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IT monitoring reduces the workload of retailers by about 30%

Food retailers reduce the workload accumulated by their IT areas by almost 30% thanks to monitoring.

Controlling data and extensive information from the whole company, by controlling, supervising and ordering everything through the same system, allows to reduce the times of action in the face of possible errors and failures, improves resource management and organization and increases the effectiveness of the business activity.

In addition, monitoring saves costs.

IT monitoring and retailers, what you need to know

Large food distribution firms carry out continuous processes to guarantee the supply of products on the shelves, so the volume of information generated by executing these tasks throughout the day is remarkable. 

If you add to that amount of data the diversity of systems in the IT structure with which retailers work on a daily basis, the route to obtain valuable, clear and practical information becomes even more complicated. 

The difficulty is greater if, in order to analyze these data, there are unqualified personnel without the support of a reliable platform to make their work easier.

This situation highlights that the fact of not having a monitoring system multiplies the actions necessary to obtain information on the activity of the technological structure of the company or the state of each of its facilities:

This slows down a company’s power to act and its ability to react. 

That, after all, translates into a loss of value both economically and in terms of performance, especially concerning the area of human resources.

What do we achieve with monitoring in the retail sector?

Through monitoring, it is possible to access, even remotely, the entire IT structure of a company. 

That is, by means of a central console you may organize and control an entire technology park. 

This, despite being able to present a heterogeneous panorama with a wide diversity of systems that sometimes do not support each other, goes under the command of a monitoring system by which it can be accessed.

Monitoring makes it possible to replace an existing system and it is also capable of coexisting with others. 

The kind of flexibility that is essential in the sector, because it allows to integrate new stuff to the existing system. 

This observability implies the ability to bring together all data sources and provide useful information for the company. 

The more complex IT systems are, the more important it is to simplify their monitoring.

That way, servers from different operating systems can be monitored by the same controller. 

And in turn, every time an error is detected anywhere in the park, the information can immediately reach those responsible, shortening the reaction time and anticipating more serious internal operating situations.

Monitoring, in addition to making control and error anticipation easier within the company’s performance, it also helps to find out aspects as simple as the state of the toner of a series of printers, or the time workers clocked in. 

Monitoring companies ends up leading to cost savings and service improvement.

Thanks to appliying monitoring systems, retailers in the food sector acquire a tool that enhances the control of the technological infrastructure that guarantees the traceability of their products throughout the distribution chain; from its origin to its arrival to the final customer or to sales establishments. 

In addition, the implementation of this data technology allows monitoring the status of the systems from a centralized position and anticipating breakdowns and errors, saving workload and improving delivery times.

In the food market there have already been companies that have opted for this development of their structures. 

An example of this is Fripozo, belonging to the Fuertes Group, which implemented a monitoring system thanks to its agreement with the Spanish company Pandora FMS. 

As a result of this adaptation, it achieved higher responsiveness to any system failure that could affect the control and distribution of deep-frozen food.

In this particular case, one of the concerns for the company was to achieve some degree of flexibility. 

That is, that something specific could be monitored without this involving a large investment of time and local resources without external intervention. 

Fripozo, after this association with Pandora FMS, managed to reach that goal.

In addition to Fripozo, other distributors such as Salvesen Logistics have also confirmed operational improvements after monitoring their IT structure. 

The company, which like Fripozo took its chances on the Spanish Pandora FMS, came to reveal a reduction of 24% of the workload of its IT area. 

As revealed from their organization, the attention that was constantly paid to the health of the system was focused on improving services and products.

The sector, with more and more competition, is devoted to a necessary organization of the internal data that are produced throughout the same day in a company. 

Any mistake can lead to a chain failure, a misuse of their own resources and a point in favor of competition in the market.

“The monitoring carried out by systems such as Pandora FMS represents clear economic savings for companies that implement it in their IT infrastructure. Reaction times to any failure are shorter and therefore have less impact on the company. But, in addition, internal processes have also been improved as different business models have been discovered“,

explains Sancho Lerena, CEO and founder of Pandora FMS.

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Limited is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 Limited offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

Politicians aren’t the only ones at risk: how to tell if your mobile or PC passwords have been stolen

The increasing use of new technologies by the population has increased the risk of theft. Not only on the street can one fall victim to thieves, but one can also lose sensitive information such as passwords or banking keys in the cloud.

In this case it is even easier not to realize that virtual robbers are committing a crime. 

In addition, security no longer depends on you, but the security of third parties, those we shared our data with, becomes important.

What you don’t know about the security of your platforms

How can you maximize individual security on the network? 

Easy-peasy. 

Periodically modifying passwords and following some basic tips. 

The first thing is to know whether the user has been affected by any breach in any platform. The process could be complex for someone who is not really used to all of this, but there are free and secure portals where you may just enter some identifying data of your account to find out whether the passwords are in danger.

Haveibeenpwned.com is one of the examples. 

*As if it were a Google search engine, users only have to enter their email or phone number to find out whether the passwords of that profile have been leaked. 

In case that leak is confirmed (a message appears in just one second and in a very intuitive red color), the procedure is simple: 

Go to all those accounts and change the password. 

