Monitoring Your System

Abstract

Computers running on a network can sometimes be likened to living organisms. A sophisticated network is like a complex ecosystem; it has all sorts of organisms, each with its own specific capabilities and requirements. Our PowerShell scripts and commands issued at the interactive shell are usually in the position of instructing other system components on what to do and how to do it. Being proactive in anticipating possible problems and failures is one of the characteristics a successful system administration strategy must have. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to anticipate and prevent every single problem. In Chapter 9, you learned how to trap and handle errors generated from within scripts. In this chapter, we will be working with errors triggered by other programs. You will learn important techniques for monitoring a system and its components and watching their operation. Our goal is to spot each anomaly and failure as soon as it happens. In most cases, we can even react and fix the problem before regular users even notice it! Even if we cannot fix things that quickly, it is always better to know in advance and notify interested parties, so that the problem has minimal impact on people’s work processes.