Pulseway's Enterprise IT Monitoring and Management Solution

Pulseway, fka PC Monitor, by MMSOFT Design Ltd., is a mobile monitoring and management suite. The suite consists of a system agent, a web-based interface, and a mobile app that collectively allows you to monitor and manage your Windows, Mac, and Linux systems from a tablet or from a phone without the use of RDP, VNC, or other remote connectivity protocol or remote control software.

You aren't limited to servers; you can monitor workstations as well.

Pulseway's agent goes deep into the operating system, giving you a close look at processes, CPU usage, disk space, memory, and users. You can also issue commands to the remote system, kill processes, restart the system, shutdown, power off, or enter maintenance mode.

End user support has never been so easy. You can chat with the user in real time, lock the computer to work on it, and then you can message the user when it's time to logon again.

Some notable features:

• Run command line commands.
• Run PowerShell commands.
• Carry on real-time chat with users.
• Logoff the current user or lock the desktop.
• Restart, Shutdown, Power off, Suspend, or Hibernate the system.
• Enter Maintenance Mode.
• Perform Windows Updates.
• Uninstall software.
• Manage security settings.
• Kill or restart processes.
• View Event Logs.
• View disk space and browse filesystems.

For up to 200 monitored systems, you can use Pulseway's SaaS solution. If you have more than 200 monitored systems, you need to investigate Pulseway's on-premises solution to lower latency and to boost your service efficiency.

Setting up Systems for Monitoring

The first step in the process is to go to Pulseway's Download page and grab the correct agent for your operating system (Linux, Mac, Windows, and Raspberry Pi). Next, you have to install the agent, which is a different process depending on your operating system.

The agent software also installs a small client application, the Pulseway Manager, on your computer that requires you to login to Pulseway's service before any monitoring can take place. Login with your Pulseway username and password and setup the details of how your system will be monitored and managed. This process is also different for each operating system as some items are selected by default and others are manual select.

Some features that you select in the Pulseway Manager require extra software to enable them. Once you select a feature, the software will download and install automatically after an acknowledging prompt.

The selections are very granular in that you can select services to manage, scheduled tasks to manage, performance counters, file browsing features, certificates, maintenance windows, and network connectivity to name a few.

On Windows, you can optionally select to manage the following advanced services:

• Active Directory
• Exchange Server
• Hyper-V
• IIS
• SCOM
• SQL Server
• Windows Backups
• VMware hosts
• XenServer hosts
• Amazon services
• Azure services
• SNMP
• ESET Remote Administrator

You can also manage notifications for host status, ping of various other hosts, storage, website availability, and SSL certification expiration.

Pulseway's monitoring and management capability is thorough and highly configurable. When you've made all the changes required for your system, save your changes. Your system is now being monitored and is ready for management.

Security Features

Pulseway designed its monitoring and management system as a secure service from the ground up. All communications are encrypted and take place over HTTPS. Additionally, you can choose two-step authentication so that your monitoring and management services are absolutely secure. You can restrict or block devices and limit the commands that can be executed from mobile devices.

You also receive a notification every time a new device is added to your account. And for those who like to have audit trails and forensics available, every command sent to a monitored system is logged.

• Fully encrypted communication based on RSA private-/public key exchange and AES (256 Bit) session encoding.
• Two-step authentication.
• Device command authorization for limiting the commands that can be sent from mobile devices.
• Device access policies allowing to globally restrict each device.
• Ability to block a mobile device from accessing the systems.
• A notification is sent every time a new mobile device is added to an account.
• Mobile device access PIN and fingerprint authentication using Touch ID on newer iOS-based devices.
• Every command sent is audited.

Your allowed mobile devices need to have strong passwords on them to further secure access. No device password or weak device passwords offers thieves an easy way into your device, its data and, its apps. If you bypass simple security measures, your systems will be vulnerable to attack and compromise.

Pulseway System Management

The true beauty of Pulseway is that you can manage your systems from any mobile device, regardless of where you are or how you're connected to the Internet. But how does that work? The Pulseway agent reports to a Pulseway SaaS server farm that maintains an encrypted two-way connection to your systems via the agent and the HTTPS protocol.

Your system reports its data and status to the Pulseway cloud and your mobile app connects to the Pulseway cloud. Your encrypted interactions take place using the Pulseway cloud as a secure intermediary between your mobile device and your remote systems. When you issue a command or check a service from your device, the command is processed by the central cloud service, and then delivered to your system for execution and results display back to your device. The process is near instantaneous.

Watch the Pulseway Overview video that gives you an idea of the number of available management options and the app's ease of use.

Monitoring Options

When you open the Pulseway Manager application on your managed node, you have dozens of options for notifications (alerts). You can also create your own custom alerts if one of the many preconfigured ones don't work for you by specifying conditions that, if met, will trigger an alert.

I have a word of caution to offer about setting up notifications. Only setup notifications that you really want to know about or your phone or other device will constantly alert you. The notification part of Pulseway is extremely good and should be used with some reservation.

However, if you're going to setup a notification console on a device for an individual or group of "eyes on glass" technicians, then you should use every possible alert that you want. The extreme to which you setup notifications will depend greatly on your service level agreements (SLAs) and other contractual service obligations. In other words, there are no set standards here; therefore Pulseway provides many options from which you may choose. To see a sample of provided notification options, see Figure 1.

Figure 1: Pulseway Manager's System Status Notification Options.

About Pulseway

Pulseway is mobile first IT management software that helps busy IT admins look after their IT infrastructure on the go.

MMSOFT Design was founded in Dublin, Ireland in 2011 and it is a global leading Remote Monitoring and Management solution provider for SME's. Since it's launch the solution has grown to have over 300,000 IT users around the world.

At Pulseway, it's our mission to help IT admins be IT Heroes. So we created a simple and affordable solution that lets you remotely monitor and manage all your IT systems directly from any smartphone or tablet.

Our Enterprise Server is preferred by over 250 leading corporations such as DELL, Louis Vuitton, Conde Nast, and British Columbia Institute of Technology.