As experts indicate, you have to set different passwords depending on the platform.

Cuida la seguridad de tus plataformas.
“It makes no sense to set the same password on all applications and systems. 

That equals making things easier for thieves, because by taking profit from a single security breach they can take control of all your accounts for not having different passwords”, explains Sancho Lerena, CEO of the monitoring company Pandora FMS.

The fact of setting different passwords is usually a problem for the user, who risks either forgetting some of them if they do not keep them safe or losing some speed in the accessibility processes to the different applications. 

Despite this, it is essential to reinforce the security barrier. 

And that is because not only large entities should be protected.

One of the easiest things to verify is the strength of the passwords used, and implementing a system that monitors this may seem simple and innocent, but it is the first step to a safer system. 

Security monitoring

Security monitoring is used to control key security aspects, such as backup verification, or the execution of anti-virus security programs.

The most powerful organizations on the market are a clear example of the importance of cloud security and data protection. 

Until recently there was a specific department to manage all IT information and its protection, but the increase of that data bag and the increase of the danger in the cloud have turned monitoring into the most effective solution. 

Monitoring the IT structure of a company means centralizing the control of all the information and, in addition, it allows to alert and anticipate each error. 

In addition, those in charge, both of the IT structure and of data security, do not have as much workload and can perform their functions 100%. 

“Our monitoring solution, for example, strengthens security where it is installed. 

Businesses are placing increasing emphasis on the security of their IT information, and monitoring is critical to that end. 

Any failure or error is reported instantly, so action is faster and losses smaller. 

However, ordinary users should not forget that their information is also valuable for cyber criminals”, underlines the expert at Pandora FMS, aware of the interest of large organizations in protecting their data with systems such as monitoring.

Conclusion

Cybercrime has increased over time. 

Users, given the number of processes that must be developed online, share more and more information. 

A scenario that has made companies take their chances on monitoring systems such as that of Pandora FMS and that extends to individuals the need to protect their data on the network.

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Limited is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 Limited offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

Pandora FMS Named An Emerging Favorite In Capterra Shortlist For Server Monitoring Software and APM

The work is hard and there are high expectations, but we don’t give up! The fight goes on and every day we are happier with what we achieve and what we mean to our users.

Therefore, Pandora FMS is proud to announce its mention as an  Emerging Favorite  in 2022 Shortlist for Server Monitoring Software and APM by   Capterra, a free online service that helps organizations find the right software.

Pandora FMS is always among the favorites. Capterra knows this

Capterra Shorlist

*As many of you may already know, Capterra Shortlist is an independent assessment that evaluates user reviews and online search activity to generate a list of market leaders in the software space that offer the most popular solutions. (Have a look at the Capterra Shortlist methodology here.)

As it could not be otherwise, our CEO and colleague Sancho Lerena has wanted to make some comments on this achievement:

“The first thing I would like to say is thank you. Sometimes it seems that one does not give enough thanks and there is much to thank, both to our coworkers and users, and even the Capterra platform itself. 

Especially because there are so many contributions and because it is absolutely always a huge honor to receive this kind of mention.” 

Here is a sample of our recognition in table format:

APM

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Limited is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 Limited offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

Coastal municipalities monitor their beaches to measure the environmental impact of tourism

The Spanish tourism sector is preparing for a record summer in which they hope to emulate the summer periods prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

The government has already advanced that 90% of the foreign tourism that visited the country in 2019 will be recovered.

That year, 84 million foreigners were received, a figure that is expected to be reached this year, taking advantage of the high temperatures and the national tourist offer.

For this reason, the administrations of the main tourist centers are being reinforced with the necessary technology to control capacity in order to improve the performance of public services and minimize the environmental impact.

Pandora FMS helps to monitor and manage our beaches

More and more municipalities are opting for the installation of monitoring systems that collect all the data in real time and allow them to be managed from a main console.

Monitoring, present in most companies to improve the management of their IT infrastructure, captures all the data that is constantly generated and manages it from this central system.

In this way, access to all the information collected is much simpler and immediate and the capacity to react to any anomaly detected is improved.

The importance of monitoring in companies has spurred the administration’s interest in improving the efficiency of their services and they are now applying this technology in the management of their beaches.

Municipalities in busy tourist areas are particularly interested in knowing the state of the busiest spots and are focusing on beaches, where systems are already being implemented to monitor the state of each sandy area and control the capacity.

Thus, in addition to measuring how many tourists visit a place in a given time slot, it is possible to minimize the environmental impact on the territory by establishing precise measures to improve the environmental protection of the beaches as well as the fauna and flora that inhabit them.

“Monitoring is a reality that is present in the private sector, and increasingly established in the public sector, which improves the control of tourist spots with large crowds of people.

With these systems it is possible to calculate how many people are on each beach at any given time.

In this way, the efficiency of health and safety services can be improved or the capacity of some of these areas can simply be restricted if the environmental damage being caused is alarming,

explains Sancho Lerena, CEO of the Spanish company Pandora FMS, which monitors systems of giants such as Rakuten or Toshiba, as well as public administrations such as Madrid Digital or hospitals.

monitor and manage our beaches

Where can we find these monitoring systems?

