanks Ben, will sign up and check it out.

What's the deal if we want to install this at a client site? What about un-hosted installs in situations where we can't expose the server to the open internet?

Lazarus wrote: What's the deal if we want to install this at a client site? What about un-hosted installs in situations where we can't expose the server to the open internet?

Indeed this is exactly the sort of stuff we have been looking at, but not nearly as slick. We can not expose our servers to the internet due to security restrictions, so the only way we could use it would be via a locally hosted portal...

Lazarus wrote:What's the deal if we want to install this at a client site? What about un-hosted installs in situations where we can't expose the server to the open internet?

No plans for un-hosted implementations. We've only had one client with this kind of setup (server with no internet access) and our contact sent a request to IT and they sorted it in 5 min. I'm not sure if this kind of policy is mainstream any longer with the advent of cloud computing and auto update software.

Note: Just implemented Minor Error Logging and a page dedicated to searching the TM1Server.log.

I wrote what I hope was a thorough evaluation of setting up and using Spark monitor on the Flow Blog.

If you're interested, you can check out the article.

I applaud your ingenuity but I can't think of a single company, at least in the U.S., that is going to allow their TM1 server to communicate with an un-vetted third party company outside the firewall. If you really want to make money on this you need to sell the software so that it can be run by the companies themselves inside their own firewalls. Once again, great idea, just may need a tweak to your business model to realize it's potential.

Hey tomok, I thought the same thing at first, and you're right some companies will not allow it if they have rigid IT policies.

But since it does not require your TM1 username and password, it's not as much of a security risk as I originally thought it might be. It simply reads the TM1 logs, TM1Top information and machine performance counters.

I guess you could argue that it could do something outside of what it says it does, as it does sit on the same physical machine as the TM1 data folder, but you can easily prevent this using file system security.

Lazarus,

I think you are missing Tomok's point. It has nothing to do with user names and passwords. It's all about port numbers. Unless this is using a port already allowed by a companies firewall it will never make it out. Virtually all the companies I have encountered in the US and the UK would only let it through if it went through a full analysis and purchase cycle. During this process they would identify the risks of opening up such a port. Keep in mind we are talking about bigger customers now that big blue holds the reigns. We are not in small time Applixville any longer,

Jim.

No I agree, but there's no need to open any ports. I had the same concerns before I communicated with Ben about it.

If you look at the architecture of the program, you''ll see the Monitor program sits in between the TM1 Server and the web application server, regularly pushing data out via a tcp/ip channel. Since ports are for programs to monitor and respond to non-initiated incoming traffic, it's not an issue. The server just needs an outbound internet connection and it'll work fine.

I've worked for many large corporates in the past, not just consulting with TM1 but developing client-server software, and in some it was a painful process to get IT to grant a server internet access, but I never found one that was unable to do it.

Sure, the Monitor program itself might have to go through SIT in large companies, and having internet access on the TM1 server may be an issue for some also, but it's not a port issue.

Anyway, it'll be the customer's choice at the end of the day, but I don't see any reason not to give them the option, given it's a better monitoring option than they get out of the box.

Thanks for the review Lazarus.
Jim, Tomok, the system has been designed to be simple from the go. Its as Lazarus says, all you need is an internet connection on your server and your ready to schedule the monitor to update the cloud as often as you like.

The only information we collect is Performance Monitor, TM1Top, TM1s.cfg, TM1Server.log, TM1 Audit Log, TM1 Process Error Logs and Operating System Version.

We may make an optional free extra that Spark will document your environment for you and formulate a wiki, but we aren't there yet - new features which require more data will always be an Opt-in system configured from the settings page.

We've just added a TM1 Top page which displays TM1 Top data and history (line chart) for each server on your account.
Admittedly this looks much better for our clients where they have a lot of activity.

it all looks excellent but due to the nature of the work here there is no way we can implement it i can't even send a TM1 server crash log to IBM due to security restrictions...

Too bad Steve. It hasn't stopped 35 other companies from coming online in the first week.
Happy 1 Week Anniversary Spark!
Russia, USA, UK, Australia and NZ all included.