What’s Up Gold Introduction

Developed originally from a Freeware utility called WS Watch by John Junod, What’s Up Gold is a relatively inexpensive award-winning and popular network monitoring, mapping, notification and performance tool from Ipswitch.

What’s Up Gold Functionality

What’s Up Gold monitors the performance and availability of devices on your network 24/7. A simple graphical representation shows green for OK, red for errors and will alert you via email, pop up message, audible alert (or pager/SMS with an additional plug-in) should problems occur.

I am definitely not a network technician, but after a slower than expected installation of the Small Business Version, (which monitors up to 10 devices) I found this to be the easiest most intuitive network tool I have come across yet. With automatic discovery using SNMP and data from router tables to find network devices quickly and accurately; and simple to follow choices about how you would like to be alerted to failures, about how frequently you would like to ping your devices, a simple graphical map of your devices, and easy to understand tables it would be hard to go wrong.

What’s Up Gold Professional also runs as a Windows service and provides additional TCP/UDP Port monitoring, threshold monitoring of system resource such as CPU, disk space and memory, event logging and SNMP traps. You can also track back historical data as html reports and obtain secure remote access to network data. On the downside the ability to easily set up pager/SMS alerts would be useful.

What’s Up Gold tracks network traffic associated with FTP, HTTP, SMTP, DNS, POP3, Telnet and other common services and has a number of additional modules available which enhance functionality. Exchange Monitor checks performance and availability of email services. SQL Monitor will alert you to critical database errors and performance latency, and the Failover Module will enable managers to maintain normal monitoring functions if the server on which WhatUp Gold resides becomes unavailable.

If you felt you needed them, there’s a Knowledge Base, User and Getting Started Guides, Support Centre and User Forum also available.

Versions and Pricing

What’s Up Gold current version 8.0 is available in Small Business and Professional Versions and runs on Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP SP1 or later or Windows 2000. In order to use beeper or pager notifications, a local modem and phone line is required. WhatsUp Gold Small Business version is available from $295 and Professional from $1,495 including 12 months upgrades and support.

Conclusion

What’s Up Gold is a perfect first timer’s tool. Simple, easy to use and economical to purchase, with no need to invest in costly training or support, it’s ideal for the small to medium sized network. We are pleased to announce that we can now supply What’s Up Gold. Please take a look at our network monitoring section.

About the Author

Annie Raynor Annie Raynor, Bsc(Hons), possesses extensive experience in IT marketing and PR, particularly in the field of network management. In 2003 she joined OPENXTRA as Marketing and Business Development Manager, part of her remit being to raise OPENXTRA’s profile and assist in its growth.