These monitoring systems are being installed in various parts of the country.

For example, the Coastal Observation and Forecasting System of the Balearic Islands will be installed on the beaches of Mallorca.

With this mechanism, the administration will allow tourists to share photographs taken from the same point on the beach, allowing them to see the evolution of the landscape in order to control its pollution and to record the hourly capacity of the beach.

This same experiment based on monitoring will also be present in Galicia, specifically in Vigo, or on beaches in Valencia.

The two main objectives in all cases are to control the environmental impact and to know the approximate capacity of each beach in different time slots in order to manage public services in the most efficient way.

Gran Canaria has also invested 500,000 euros in a system to monitor very busy beaches such as Las Canteras, Alcaravanera and La Baja.

For its part, Barcelona will use drones, after investing almost 170,000 euros, to measure the capacity of each beach without the need to identify the population.

In both situations, monitoring will be essential to collect all the data and enable the authorities to act as appropriate.

“Monitoring processes are in our day-to-day life, it is normal for administrations and tourism companies to adhere to this type of systems,” acknowledges the CEO of Pandora FMS.

“Monitoring allows access to information by a single means .

In this case, a computer where all the data generated every second is concentrated and which, if the monitoring system did not exist, would have to be collected from each specific console.

Thus, if there is an alert in an area, action can be taken from the central console and the other areas can be alerted,” says Lerena.

 

Tourist wave

The summer of 2022 was set to be the summer of the return to full normality, also in the economic sphere.

However, the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent inflationary wave led to fears of a new crisis from May to the present.

Despite this, the Government has reaffirmed that the Spanish economy is “strong” and has positioned tourism as one of the driving forces in the coming months.

The forecasts of the Executive go through to recover nine out of ten foreign tourists who visited Spain in 2019, a year in which 84 million people were received in the 12 months of the fiscal year.

At the moment, more than 20 million airline seats are already estimated to be booked for these months.

In addition, domestic tourism is also likely to grow by 3%, so the economy will not only be driven by the foreign population.

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Limited is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 Limited offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

Monitoring as a service: the alternative to talent shortages

There is quite a wide range of solutions offered by monitoring as a service to any company, from performing any analysis to detect the root cause of the issue to determining the path of the failure.

Here goes…

Our opinion on monitoring as a service

One of the most important and obvious benefits it brings to the table is that it solves training problems of workers involved or just solves the shortage of talent of these workers right away. 

It may sound a bit harsh… but it is what it is. 

The increase in the amount of information available in companies, and the obligation to be able to manage this IT structure well means that workers must constantly be better qualified.

In addition, the increasing importance of IT means that infrastructure managers have a certain amount of work overload. 

Something that with a monitoring system does not happen! 

Rather the other way around, monitoring as a service establishes a theoretical bridge between technology and business, drawing a scheme where you can easily detect where the source of the problem is, saving time and actions to the operating team.

Monitoring reduces the importance of the traditional involvement of people from different areas of the organization and the work overload that managers in this process may have. 

To sum up, monitoring systems control all data and allow access to information from the same platform, avoiding that those in charge of this area have to stay aware of several fronts without fully concentrating on a single one. 

Also inactivity cost is reduced!

Let’s get to the point!

“You must take into account that the transformation of a given company implies that there is more software. 

And, therefore, more business areas that depend on technology. A series of changes that imply the need to hire more competent profiles. 

Everything with the aim for all pieces to fit perfectly, both the computer and its software as well as the network and the technician who handles it “. 

Explains Sancho Lerena, CEO of Pandora FMS, as you surelyl know, an international reference in monitoring.

An example of this need is that the growth of hybrid infrastructures is 25% per year according to IDC data. 

For that reason, many companies are taking their chances on taking out their IT monitoring infrastructure to save money and especially time.

This process of getting the entire IT organization under the umbrella of the same system also helps the infrastructure manager, as they have higher capacity to manage its records. 

On the one hand, it collects all the data despite the fact that it is a large volume. 

And, secondly, it concentrates access to all that information on a single centralized console.

In conclusion, we get over the lack of time for the worker to be aware of fundamental tasks such as security or data management. 

It also gets rid of the possible lack of capacity to adapt to the different operating systems that may exist in the same company. 

And, lastly, the workload involved in facing a constant data flow where any minimal error must be detected is minimized. 

Systems such as Splunk, Datadog or Pandora FMS itself help in the process.

Conclusions

Through monitoring, it is possible to use information in a reactive way, anticipating problems and alerts received; preventive, since analyses are obtained that help to be prepared for any worst-case scenario; and retrospective, since the emerged crises are also studied to find out the extent of their impact and know how to take measures properly in the future.

 

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Limited is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 Limited offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

Politicians aren’t the only ones at risk: how to tell if your mobile or PC passwords have been stolen

The increasing use of new technologies by the population has increased the risk of theft. Not only on the street can one fall victim to thieves, but one can also lose sensitive information such as passwords or banking keys in the cloud.

