RevSoft Delivers Smart Phone Interface for IBM i Monitoring Tool
August 17, 2010 Alex Woodie
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Administrators can now use their smart phones to respond to System i messages when they’re using RevSoft‘s message management and monitoring tool. The new feature added to Rev Message version 10.2 will be useful for tasks such as restarting failed jobs, which would typically require an administrator or operator to log onto the server from an emulator. Rev Message is one of an integrated set of systems management tools that include Rev Scheduler, Rev Dataflow, and Rev Guardian. The product, which saves administrators time by automatically scanning message logs and queues for important events, works equally well with System i, Unix, Windows, and Linux servers. In July, the Australian software firm unveiled the smart phone enhancement to Rev Message version 10.2, which shipped last year as part of a major user interface overhaul centered on Microsoft .NET. With the smart phone enhancement, any phone that can support e-mail and a Web browser can be used to view and respond to critical messages detected by Rev Message. The smart phone functionality involves the Rev Message server running on the IBM host running IBM i, and the Rev Message Dispatcher component, which installs on a Windows PC and functions as the intermediary between the IBM i host and the Internet-enabled smart phone used to consume and respond to the server error. When an error or message is detected, it’s forwarded to the smart phone via e-mail. To view the contents of the message, the operator clicks on the hyperlink automatically generated by the software, which opens the message in a Web browser.
The smart phone interface gives the administrator details about the error, including the date and time and whether it has been addressed. The administrator can send one of several pre-canned replies, or enter a numerical range if that is a valid reply. John Massey, RevSoft product manager, says the new capability was originally developed for Unix environments, but was adapted to work with the IBM i platform, as well. The capability works with all smart phones, as long as they have an e-mail client (preferably SMTP) and a web browser. Massey says the software will be particularly useful for acknowledging errors. If the software does not receive an acknowledgement for an error or a message, it will continue escalating the problem and alerting additional operators or administrators, until it receives an acknowledgement. Security is maintained through configuration of the central management console. All messages and responses are also logged for viewing in the console as well. For more information, visit www.revsoft.com. RELATED STORIES System i Automation from RevSoft is ‘FAB’ulous RevSoft Overhauls Server Operations Suite with .NET Interface RevSoft Pushes ‘Lights On’ Approach to Systems Automation SEA and RevSoft End Partnership for OS/400 Utilities U.S.A. Gets New OS/400 Systems Management Suite from SEA
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