Hobbit Monitor version 4.2 released

[Henrik Stoerner]

I am pleased to announce the release of Hobbit version 4.2.0.

This release comes after a full year of development since the
previous release, and 2 months of dilligent testing by lots 
of dedicated people on the Hobbit mailing list. It is safe to
say that this is the best tested release of Hobbit ever done.

This release is very much focused on Hobbit clients. The highlights 
of this release are:

* Full client support. The Hobbit clients now support monitoring
  of cpu-, disk- and memory-utilisation, as well as system logfiles,
  network ports and traffic, processes, file- and directory sizes,
  system clock synchronization, and much more. When a problem is
  detected on a host, the client data is automatically saved so
  it is available for later troubleshooting - even if the host
  has completely crashed.

* Pull-style data collection for DMZ hosts. Clients normally
  connect to the Hobbit server to deliver their data. For
  DMZ hosts this is often not possible due to firewall restric-
  tions. For such hosts, Hobbit 4.2 supports server-pulling
  of the data.

* Automatic updates of Hobbit client installations. Client
  installations of Hobbit 4.2 can be updated automatically
  without having to physically access the client hosts.
  Updates can be rolled out automatically from the Hobbit
  server, to individual clients or all of your monitored systems.

* A new "Acknowledgment" webpage lets administrators acknowledge
  alerts easily, without having to know the ack-code required
  in previous releases.

* A new "Critical systems" webpage allows detailed configuration
  of critical systems for large-scale operations. A web-based
  configuration tool enables the monitoring operations staff to
  easily configure individual hosts and/or services to appear
  on the Critical Systems view, and allows them to focus on
  the most important events at any given time.

* A new "Metrics report" webpage allows for comparison of trend
  data across hosts, e.g. to view the effect of loadbalancing
  a service across multiple hosts.

* Several independent projects have sprung up, including a
  BBWin (a client for MS-Windows based systems); DevMon
  (a data collection tool for SNMP-enabled devices); and
  The Shire (a repository for Hobbit add-ons, sample 
  configurations, and other interesting things). Links to 
  these can be found in the "About Hobbit" on-line help.

Plus performance improvements, lots of other small enhancements
and bugfixes.

Hobbit 4.2.0 is available from the Hobbit project page on 
SourceForge.net: 
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=128058&package_id=140220

If you are upgrading from a previous version of Hobbit, please refer
to the RELEASENOTES file shipped with Hobbit 4.2.0 for instructions
on updating.


I hope You will enjoy it.

Regards,
Henrik