In this case it is even easier not to realize that virtual robbers are committing a crime. 

In addition, security no longer depends on you, but the security of third parties, those we shared our data with, becomes important.

What you don’t know about the security of your platforms

How can you maximize individual security on the network? 

Easy-peasy. 

Periodically modifying passwords and following some basic tips. 

The first thing is to know whether the user has been affected by any breach in any platform. The process could be complex for someone who is not really used to all of this, but there are free and secure portals where you may just enter some identifying data of your account to find out whether the passwords are in danger.

Haveibeenpwned.com is one of the examples. 

*As if it were a Google search engine, users only have to enter their email or phone number to find out whether the passwords of that profile have been leaked. 

In case that leak is confirmed (a message appears in just one second and in a very intuitive red color), the procedure is simple: 

Go to all those accounts and change the password. 

As experts indicate, you have to set different passwords depending on the platform.

Cuida la seguridad de tus plataformas.
“It makes no sense to set the same password on all applications and systems. 

That equals making things easier for thieves, because by taking profit from a single security breach they can take control of all your accounts for not having different passwords”, explains Sancho Lerena, CEO of the monitoring company Pandora FMS.

The fact of setting different passwords is usually a problem for the user, who risks either forgetting some of them if they do not keep them safe or losing some speed in the accessibility processes to the different applications. 

Despite this, it is essential to reinforce the security barrier. 

And that is because not only large entities should be protected.

One of the easiest things to verify is the strength of the passwords used, and implementing a system that monitors this may seem simple and innocent, but it is the first step to a safer system. 

Security monitoring

Security monitoring is used to control key security aspects, such as backup verification, or the execution of anti-virus security programs.

The most powerful organizations on the market are a clear example of the importance of cloud security and data protection. 

Until recently there was a specific department to manage all IT information and its protection, but the increase of that data bag and the increase of the danger in the cloud have turned monitoring into the most effective solution. 

Monitoring the IT structure of a company means centralizing the control of all the information and, in addition, it allows to alert and anticipate each error. 

In addition, those in charge, both of the IT structure and of data security, do not have as much workload and can perform their functions 100%. 

“Our monitoring solution, for example, strengthens security where it is installed. 

Businesses are placing increasing emphasis on the security of their IT information, and monitoring is critical to that end. 

Any failure or error is reported instantly, so action is faster and losses smaller. 

However, ordinary users should not forget that their information is also valuable for cyber criminals”, underlines the expert at Pandora FMS, aware of the interest of large organizations in protecting their data with systems such as monitoring.

Conclusion

Cybercrime has increased over time. 

Users, given the number of processes that must be developed online, share more and more information. 

A scenario that has made companies take their chances on monitoring systems such as that of Pandora FMS and that extends to individuals the need to protect their data on the network.

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Limited is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 Limited offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

The most complete comparison: Pandora FMS Open Source vs Pandora FMS Enterprise

What is Pandora FMS Open Source?

Pandora FMS Open Source is not a freemium software, it is not bloatware nor shareware (*Wink for those born before the 80s). Pandora FMS is licensed under GPL 2.0 and the first line of code was written in 2004 by Sancho Lerena, the company’s current CEO.

At that time, free software was in full swing and MySQL was still an independent company, as was SUN Microsystems. Today there are thousands of users of the Open Source version that regularly download updates through the system that we designed for that specific purpose.

We do not know more about the subject (neither their names, nor their companies…) because, above all, we respect privacy.

We consider Pandora FMS to be a real free software. The project has been active in Sourceforge since 2004 and we have all the awards granted by this entity that leads Open Source. All the code is available on Github in real time, but we do believe that there is something more important and that is the documentation we have available in five languages (Spanish, English, French, Japanese and Russian), with a level of depth that allows you to get the most out of it without having to pay for certifications, training or consulting.

Printed, the manual has more than 1,000 pages (per language) and is maintained by our professional development team, Q&A, translators and professional documentalists. We also have a public forum where we solve questions, with more than 15,000 messages.

We believe that freedom consists in offering users options, not just giving them part of the pieces of a puzzle without instructions.

Pandora FMS Enterprise

However, Pandora FMS has a version based on a commercial license that extends some of the features present in Pandora FMS OpenSource version. This license incorporates additional source code that is not publicly available or free of charge.

These features are oriented to demanding professional environments that require some automation and more specific tools already created to use them in operation and with professional support so that if something fails they can ask and get a patch if necessary. It is exactly for these types of environments that we designed Pandora FMS Enterprise.

If you want to use Pandora FMS Community and have doubts about whether it will be enough for your organization: Don’t hesitate!, it is not a question of size, we have users of the Open version with thousands of agents and who have been using it for years.

Obviously the main benefit of the Enterprise version is that you will have someone to support you at all times. Whether it is some problem with an update or throughout the installation of a plugin. But there are many small differences that can be key to optimizing your day-to-day management.

Next we will describe some of the Enterprise features. If you want to try them yourself, you can test the waters of a 30-day trial version, but let us show it to you at an online meeting and you’ll save yourself the trouble of messing with the software. Your time is valuable and while our documentation is extensive, PFMS has plenty of features.

