FTP Monitor

The SiteScope FTP Monitor attempts to log into an FTP server and retrieve a specified file. A successful file retrieval assures you that your FTP server is functioning properly.

In addition to retrieving specific files, the FTP Monitor can help you verify that the contents of files, either by matching the contents for a piece of text, or by checking to see if the contents of the file ever changes comapred to a reserve copy of the file.

Usage Guidelines

If you provide FTP access to files, it is important to make sure that your FTP server is working properly. There is nothing more frustrating for a customer than to finally find the file they want, but then be unable to get it. The FTP monitor insures that you are the first to know if there is a problem.

To use this monitor you will need to:

have network access to an FTP server
know the relative paths, if any, to the files on the FTP server
know an applicable username and password to access the files
know the filenames of one or more files available for FTP transfer

While you may have many files available for FTP from your site, it is not necessary to monitor every one. It is recommeded that you check one small file and one large file.

A common strategy is to monitor a small file every 10 minutes or so just to verify that the server is functioning. Then schedule a separate monitor instance to FTP a large file once or twice a day. You can use this to test the ability to transfer a large file without negatively impacting your machine's performance. You can schedule additional monitors that watch files for content and size changes to run every 15 minutes to half hour. Choose an interval that makes you comfortable.

If you have very important files available, you may also want to monitor them occasionally to verify that their contents and size do not change. If the file does change, you can create a SiteScope alert that will run a script to automatically replace the changed file with a back-up file.

Status

The reading is the current value of the monitor. Possible values are:

OK
unknown host name
unable to reach server
unable to connect to server
timed out reading
content match error
login failed
file not found
contents changed

The status is logged as either good or error. An error status is returned if the current value of the monitor is anything other than OK.

Completing the FTP Monitor Form

To display the FTP Monitor Form, either click the Edit link for an existing FTP Monitor in a monitor table, or click the add a Monitor link on a group's detail page and click the Add FTP Monitor link.

Complete the items on the FTP Monitor form as follows. When the required items are complete, click the Add Monitor button.

FTP Server: Enter the IP address or the name of the FTP server that you want to monitor. For example, you could enter either 206.168.191.22 or ftp.thiscompany.com.
File: Enter the file name to retrieve in this box, for example /pub/docs/mydoc.txt.
User Name: Enter the name used to log into the FTP server in this box. A common username for general FTP access is username anonymous.
Password: Enter the password used to log into the FTP server in this box. If using the anonymous login, the password is also anonymous.
Update every: Select how often the monitor should check this FTP server. The default interval is to run or update the monitor once every 10 minutes. Use the drop-down list to the right of the text box to specify another update interval in increments of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. The update interval must be 15 seconds or longer.
Title: Enter a title text for this monitor. This text is displayed in the group detail page, in report titles, and other places in the SiteScope interface. If you do not enter a title text, SiteScope will create a title based on the host, server, or URL being monitored.

Advanced Options

The Advanced Options section presents a number of ways to customize monitor behavior and display. Use this section to customize error and warning thresholds, disable the monitor, set monitor-to-monitor dependencies, customize display options, and enter other monitor specific settings required for special infrastructure environments. The options for this monitor type are described below. Complete the entries as needed and click the Add or Update button to save the settings.

Disable

Check this box to temporarily disable this monitor and any associated alerts. To enable the monitor again, clear the box.

Timeout

The number of seconds that the FTP monitor should wait for a file to complete downloading before timing-out. Once this time period passes, the FTP monitor will log an error and report an error status.

FTP Proxy

You may instruct SiteScope to run the FTP through a proxy server. Generally, if you use an FTP proxy you will have it set up in your browser. Enter that same information here. For example, proxy.thiscompany.com:8080. Remember to include the port.

Passive Mode

Check this box if you want SiteScope to use FTP passive mode. You use this mode to enable FTP to work through firewalls.

Match Content

Enter a string of text to check for in the returned file. If the text is not contained in the file, the monitor will display "no match on content". The search is case sensitive. You may also perform a Perl regular expression match by enclosing the string in forward slashes, with an "i" after the trailing slash indicating case-insensitive matching. (for example, "/Size \d\d/" or "/size \d\d/i").

Check for Content Changes

Use this option to have SiteScope compare file contents to a previous, successful download of a file. The options for this setting are:

no content checking - (default) SiteScope does not check for content changes
compare to last contents - Any changed checksum will be recorded as the default after the change is detected initially. Thereafter, the monitor will return to a status of OK until the checksum changes again
compare to saved contents - The checksum is a snapshot of a given page (retrieved either during the initial or a specific run of the monitor). If the contents change, the monitor will get a "content changed error" and will stay in error until the contents return to the original contents, or the snapshot is update by resetting the saved contents
reset saved contents - Takes a new checksum of the file and saves the resulting checksum on the first monitor run after this option is chosen. After taking the updated checksum, the monitor will revert to "compare to saved contents" mode.

