Before you ask: yes, we’re skipping version 13. We’re not an especially superstitious bunch, but it just seems like version 13 might be a bad idea. So we’re on to version 14–which will get its first public exposure with a Technical Preview release in April. If you want to test drive the latest and greatest in network management, go apply to be a part of the Technical Preview Program now.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll give you a sneak peek at some of the new features and innovations in WhatsUp Gold v14. First up is a response to the single most common feature request we’ve received from our customers.

Critical Active Monitors

Critical active monitors finally give you the ability to set dependencies on the active monitors that are applied to a device. In the past, if you wanted to monitor a Web server, for example, you might have applied several active monitors:

• A Ping monitor to tell you if the device was unreachable on the network.
• An HTTP monitor to tell you if the Web site was accessible.
• An HTTP content monitor to tell you if the content of the Web site changed.
• An HTTPS monitor to tell you if the Web site was accessible over an SSL-encrypted connection.

To get meaningful details about down monitors in your notifications, you would attach a custom action to each monitor.

That all worked fine–until your Web server crashed and WhatsUp Gold spammed you with four separate messages. In this example, four messages is not that big a deal, but imagine if you were monitoring dozens of aspects of a device: you could end up with a full inbox fast when a device went completely offline.

Critical active monitors fix that. Now, you can specify a monitor as a “critical” monitor. When a critical monitor fails, WhatsUp Gold stops trying to poll all of the non-critical monitors applied on the device. You get one message telling you what you care most about knowing.

Sign up for the WhatsUp Gold v14 Technical Preview Program

Curious to learn more about Critical Active Monitors and the other new features in WhatsUp Gold v14? You can learn more about the innovations in the new version on the Ipswitch Technical Preview site. Sign up for the technical preview program now and you’ll find out as soon as a technical preview release is available.

Questions? Ask them in the comments!