Services

Services are the way to show in a simple and visual way what things are like in your organization, classified into different entities that in turn are made up of other services and / or metrics.

That way you may perform an automatic root cause analysis and find out when a service is affected, where the source is and even have it displayed in the form of a tree:

Services complement the existing display options in Pandora FMS and allow system managers to define weight rules that have their systems’ redundancy to alert only in case of need, not when something irrelevant fails.

↑ Go to index

Policies

The need arose from a client who managed many computers with different purposes and technologies. They found out that monitoring Windows 2000 computers was different from monitoring Windows 2003, and that of course the Redhat Linux had different needs from the Debian Linux. It also had differentiated database environments, such as DB2 or MySQL.

Base monitoring could be “compartmentalized” into different sets of checks that could be standardized, so that any Linux machine that had Oracle could be monitored the same. That way, we made sets of checks that could be easily deployed to machine groups.

Thanks to policies, it is possible to homogenize monitoring and to deploy standard monitoring by technologies.

Thus a system can have different policies applied (e.g. base operating system, database, application X, network performance, etc.) and for every time you modify the policy, it can get “synchronized” with those systems that are subscribed to said policy, in a totally automatic way.

Of course, exceptions can always be made to policies at individual level, and each system can have unlimited policies in addition to custom monitoring. Using policy monitoring can save system administrators a huge amount of time.

↑ Go to index

Customization and OEM

If you need to sell your own monitoring product, with your own brand and full customization not only of its look, but also of its installers, command path, running services, ISO installation images, Windows agents, logos, manufacturer and product names, Pandora FMS Enterprise has different customizing levels.

The most basic, and included as standard in any Enterprise license, allows you to customize the appearance of the console so that it does not look like Pandora FMS but your own product, with your own brand.

If what you need is to go further, and generate a software with another name and that from the installation process to the name of the database everything is alien to Pandora FMS, then OEM customization is what you need. We can even generate update packages specific to your OEM (or teach you how to do it so you can fend for yourself).



↑ Go to index

History DB

Pandora FMS Enterprise has a secondary storage system in an additional database. The system automatically transfers the data from more than N days to the history database and when it needs it to make reports or graphs, it uses both databases to gather information.

This allows you to have an almost unlimited data history (several years) without compromising the speed of access to day-to-day data.

↑ Go to index

Delegated authentication in Active Directory

Whether you need your installation to rely on an Active Directory to authenticate users, or to automatically create them at login, assigning them specific profiles or filtering them through a blacklist, this feature is designed specifically for professional environments like yours.

It has advanced options such as delegating to a secondary server, excluding administrators, complementing it with double authentication through Google Auth and many other options.

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Remote control

Remotely control and access your systems, whether windows workstations, Linux or Windows servers, or Raspberry or similar embedded systems. Access the remote shell as if you were in front of it, the remote desktop, or copy files both ways. All this from the same Pandora FMS WEB console, fully integrated into your asset management.

In the Enterprise version you may have your own on-premise infrastructure of eHorus servers so that all communication among your systems can be managed and controlled, with total autonomy from third parties and with maximum security and confidentiality.

In the community version, however, you may use our Cloud servers, up to a maximum of five devices for free.

↑ Go to index

Satellite Servers

Satellite servers allow headless remote monitoring of entire networks of equipment in a distributed way. Install Satellite servers in the networks of your clients, they will obtain metrics of all kinds of devices around them, exploring what they have around them automatically and sending the information to the central server where you may manage it as if they were normal agents.

Satellite servers are perfect for making deployments in remote sites, customer offices or inaccessible environments. They can be installed on Raspberry, or any type of container.

↑ Go to index

User Experience (UX) Monitoring

Nothing like observing things pretending to be a real user, if possible from the same chair as the real user. This is what user monitoring consists of, replicating a transaction from beginning to end, step by step, calculating the time it takes in each step, and verifying that each step is completed correctly.

That way you will not only find out whether it fails, but you will also know where, and how long each step takes. You may even take a screenshot to know what the fault looked like. This can be done for web applications (even if they have Java, Flash, HTML5, etc.), and also for traditional desktop applications. It can be done centrally (WUX) or in a distributed way so that the probes perform the tests from different geographical locations.


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Remote agent deployment

We know that deploying agents and configuring them is one of the most burdensome points of deploying monitoring. That is why we created a tool that allows, providing credentials, to connect to Windows or Linux systems to copy the agent and carry out its unattended installation.

It allows you to customize the installation, by different networks, environments or groups of machines. From dozens to thousands of systems can be installed or upgraded from the agent deployment console.


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Omnishell

Omnishell is a Pandora FMS Enterprise feature that is used for orchestration (IT automation). It is a fully native tool integrated into the console that uses PFMS agents to execute command blocks on selected targets.

A use example would be to configure the auto-start of the HTTPD service on CentOS 7 systems massively. Another example could be to install a manual patch on those Windows machines that you select from a list. It can be one or several hundred machines.

