Monitoring System Peripherals

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When monitoring your UNIX server, you should not forget about the system peripherals, such as disk, tape, and printer devices.

Disks

Disk devices store your corporate data, so ensuring their correct operation is critical. Disk monitoring should be included as part of any effort to monitor a system. Chapter 5 is dedicated to covering the tools for monitoring disk devices because of the importance and complexity of the subject.

Tapes

By checking for tape hardware failures periodically, problems can be found before the tape drive is needed. For example, early detection and repair can result in the evening backup application running without delays.

You should use hardware monitors, such as the EMS Hardware Monitors , to ensure that your tape drives are healthy , so that backups may occur as scheduled. As mentioned earlier, a variety of tape- related errors can be detected , such as failed I/O operations to the tape, tape loader errors, and tape changer errors.

Printers

This chapter discussed earlier how you can use MIB instrumentation to look for important system information. A Printer MIB specification typically is supported by modern network printer devices. The Printer MIB stores the status of the printer (online, offline, and so forth), as well as information about printer subcomponents, such as an empty printer tray. A tool such as IT/O can be used to enable monitoring of individual fields in the MIB, such as printer status.

Using the lpstat command, you can check the status of jobs in the print queue and verify that the print scheduler is running. Using lpstat with no options shows you information for all the printers connected to the system.

Some printer management software is also available. One example is HP JetAdmin software, which can be used to manage printers and monitor the status of jobs printing remotely. This host-based application provides real-time printer and job status information, as well as status updates, remote diagnostics and troubleshooting, an optional status log, and a remote front panel. The utilities are accessible through a graphical interface. Web JetAdmin software adds additional capabilities, such as the ability to view customized maps that show printer locations and status information from a Web browser.

Web JetAdmin 4 is an HP software application that is used to monitor all peripheral devices on the network from a Web browser. Maintenance and troubleshooting can be done on any MIB-compliant printer device, including ScanJet 5 scanners and HP SureStore CD-ROMs.

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