MonBOX Remote Monitoring Appliance You CAN Get There From Here

Solving Problems to Make Your Job Easier

The MonBOX Remote Monitoring Appliance (MBR) is intended to help you monitor networks and devices that are harder to get to from your central monitoring server.

The MBR is intended to be a tool that you can apply according to your needs and according to your environment. It uses a number of tools and protocols developed as part of the industry-standard Nagios ecosystem, but can be used in almost any environment.

Here are a few ways that a MonBOX Remote Monitoring Appliance can make your monitoring easier.

Organizational Boundaries

You may need to monitor devices on networks that are controlled by other organizations. For example, perhaps you're the global network group charged with keeping all the divisions and offices in your company connected, but have nothing to do with the LANs behind the gateways that you manage. An MBR behind the firewall can provide you with a way to check that network connectivity to the outside world, or central corporate resources, is working just fine.

Or perhaps you're a service provider that manages the office computers for a variety of customers. An MBR in each location provides an easy way for you to keep an eye on your customers' networks, without having to worry about setting up VPNs or inbound connectivity through a variety of low end routers/firewalls.

Unreachable Locations

Perhaps you need to monitor the point of sale networks in a chain of stores, which are all connected to the internet with consumer grade DSL connections, with dynamic external IP addresses. An MBR in each store provides you with a way to monitor the internal networks, and a way to determine (and track) the current external IP address for each location.

Maybe you sell or maintain high-end network printing systems or imaging systems that are installed inside your customer premises. If you deploy an MBR with each of your systems, you have a tool for monitoring and reporting on your primary systems, even though you have no control over or access to your customers' networks.

Unreliable Connections

You're the network group in a large company, with many small locations, where the network connectivity is often very busy, or is provided over not-very-reliable links. You want to use SNMP to monitor traffic levels inside each network, but sending unencrypted UDP SNMP queries across the public internet is unreliable and unacceptable. Put an MBR in each location, and use check_by_ssh to "tunnel" UDP SNMP queries into each location.

Local-Only Services

Perhaps each of your remote locations has a file server for local use, which provides services only to the local network. An MBR in each location provides a way to check local-only services.

Another Tool for your Monitoring Toolbox

The MonBOX Remote Monitoring Appliance provides a tool for working around limitations or restrictions in your network. Think of the MBR as another level of indirection that's solving a problem in computer science.