Introduction

This section describes the data that Skylar One (formerly SL1) collects from monitored devices, how to configure monitoring policies to collect that data, and how Skylar One displays the data in the user interface.

NOTE: For information about how Skylar One discovers devices, or how to configure and manage those devices in Skylar One after they have been discovered, see the section on Device Management.

Use the following menu options to navigate the Skylar One user interface:

• To view a pop-out list of menu options, click the menu icon ().
• To view a page containing all of the menu options, click the Advanced menu icon ().

What is a Device?

Devices are all networked hardware in your network. Skylar One can monitor any device on your network, even if your organization uses a geographically diverse network. For each managed device, you can monitor status, create policies, define thresholds, and receive notifications (among other features).

Some of the devices that Skylar One can monitor are:

• Bridges
• Copiers
• Firewalls
• Load Balancers
• Modems
• PDU Systems
• Probes
• Printers
• Routers
• Security Devices
• Servers
• Switches
• Telephony
• Terminals
• Traffic shapers
• UPS Systems
• Workstations

In Skylar One, devices also include component devices and virtual devices.

For more information about managing devices in Skylar One, see the section on Device Management.

What is a Dynamic Application?

Dynamic Applications are the customizable policies that tell Skylar One what data to collect from devices and applications. For example, suppose you want to monitor a MySQL database running on a device in your network. Suppose you want to know how many insert operations are performed on the MySQL database. You can create or edit a Dynamic Application that monitors inserts. Every five minutes (for example), Skylar One could check the number of insert operations performed on the MySQL database. Skylar One can use the retrieved data to trigger events and/or to create performance reports.

Skylar One includes Dynamic Applications for the most common hardware and software. You can customize these default Dynamic Applications to suit your environment. You can also create custom Dynamic Applications.

Dynamic Applications in Skylar One support a variety of protocols to ensure that Skylar One can always communicate with the devices and applications in your network and retrieve information from them. Dynamic Applications can use the following protocols to communicate with devices:

• SNMP
• SQL
• XML
• SOAP
• XSLT (uses SOAP and XSLT to convert XML data to a new format)
• WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), including WMI and WBEM
• Windows PowerShell
• Custom Python applications (called "snippets") for proprietary or more complex data retrieval

What is the Skylar One Agent?

The Skylar One agent is a program that you can install on a device monitored by Skylar One (formerly SL1). There is a Windows agent, an AIX agent, a Solaris agent, and a Linux agent. The agent collects data from the device and pushes that data back to Skylar One.

Similar to a Data Collector or Message Collector, the agent collects data about infrastructure and applications.

You can configure an agent to communicate with either the Message Collector or the Compute Cluster.

For more information about monitoring devices with the agent, see the section on Monitoring with the Skylar One Agent.