Progress Software WhatsUp Gold 2021

Editorial Type: Review Date: 2021-03-01 Views: 3,999 Tags: Networking, Network Monitoring, Progress Software
Progress Software's WhatsUp Gold (WUG) is a great network monitoring choice for SMBs and enterprises and this latest version aims to make it even more appealing. WUG 2021 introduces enhanced log management and has the ability to collect Windows Event Logs plus Syslog events and present all the information in its main web console for easy analysis.

WUG 2021 introduces enhanced log management and has the ability to collect Windows Event Logs plus Syslog events and present all the information in its main web console for easy analysis.

WhatsUp Gold 2021 integrates tightly with the Elasticsearch analytics engine and provides extensive log search, filtering and export facilities. You can choose what events you want to collect, link events, conditions or trends with alerts and actions and create customisable dashboards in the main console for at-a-glance log status views.

The simple points-based system employed by WUG 2021 takes all the guesswork out of licensing costs. Each device, regardless of the number of network interfaces, CPUs and so on is considered one element and costs one point while each monitored application or log management source costs ten points.

Two versions are available with the Premium edition providing core functions such as discovery, interactive mapping, alerting and reporting plus cloud, device, network, storage and wireless monitoring. Optional add-on modules are available for virtualisation and application monitoring, network traffic analysis (NTA) and log management, which are all included in the Total Plus version.

Installing WUG 2021 on a Windows Server 2019 host was simple and the routine also loaded SQL Server 2017 Express and IIS. You don't have to do anything for your first network discovery as it runs this for on your local IP subnet and populates its dashboard with all network devices.

Elasticsearch installation is included in the initial routine and you can choose the basic OSS version, which only accepts connections from the WUG 2021 host. If you want the version with authentication and encryption, you'll need to source and install this separately and point the WUG host at it.

The WhatsUp Gold console is easy to use as it presents four menu options in its upper ribbon bar. You can swiftly run discoveries, view all network devices, pull up a wealth of analysis dashboards and access all WUG and add-on module settings.

Analysis dashboards are a great feature as you can create multiple custom views, add columns and choose what you want to see. Anything WUG is capable of monitoring can be included making it easy to create NOC (network operations center) views for your support teams.

Adding Windows and Syslog log data sources is a breeze as you choose monitored devices from the log settings page. For Windows Event Log sources, you can gather application, system and security logs and decide whether you want critical, error and warning levels as well.

WhatsUp Gold's viewer window reveals all the log action over the selected time period and its search facility quickly finds a log of interest. Advanced filters can be used to fine-tune the information further by applying sets of log type criteria and you can add alert thresholds to provide notifications of unusual activity.

Log management isn't the only new feature, as WUG's inbound REST API performance monitor has been enhanced with an outbound version allowing you to send information to WUG from third-party apps such as Microsoft 365 and Salesforce. Reporting also gets a boost with the improved rendering engine notably improving its appearance, and there's also a new application performance monitor (APM) profile for MySQL 8.0.

WhatsUpGold 2021 is a sophisticated network monitoring solution that delivers an impressive range of tools integrated seamlessly into a single console. The simplified licensing schemes make it very affordable for SMBs, it's scalable enough for enterprises and the new log management features add even more versatility.

Product: WhatsUp Gold 2021
Supplier: Progress Software Ltd
Tel: +44 (0)1344 360444
Web site: www.whatsupgold.com
Price: Premium - 25 devices from $2,740