Unless this is set to "no content checking" (the default) SiteScope will record a checksum of the downloaded document the first time the monitor runs. The monitor then does a checksum comparison each subsequent time it runs. If the checksum changes, the monitor will report a status of "content changed error" and change state to error.

Generally, if you want to check for content changes in a file that normally is not expected to change, you will want to use the compare to saved contents option. This option saves a checksum "baseline" from the first successful download run of the monitor and compares all subsequent checksums to that baseline. The monitor will continue to report an error until 1) the subject file is replaced with the file having the original content (checksum) or 2) the Check for Content Change option is set to reset saved contents and the monitor is run with this setting. After running the monitor with this setting, the checksum baseline is updated and the monitor reverts back to the compare to saved contents option.

The compare to last contents option compares the checksum of the last successful download to that of the next successful download. If the checksums are different, an error is reported for that run of the monitor. The checksum from the most recent successful download then replaces the previous one. If the checksum of the next monitor run is the same as the new saved value, the monitor will change to a status of "good".

Proxy Server User Name

If the proxy server requires a name and password to access the file, enter the name here. Technical note: your proxy server must support Proxy-Authenticate for these options to function.

Proxy Server Password

If the proxy server requires a name and password to access the file, enter the password here. Technical note: your proxy server must support Proxy-Authenticate for these options to function.

Verify Error

Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this monitor again if it detects an error. When an error is detected, the monitor will immediately be scheduled to run again once.

Note: In order to change the run frequency of this monitor when an error is detected, use the Update every (on errors) option below.

Note: The status returned by the Verify Error run of the monitor will replace the status of the originally scheduled run that detected an error. This may cause the loss of important performance data if the data from the verify run is different than the initial error status.

Warning: Use of this option across many monitor instances may result in significant monitoring delays in the case that multiple monitors are rescheduled to verify errors at the same time.

Update Every (on error)

You use this option to set a new monitoring interval for monitors that have registered an error condition. For example, you may want SiteScope to monitor this item every 10 minutes normally, but as often as every 2 minutes if an error has been detected. Note that this increased scheduling will also affect the number of alerts generated by this monitor.

Schedule

By default, SiteScope monitors are enabled every day of the week. You may, however, schedule your monitors to run only on certain days or on a fixed schedule. Click the Edit schedule link to create or edit a monitor schedule. For more information about working with monitor schedules, see the section on Schedule Preferences for Monitoring.

Monitor Description

Enter additional information about this monitor. The Monitor Description can include HTML tags such as the <BR> <HR>, and <B> tags to control display format and style. The description will appear on the Monitor Detail page.

Report Description

Enter an optional description for this monitor that will make it easier to understand what the monitor does. For example, network traffic or main server response time. This description will be displayed on with each bar chart and graph in Management Reports and appended to the tool-tip displayed when you pass the mouse cursor over the status icon for this monitor on the monitor detail page.

Depends On

To make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor or monitor group, use the drop-down list to select the monitor on which this monitor is dependent. Select None to remove any dependency.

Depends Condition

If you choose to make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor, select the status condition that the other monitor or monitor group should have in order for the current monitor to run normally. The current monitor will be run normally as long as the monitor on which it depends reports the condition selected in this option.

List Order

By default, new monitors are listed last on the Monitor Detail page. You may use this drop-down list to choose a different placement for this monitor.

Error if

By default, SiteScope generates an error if the returned status indicates anything other than a successful retrieval of the file. You may choose to have SiteScope generate an error based on the round trip retrieval time. Enter the shortest retrieval time (in milliseconds) that should generate an error. Enter a comparison value and use the comparison operator list to specify an error threshold such as: >= (greater than or equal to), != (not equal to), or < (less than).

Warning if

By default, SiteScope does not generate warnings for FTP monitors. You may choose to generate a warning based on round trip retrieval time. Enter the shortest retrieval time (in milliseconds) that should generate a warning. The symbols in the comparison value list are the same as those for Error if.

Good if

By default this monitor returns a good reading if the monitor returns a status of 200. You can change this to be tied to either file size or round-trip time. Select the option you prefer from the drop-down list and then set the threshold using the comparison value list. The symbols in the comparison value list are the same as those for Error if.