More questions?

Please feel free to use Contact Us form, to ask questions about MAGNAPing IMME.

FAQ:

Q: I want my infrastructure to be monitored, but MAGNAPing does not include a plugin for my database, message queue, or other technology. What are my options?
A: You have two options. One is to develop one or several plugins yourself, using the API documentation in the Chapter 8 of the product manual. The other option is to request that I develop the plugins for you.
To reach out to us, use Contact Us form or call 1-888-353-2238 and describe your business and technical requirements. Typically, it takes between one and two days, to code a new plugin, and one more day to thoroughly test and document it. For testing, we will require access to an instance of your technology, be it a database, message queue, or another type of service. If you cannot provide such access, then we will have to perform our own R&D, to obtain a copy of the server, to install it, and to learn and implement its API. In this case, additional work will be required on top of the usual and customary two or three days.
If the server software does not have a free, trial, or evaluation edition, then the cost of acquiring it will be billable on time and materials basis. In some cases, the cost is as low as a basic subscription, but in other cases it may be substantial. You are encouraged to provide us with the access to an existing instance or account, in order to lower your cost and to expedite the delivery.

Q: What is the main difference between persistency and notification plugins?
A: Events persistency is not addressed to anyone in particular. Notifications are associated with some sort of a destination identifier, such as an email address or phone number. This difference diminishes in the case of message queue or group chat technology, but it still targets a certain queue, topic, or chat room, and we consider it a notification rather than persistency.

Q: Different users have access to different mounted drives or UNC paths on my system. Can MAGNAPing check all of them?
A: Yes, it can. Make as many copies of MAGNAPing directory as user accounts, and run each under the respective account. Alternatively, you may keep one directory but make copies of magnaping.exe and magnaping.exe.config files. Change the global hostName key in each of the configuration files, to differentiate among these instances. Example: host1user1, host1user2, etc. Populate the URLs source for each instance with its own set of URLs.

Q: My system is behind a firewall, and there is a rule that allows it to access a database server. I want to receive email notifications about failed URLs, but it is problematic to add a rule to allow access to an SMTP server. How can MAGNAPing help me?
A: If your database server supports email functionality, then you can leverage it for sending emails as well. Supported servers are MS SQL Server , Oracle , DB2 UDB , iSeries , Sybase ASA , and Sybase ASE. Extensions may have to be developed for some other servers.

Q: My system is behind a firewall, and there is a rule that only allows it to access web sites over HTTP(S). How can MAGNAPing help me?
A: You could create a web service endpoint that will support the saving of events on behalf of MAGNAPing. It has to support GET or POST methods and to accept one string parameter.

Q: Can I send email notifications to multiple addresses?
A: Yes, you can. Put multiple To, CC, or BCC addresses separated by semicolons in their respective configuration key values. This work only partially with Sendgrid or Sendinblue, as regards to To, CC, or BCC names because they will not be mapped to their respective email addresses. Do not use addressee names if multiple addresses are used with these providers.

Q: Can I send SMS/MMS notifications to multiple phone numbers?
A: Yes, you can send up to 3 of them, by using To, CC, and BCC addresses, for the total of 3 notifications.

Q: Can I send notifications to multiple XMPP subscribers?
A: Yes, you can send up to 3 of them, by using To, CC, and BCC addresses, for the total of three notifications. If you need XMPP messages to be delivered to more subscribers, create a group chat on the server, invite all of them, and send notifications to the group chat.

Q: I want to monitor resources required by a particular machine, but different groups support different resources or clusters of resources. How can MAGNAPing help me?
A: By running several different instances of MAGNAPing, you have the opportunity to specify different group mailboxes, SMS phone numbers, or message queues for your notifications, depending on the list of resources being monitored.

Q: Why do you not provide a docker package?
A: Every installation of MAGNAPing has a unique combination of plugins. There would have to be too many docker packages created for all possible permutations of plugins. Upon request, we may provide scripts that can be used to install plugins into a docker package that you could use to create your deployment. Also, many technologies or serverices may be accessed on different TCP ports, depending on the specific installation or agreement.

Q: I do not know SQL. How can I make changes to the URLs list in my database?
A: If for some reason you cannot edit the URLs table in your database server, there are two options for you. One is to use the administrator GUI application. The other is to use the CLI to dump records into an XML file, to edit that file in a text editor, and then to use the CLI again, to migrate the records back into the database table. As long as you are not using the active flag or content search elements, you can also dump data into a plain-text file. See Section 5.2 on p. 98 for more details.

Q: Does MAGNAPing support SMTP.COM transactional email provider?
A: Unlike other providers, SMTP.COM does not make their API available through a Nuget package. If SMTP.com will make a Nuget package available in the future, we may look into adding it. In the mean time, you should be able to use the SMTP plugin included in the base package, since SMTP.COM provides access through SMTP protocol as well.

Q: Can MAGNAPing run on older .NET frameworks?
A: Yes, MAGNAPing prides itself by protecting your investment in IT. It can run on any frameworks
from 4.0 to 5.0, but for versions older than 4.7.1 you need a custom build. Please contact customer
service.

Q: I use SQL content check but MAGNAPing always reports a timeout error even from the running server. Why?
A: A query may time out for several reasons. The most obvious ones are that the query is not using an appropriate index, the query syntax makes it slow, or there is too much data to query. Try to create an index that the query can use. If that does not help, then redesign the query to return the result faster. Finally, try to reduce the number of records that it has to process.

Q: Does the built-in web dashboard support HTTPS?
A: The goal is to keep MAGNAPing as lightweight as possible. It leverages Windows built-in web server facility, to serve the dashboard page. In order to support HTTPS, an X509 certificate would have to be generated and installed. It has to be a certificate trusted by browsers. The user is encouraged to take care of the certificate installation, prior to changing the protocol of the URLs to https:// and the port number to 8443. Alternatively, a VPN may achieve the same goal of securing the dashboard contents, in transit.

Q: When I go to the dashboard URL in the browser, it never opens the page nor does it prompt for credentials. Why?
A: You may have changed the password in the MAGNAPing instance configuration file while the browser is still authenticated with the old password. Close the browser and reopen it, to clear the session.