IT Employment

I am looking for something that will help me stay on top of problems before they get out of control. I want to see what is going with switches, routers, servers, and workstations. The cost is definetly a factor, the lower the better.

Are you just checking to see if they're alive? To see if they're responsive? Are you checking on specific services? Are you interested in cetralized repoting capabilities? Do you need multiple alerting methods? Do you want redundancy?

Are you willing to invest time in this? [Either way, you have to spend time doing it yourself, or getting familiar with what you purchase.]

I realize that some time will be needed, but I am not sure what I should be looking for. What I want to be able to do is have a piece of software that could possibly help me find problems before they happen, or at least before they get out of hand. As far as doing it my self I do not even know where to begin.

http://www.nagios.org/
GPL and very powerful. Easier than big brother.

I looked at about 10 different programs and by far the best for price and functionality is Server Monitor from www.purenetworking.net

Its uses a web browser interface so you can get to it from anywhere on your lan, will notify you by email/sms.

Take a good look at ServersAlive - http://www.woodstone.nu/salive/
Invest in some time setting things up, and your efforts will be rewarded.