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NORTHERN Storage
Assistant |
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Key Concepts - Creating an Assistant
Northern Storage Assistant is engineered to automatically monitor for
events that you should be manually watching for and automatically
triggering actions that you are manually performing in response to these
events. It has a single key concept, the Assistant; a configured job
that combines the answers to two questions: what events do you wish to
monitor and what actions should be triggered when these events occur.
- What do you wish to monitor? Use date, timer, file, Internet or
system related events to trigger your desired actions.
- What action do you wish to take? Manage files, execute programs
or send notifications when your event parameters are met.
- Connect multiple events with multiple actions to create advanced
and specific Assistants.
Monitoring for Events
The first of two components of your Assistant; the answer to the
question "what events should be monitored?"
- Calendar Event: use dates, date ranges and days of the
week to trigger actions. Configure your event to be true every
Monday out of office hours, but every Monday all day during national
holidays.
- Timer Event: trigger actions to run at certain time
intervals, regardless of the date or day of the week. Configure your
event to be true every hour or between tomorrow at 10am and tomorrow
at 11am.
- File Watcher: use changes in file or directory properties
as triggers for actions. Watch for incoming files on your ftp server
or changes in the security descriptor of a critical file.
- Internet Watcher: monitor for specific strings or simply
changes in an http page and trigger actions accordingly. Configure
Assistants at multiple sites to watch the corporate website and
react when specific changes are made.
- System Watcher: use system changes to trigger actions.
Monitor for a server start-up and send a popup notification.
Taking Action
The second component of your Assistant; the answer to the question "what
Action should be taken when the specified event occurs?"
- File Delete: permanently remove unwanted files from your
storage resources. Define your unwanted files using extension,
modified date, size, etc. Trigger the removal of music files from
your entire network.
- File Copy: duplicate files that meet your specified
parameters. Regularly duplicate all sales records to the
International Sales Manager’s computer.
- File Move: archive files that meet your parameters.
Streamline the content of your critical file servers by archiving
all files that have not been accessed during the last six months.
- Directory Replicate: maintain a mirrored copy of
directories on multiple servers. Specialized teams working on
components of a larger project can have their changes automatically
replicated into a central project file structure.
- Execute Program: run any program when your event
arguments are met. Trigger your ‘new user’ script when a new child
directory appears under c:\users.
- FTP/HTTP Actions: upload, download, run scripts via ftp
or http protocols. Maintain up to the minute production figures on a
remote web server.
- Notification Actions: send smtp or popup notifications,
variables can be included to make messages more precise. Receive a
popup when an Assistant has run or when a file exceeding 10MB has
been saved to your webserver.
Managing Assistants
Northern Storage Assistant provides a broad range of views, each
offering activity information sorted in different ways. These
alternatives allow you to instantly retrieve the information you
require.
- Design View: the workspace where you engineer and manage
your Assistants. In a familiar Windows environment, build, link and
combine your building-blocks into a full-grown IT staffer.
- Status View: the real-time status of Assistant
activities. With updates every half second you are in full control
over your system at any given moment.
- History View: a history of activities for the chosen time
period. Detail-rich descriptions of every event, action or
Assistant’s historical performance.
- Timeline View: a graphical display of your configured
events, actions and Assistants over time. A timeline that provides
you with a complete picture of timing, interaction and queuing of
activities.
- Statistics View: a statistical summary of activities over
time. Aggregated data of your Assistant’s activities offers a quick
overview of their status and performance.
Depth of Control
Northern Storage Assistant provides a complete depth of functionality,
enabling you to acheive any specific goal: from simple
single-event/single-action Assistants to advanced interrelated events
and actions with tuned dependencies, result passing and error handling.
- An Assistant can include a single event, or a group of
inter-dependent events. These events are linked using Boolean Logic
(AND, OR, NOT).
- An interdependent group of actions can also be configured to
achieve a more exact result. A system of fault-tolerance allows you
to fine tune the level of success dependency through the series of
actions.
- Maintain a count of events or actions to serve as triggers for
new actions or tune the fault tolerance within a group of actions.
- Connect the components of an Assistant more closely by allowing
results to be passed between them.
- Control the number of event and action repetitions and delay
between repetitions. Prevent a prolonged true event from triggering
an action multiple times.
- Support for VPN, RAS and RRAS allows Assistants to function
across non-permanent connections.
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