Messaging and Directory Server software used around the world in the Government, Military, Aviation and Commercial sectors.

Products

Isode Messaging Operational Management

Isode ships a number of flexible management tools with our Internet and X.400 messaging servers, including tools that support monitoring and control of operational systems.

M-Switch Operational Management covers all of the variants of the M-Switch product, both Internet and X.400 servers. Operational management of M-Switch has a number of manager visible components:

• MConsole, a graphical console that enables monitoring and control over one or more copies of M-Switch.
• Audit Database, a database of structured audit log data from one or more M-Switch servers. Used by Isode tools for management reporting, message tracking and quarantine management
• Message Operator Interface (Web) covering operational statistics summary, message tracking and quarantine management.
• Event Handling & Audit Logging using a client/server protocol, supporting event log viewing monitoring and searching.
• Monitoring using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and the MADMAN (Mail and Directory Management) MIBs (Management Information Base).

 

MConsole

MConsole's graphical display gives a structured overview of the status of one or more M-Switch servers. It is the primary operational management tool for M-Switch. Monitoring features include:

• Overall queue status.
• Information on high, medium and low priority messages.
• Information on each M-Switch channel.
• Graphical display of key M-Switch parameters, such as number of messages and number of channels running.

As well as monitoring M-Switch, MConsole can be used to control the queue, and provide operator functions which are a critical part of a managed messaging service.

You can read more about MConsole here.

Audit Database

The Audit Database is a key management component of M-Switch, that holds audit information on messages that have been processed. Details of the audit database structure, architecture and Isode and customer applications built over the audit database are described here.

The Audit Database is an enabler for a wide range of statistical analysis options, such as those presented by the Message Operator Interace described below.

Message Operator Interface

Enabled by the Audit Database, the Message Operator Interface allows in-depth examination of and control over messaging activity across multiple MTAs. It gives access to:

• Message searching,
• Quarantine management,
• User role allocation and setup, and
• Comprehensive statistical reporting.

You can read more about the Message Operator Interface here.

Event Handling & Audit Logging

Isode server products and associated management tools use an event system. Events are defined in an XML repository, providing documentation of events and operator actions. Events are numbered in a structured manner to indicate severity and error type. The event system deals with events that need operator action, and informative events to give indication of progress and to help with diagnosis of problem situations.

Details on the Event Log Viewing tool can be found here.

SNMP Monitoring

MConsole is ideal for direct monitoring and control of M-Switch. M-Switch may also be monitored using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) from an SNMP Console. Use of SNMP is ideal to monitor M-Switch from a third party product. Isode servers use a sub-agent model for support of SNMP and M-Switch supports the latest SNMP MADMAN (Mail and Directory Management) MIBs (Management Information Base), specified in RFCs 2788 and 2789. You can read more about Isode's SNMP architecture and the benefits of using SNMP here.

Availability

The Isode messaging management tools are available on Solaris, Windows, Linux and HP-UX. More details on supported platforms and versions can be found here.