The system is designed to be executed on hundreds of systems simultaneously and wait for the order to be executed, showing on the screen the progress, machine by machine:

The total monitoring solution for full observability

Contact our sales team, ask for a quote or solve all of your doubts about our licenses.

Get in touch!

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Auto Provisioning and automatic agent configuration

It implements an automatic mechanism by which it can apply policies and changes to newly provisioned agents, so that after deployment, monitoring configuration is automated, assigning it group(s), monitoring policies, alerts, etc.

This customization is done based on rules. For example, having a certain IP range, a specific brand or custom field, or a hostname with a certain pattern. In addition, after you make the configuration change, you may generate a custom action.

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Collections

Deploying advanced monitoring requires bringing scripts and small applications (ours, yours or from third parties) to the monitored systems, to be executed by the agent in the form of plugins.

Collections allow you to gather this set of files and send them them to agents in an integrated way in the policies. That way, using plugins is something simple and transparent for the final operation.

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Log collection

Pandora FMS can collect logs from any source that supports syslog or through software agents (Windows and Linux). Such logs can be plain text files, or Windows system events.

They will be collected by Pandora FMS monitoring agent and sent to the server along with the monitoring data. So if you already have agents installed, you may collect logs from those systems conveniently and quickly, and without additional software or licenses.

Unlike monitoring data that is stored in a conventional SQL database, logs are stored in a separate Elastic system. You will be able to store gigabytes worth of logs and keep them for a long time (you will only need more disk space). You may set up alerts or search through your data sources. It is the ideal complement to comprehensive monitoring, and fully integrated into the console.

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Inventory Alerts

PFMS inventory allows you to obtain data of many types: installed software packages, users with access to the equipment, installed patches, hardware devices, firmware and version of the base system, license or serial number, etc.

Alerts allow you to generate actions in case of finding or not finding certain data on a computer with inventory information (whitelist / blacklist).

For example, what if you know that there is a vulnerable version in your systems? Well, you could create an alert that notifies you if someone is using it. Or on the contrary, if you need an application installed on all your systems and someone does not install it, you may find out in real time.

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Metaconsole / Command Center

The Command Center is the jewel in the crown of Pandora FMS.

It serves the purpose of centrally controlling an unlimited number of independent Pandora FMS instances (each with its server, its console and its databases) so that you may manage dozens of thousands of agents from a single point, while these systems are in turn managed by independent instances.

This federated management system ensures uniformity and ease of management. It is a robust system where one system failing does not affect the rest of the systems, and where growth is fully horizontal and distributes loads automatically.

We have clients with more than 40,000 agents and more than one million metrics collected.

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High Availability (HA)

In critical environments and/or with lots of load, it is possible that it is necessary to distribute the load among several machines and make sure that if any Pandora FMS component fails, the system will stay online.

PFMS has been designed to be modular but it is also designed to work collaboratively with other components and to be able to take on the burden of those that failed. The most critical component is the database (MySQL/Percona) that can be configured in Active/Passive mode so that in case of failure, a read-only node is automatically activated and the system continues to operate without pause, and without data loss.

This system is integrated into Pandora FMS console.

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Discovery Cloud

Discovery Cloud allows, through a fully pre-installed and centralized system, to configure native connectors (through APIs) with the most widespread public cloud providers: Amazon, Azure and Google.

You will be able to get it hooked onto your instances and explore the resources available for monitoring: machines, disks, databases and other elements.

The advantage of this system is that you may get information about the services dynamically, without installing agents. In addition, if you later install agents, you may add both monitoring approaches. Through the credential container system you may even monitor different Amazon instances, for example.


In the case of Amazon, you will also be able to find out the cost of active services.

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Discovery Applications

As with cloud providers, Discovery allows out-of-the-box to monitor some extended technologies centrally and remotely: Oracle, SAP R3, DB2, SQL Server, and VmWare virtualization (through the vCenter API).

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Enterprise ACL’s

Along with OEM features, it allows you to customize not only the look, but the feature accessible by all types of users (including administrators). That way you may limit the functions of a PFMS instance, even making the menus disappear.

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Comparison table Open Source vs Enterprise

 

FeaturesOpen sourceEnterprise
Tech supportIn community forums, by volunteersWorldwide hourly coverage. 24×7 optional
Professional services
Professional certification Several levels
Operating modelon-premiseon-premise
SaaS (MaaS)
Remote monitoring SNMP, WMI and with plugins
Monitoring with agents
Reports, dashboards and visual consoles
Alerts system
Multi-user and multi-tenant
Netflow
Network Configuration Manager
IPAM (764 version)
Mobile Console APPs
High Availability (Manual) (Integrated)
Distributed Servers (Satellite)
Policies
Services
AD Authentication
Historical DB
Remote controlOnly SaaSSaaS and On-premise
Transactional monitoring of user experience (UX)
IT Service ManagerPartial
Remote agent deployment
Omnishell
Agent autoconfiguration / autoprovisioning
Command center (Metaconsole)
Collections
HA
Correlated alerts
Inventory alerts
Log collection
Discovery Cloud
Discovery Applications
Enterprise ACL’s
OEM and Partial CustomizationPartial
 
 

 

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Limited is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 Limited offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

The most complete comparison: Pandora FMS Open Source vs Pandora FMS Enterprise

What is Pandora FMS Open Source?
Pandora FMS Open Source is not a freemium software, it is not bloatware nor shareware (*Wink for those born before the 80s). Pandora FMS is licensed under GPL 2.0 and the first line of code was written in 2004 by Sancho Lerena, the company’s current CEO.

