ManageEngine Updates Apps Manager

November 8, 2011 Alex Woodie

ManageEngine has delivered Applications Manager version 10.1, a new release of its systems management software that works with IBM i and other servers. The new release introduces expanded support for VMware environments, improved SSL monitoring, and better Web services support, among other features.

ManageEngine’s Applications Manager is an enterprise-class systems management tool that monitors the gamut of gear found in data centers, including servers, databases, networks, Web applications servers, Web services, SAN arrays, and some ERP applications. The software works in virtualized environments, offers a cloud connector, supports service level agreement (SLA) management, and monitors PHP, Java, and Windows app performance–not to mention a full array of IBM i monitoring capabilities, which gains the attention of this newsletter.

In October, the Indian company unveiled version 10.1 of the software, which added support for VMware’s vFabric tc Server, a Java application environment that’s a drop-in replacement for Apache‘s Tomcat. Metrics are provided for memory, throughput, and details of threads and transactions.

A new SSL Certificate Monitor checks the validity of SSL certificates, and tells the user when the certificate will expire. This new monitor also checks the availability and response time of the domain containing the certificates.

Finally, version 10.1 brings support for configuring Google‘s Gmail for use in email notifications; the capability to add event logs other than the available default logs; and adds support for monitoring simple object access protocol (SOAP) operations with headers, the vendor says.

Just three months ago, ManageEngine released version 10 of Applications Manager. This was a bigger release that brought a number of new features, including the capability to monitor various network services, including DNS, LDAP, and mail servers, from multiple locations. This release also introduces a “real browser monitor” that gives customers a better idea of how their Web-based apps are behaving.

Version 10 also introduces: the vCenter Server, which improves the management of VMware environments; the capability to add new fields to capture additional information about monitors not enabled by default; new server configuration viewing options; a new Web client that lets the user customize their tabs; support for Amazon S3 cloud buckets; support for IPV6; the addition of anomaly detection as a standard features; the capability to specify roles to view additional performance metrics in Exchange Server 2007 and 2010; and 64-bit support for the Windows and Linux versions of the software.

Applications Manager is available in professional and enterprise additions. The subscription fee for Applications Manger Professional Edition ranges from $795 for 25 monitors to $5,995 for 250 monitors. The subscription fee for Applications Manger Enterprise Edition ranges from $ $7,995 for 25 monitors to $18,995 for 1,000 monitors. Some add-on monitors cost extra, including the “AS 400/iSeries” monitor, which costs $1,195 in both editions. For more information, see the vendor’s website at www.manageengine.com.