Sage 100

For the IT gurus out there. Had 2 servers meltdown over memorial weekend. in both cases, 2 of the 3 drives in the RAID 5 array went south. Not sure how long the problem had persisted, I was alerted when the backup failed, but by that time it was too late, the RAID array was dead and the server would not start up (at one location a power outage drove the last nail in the coffin) Question is this - what affordable monitoring software would have been able to alert me to the fact that a drive in the array was having problems? Windows was dumb and happy because the raid controller was keeping the C and D drives running fine. That is until the second drive failed, then it was catastrophic failure. I am pretty sure any of the standard monitoring tools would not have seen this coming. (I called a couple and they agreed with me) I have checked into something like Kaseya, which says they would have caught it, but they have a 50 device minimum. What is out there for a single server but will monitor at the hardware level? The client has only a single server and did not recognize the gravity of the orange blinking lights on the front of the server. Appreciate any insights you can offer - thanks.

Do they have an IT firm that they work with? They probably should ... It also might be a great opportunity to discuss moving their systems to the cloud so they can get professional, full-time monitoring and assistance with things like drive failures. Gary Feldman at I-BN and Carla Brown at ISM are both great to work with - I would recommend starting there if you think they might be interested. They are both 90 Minds members. Other members do hosting as well but I don't have direct experience.

LOL @PeterWolf I'm their IT Firm!

What make/model of servers? We're a Dell shop so we can use their OpenManage software which will alert to the Windows Event Log on any hardware issue, including a single disk error or SMART warning in a RAID. We then monitor the Event Log with Continuum (basically equivalent to Kaseya), although you could easily use another software or service (Splunk, Spiceworks, EventSentry, PRTG, etc) or just roll your own with PowerShell (Get-EventLog).

@PeterWolf I guess what you are saying is maybe they need a larger IT Firm, and that may be true but for now I am their IT Consultant. Still would like to know what other admins use in this situation.

@SteveIwanowski OpenManage is great and they do have a Dell server, need to get it to email me alerts, will look into the suggestions. thanks.

Sorry about that @GregStiles - I think most of the IT firms that I work with will install alert systems that come with the hardware (like Steve said above) so I made an assumption that you needed that help. I think the server manufacture solutions are pretty simple to install and use although it might be too basic. You can scale up with third-party monitoring tools based on customer's needs and budget. It might be another opportunity for you to create a value stream that customers pay good money for. The flip side is you could go the outsourcing route and find a larger partner who will give you a commission for the referral (usually this is an ongoing commission) and that partner probably is invested on staying on top of all of that technology so you don't need to be while you still can provide your customer a great resource. I hope that helps.

Greg. For matters like this and are emergencies, please give us a call and we can help with a temporary environment until your client is operational back on-prem. Also consider that with certain hosting solutions available the underlying hardware is _instantly replaced_. Worst thing that happens - the client is kicked out of the system for several minutes. No extra software or ""eyes"" needed.. just built in. Let me know if we can help and provide you a sandbox during the rebuild. Cheers.