At that time, free software was in full swing and MySQL was still an independent company, as was SUN Microsystems. Today there are thousands of users of the Open Source version that regularly download updates through the system that we designed for that specific purpose.

We do not know more about the subject (neither their names, nor their companies…) because, above all, we respect privacy.

We consider Pandora FMS to be a real free software. The project has been active in Sourceforge since 2004 and we have all the awards granted by this entity that leads Open Source. All the code is available on Github in real time, but we do believe that there is something more important and that is the documentation we have available in five languages (Spanish, English, French, Japanese and Russian), with a level of depth that allows you to get the most out of it without having to pay for certifications, training or consulting.

Printed, the manual has more than 1,000 pages (per language) and is maintained by our professional development team, Q&A, translators and professional documentalists. We also have a public forum where we solve questions, with more than 15,000 messages.

We believe that freedom consists in offering users options, not just giving them part of the pieces of a puzzle without instructions.

Pandora FMS Enterprise
However, Pandora FMS has a version based on a commercial license that extends some of the features present in Pandora FMS OpenSource version. This license incorporates additional source code that is not publicly available or free of charge.

These features are oriented to demanding professional environments that require some automation and more specific tools already created to use them in operation and with professional support so that if something fails they can ask and get a patch if necessary. It is exactly for these types of environments that we designed Pandora FMS Enterprise.

If you want to use Pandora FMS Community and have doubts about whether it will be enough for your organization: Don’t hesitate!, it is not a question of size, we have users of the Open version with thousands of agents and who have been using it for years.

Obviously the main benefit of the Enterprise version is that you will have someone to support you at all times. Whether it is some problem with an update or throughout the installation of a plugin. But there are many small differences that can be key to optimizing your day-to-day management.

Next we will describe some of the Enterprise features. If you want to try them yourself, you can test the waters of a 30-day trial version, but let us show it to you at an online meeting and you’ll save yourself the trouble of messing with the software. Your time is valuable and while our documentation is extensive, PFMS has plenty of features.

Services
Services are the way to show in a simple and visual way what things are like in your organization, classified into different entities that in turn are made up of other services and / or metrics.

That way you may perform an automatic root cause analysis and find out when a service is affected, where the source is and even have it displayed in the form of a tree:

Services complement the existing display options in Pandora FMS and allow system managers to define weight rules that have their systems’ redundancy to alert only in case of need, not when something irrelevant fails.

 

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Limited is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 Limited offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

Madrid improves the services of the EMT monitoring the data of its buses

The public service of buses of Madrid, the EMT, was one of the protagonists of Global Mobility Call that took place the 14th and 16th of June in IFEMA. The company from Madrid exposed its future plans tracing the route to continue transforming the capital into a Smart City where sustainable mobility and independent vehicles acquire great relevance.

Nevertheless, executing this plan would be impossible without a technology characterized by generating data on a steady basis. 

That’s why the city has taken its chances on data control through monitoring. This is the secret for the success of the EMT, that already has established a monitoring system thanks to Pandora FMS.

Pandora FMS, the great secret for Madrid’s EMT success

The EMT counted on a system based on a central HOST, that is to say, a computer or a set of computers around where all the information circulated and to which others connected.

But, after a remarkable enterprise growth, this system became ineffective before an activity that seemed uncoverable, the reason why they were forced to change their IT infrastructure management.

The public transport company confronted a remarkable technological growth of buses and users, and they set the goal of having a trustworthy control over the whole system, both the hardware and the processes that take place.

And it was there where monitoring came up, that is to say, the reception and analysis of data and their management by means of a central console.

In other words, the EMT needed a system that canalized all the information to a single computer from which to access all the interconnected technology, and the agreement with the Spanish company Pandora FMS made such a solution available to them.

Through the alliance, the regional public giant managed to reduce costs and improve its service until becoming a reference in public transport for the smart cities of the future, as it has been shown in the Global Mobility Call.

“The EMT needed to remarkably improve the management of all the information. 

It must be taken into account that its fleet is made up of more than 2,000 buses and that tens of thousands of users use this type of transport daily. 

To satisfy this high demand they leaned on evolution to implement a monitoring system able to adapt to the systems the EMT already had in motion, but that could be able to coexist with future developments”, 

explains Sancho Lerena, CEO of Pandora FMS

This monitoring system allows, among other things, to improve the process of checking bus availability through applications, thanks to which the user can see how much is left before the bus arrives from their phones. 

It also makes it easy for maintainers to manage with real-time information on each machine, its performance, and its status.

By means of Pandora FMS technological solution, not only does it increase the control that exists over the fleet, but it also achieves better response to any incident apart from preventing possible breakdowns, which reduces the impact on the end user and maximizes the benefits.

“When this monitoring system is implemented in the EMT, a watchdog agent is also established that reduces workload. 

What is achieved with this mechanism is that there is no need to carry out periodic checkouts to see that the system is working correctly and that, in the event of an error, it can be alerted in time to act and prevent similar ones”, 

highlights the head of Pandora FMS.

EMT Madrid now has control of each bus, which by means of LAN networks constantly dump information to the central. 

A step that in just a few years will be left behind, since they intend to improve data management until knowing in real time the capacity in each bus or even establish some that are completely autonomous. 

A series of innovations that are framed within the goal of smart cities, where the use of technology for the efficient development of services is the fundamental pillar.

The power of real-time data

Investment in technological development has only just begun. 

In the coming years, the use of 5G will end up being established, which allows higher connectivity and higher speed in the use of this type of networks. 

In turn, this scenario will increase the ability of systems to obtain data in real time. And, therefore, service management itself may be more efficient by having the option of adjusting to the behavior of users with a correct monitoring system. 

Madrid, which has reaffirmed in the Global Mobility Call its image of smart city, is already working on creating a digital twin (a virtual recreation of the city) that allows us to find out the movement that takes place in the distribution of its logistic microhub. 

That way, as with the other services, circulation can be anticipated and improved and, therefore, more efficient and sustainable mobility is achieved. 

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Limited is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 Limited offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

The arrival of Pandora FMS in the United States thanks to the master’s degree from Rice University

Pandora FMS is an international entity and needs activity. And seeking that activity we set our eye on that great technological power, the United States.

How does one approach the United States?

Well, in multiple ways… 

Among them: having a team from that capital nation, with five senior professionals who are doing their MBA final project. 

The University of Rice from Texas contacts you. You sign up for their program and then wait for them to choose you as their project. 

And bingo! 

To date we have had several meetings with this team of five professionals. We already explained who we are, in what we work, our product strategies, marketing, sales…

And they answered us: 

“We are going to help you get into the USA market with our project, a specific marketing plan for the US market that includes, above all, communication strategies.” 

Things have gone so well between us that after a month and a half working remotely, we have met here, in our offices in Madrid, to finish clearing out issues and see the presentation of their final proposal. 

In addition, one of them, Sean Siegfried, has granted us an interview for untiring fans of this blog who love to follow every little detail of our trajectory. 

Here we go!

Pandora FMS and the U.S.A.: the Interview

 Could you tell us briefly about you: from where you come, what you do?

I was born in Brazil and I grew up in Portugal. I completed my degree in London before beginning my career in the industry of oil services. During the last 12 years I have moved between South America, North America and now the Middle East.  At the moment I am the Managing director of a private company in Saudi Arabia that lends manifold services to the greatest world companies, Saudi Aramco.

What brought you to Pandora FMS?

Rice University connected us with Pandora FMS for our last masters project. 

It was a consulting project of four weeks in which we studied how we could help Pandora FMS to get their way around and to obtain more market quota in the USA.

Could you describe what your project consists of?

The project consisted of understanding the business of Pandora FMS and how it could expand its operation and market participation in the USA market. 

The main motivation was to research and create a possible action plan for Pandora FMS to use in the future.

In addition to providing sufficient tools that make management understand the multiple opportunities that are available with the research that was conducted during the eight-week period.

What were the biggest challenges during the project?

The biggest challenge for the team was to understand the capabilities and advantages that Pandora FMS could bring to the US market. 

Once the team understood the applications, they had no difficulty identifying specific segments or specific areas where Pandora FMS could really make a difference when trying to get into the IT monitoring market.

What surprised you the most about our business?

The amount of competition that Pandora FMS has all over the world, and that even despite this, it still has such a strong customer base with large corporations. 

What do you think are the essential features that would make it possible for Pandora FMS to succeed in the United States?

Especially the cost structure and ability to scale slowly if necessary.

What is the most relevant lesson you have learned from this experience?

Meeting a small but dynamic team with amazing features. 

There is no doubt that the company can slowly grow with the cost base it has now. 

How would you recommend Pandora FMS to technology experts?

With this motto: “The best technology, reliable and affordable, to better monitor your organization.”

Here comes a difficult question: Can technology touch the heart?

I’m not sure how to respond to this, but if technology solves a problem, then it will have a positive effect on the customer. 

In my honest opinion, I believe that technology can touch the heart on the side of the creator/investor.

Is there anything else you would like to comment or say about Pandora FMS or the business?

I think more money should be spent on marketing and branding. 

And make the effort to participate in global forums to better understand what the needs of the market are. 

And, of course, more importantly, expand the brand footprint across multiple segments.

Finally, what do you think of our country?

After spending my life in Portugal, I was lucky enough to visit Spain multiple times. 

I really enjoy the food and walking through the streets of Madrid! 

In general, it was a great experience to share with my classmates!

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Limited is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company develops and distributes IT products for Internet and IP-based networks, including communication systems, Internet software, security, network, and media products. Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 Limited offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.