Heroix comes with decades of history in the system management marketplace.
Longitude, is their all-inclusive agentless monitoring solution, encompassing various technologies: from physical to virtual to cloud, from network to server, and from IT infrastructure to application.
The software includes 3rd party integrations such as Elastic and Webhooks.
Longitude differentiates itself with IT Monitoring that is fast, easy and affordable.
Users get power and flexibility without a heavy, complicated user interface and big price tag.
The Longitude Console installation is simple enough and in keeping with simplicity, the only prerequisite is a Windows Server based operating system.
The technology even comes with an embedded SMTP server for notification resilience.
Again, Longitude is agentless – using a variety of API’s (i.e. WMI, SNMP, JDBC, and SSH to name but a few) to collect key performance and availability metrics.
Longitude scales out quite nicely with a small bit of code (what they refer to as a “Remote Statistics Server”) it is a proxy that can be deployed on premises and in cloud configurations to agentlessly collect data for management by the Longitude Console.
There is no cost associated with the Remote Statistics Server, environments can readily scale out based on any network topology without fear of affecting their IT spend.
Monitoring
Longitude ships with a built-in knowledge base that understands a variety of operating systems, network devices, and applications.
To save time Longitude uses a single step monitoring process.
Once an administrator targets what they would like to monitor (i.e. Windows, SQL Server, VMware), Longitude automatically knows what key performance and availability indicators to collect, evaluate, and alert on.
Keep in mind, most everything Longitude collects is also available for reporting.
In addition to the built-in knowledge base, Longitude also supports extending the technology to monitor for site specific issues as well.
Configuring Longitude to perform monitoring is simple and quick – users can either leverage Longitude’s web interface or for those who rely on scripting-based deployments, Longitude comes with a command line Interface.
Below we see how Longitude has categorized what it is currently Monitoring by Application.
The pull-down menu shows how administrators can quickly and easily control Longitude’s monitoring behavior.
Longitude also supports the grouping of devices, which is extremely helpful when displaying problems or tailoring thresholds and notification.
One nice grouping feature is that devices/servers can reside in multiple groups.
This means administrators can manage their IT environment based on multiple criteria – such as location, function, and application.
Events
One of the challenges IT organizations often face with monitoring is ensuring the right people are notified when something has gone awry – Longitude makes quick do of this via Events.
The real-time Event Display above shows how Longitude lets IT administrators quickly see their problem areas and, when resource depletion is the culprit, performance detail.
The Event Display is clean and uncluttered and scales to larger environments with event filtering that provides for only the most important problems to be displayed.
The Event Display is a focal point in Longitude not only because it supports a multiple viewing options, but also because it allows IT administrators to quickly target the type of notification and corrective actions they’d like to initiate when an event is generated.
A number of alerting options are supported as well as problem mitigation via the scripting of corrective actions.
The technology comes with the kind of command/control capabilities you would expect from an enterprise class technology.
For example, Longitude supports problem escalation as well as accounting for planned or unplanned downtime.
Dashboards
The Longitude Dashboard comes pre-configured to deliver up to the minute “Top 10’s” for key IT infrastructure metrics, getting a health assessment is pretty much instantaneous.
Users can also drill into the Dashboard for a deeper dive, where they can get historical context.
In addition to performance the Dashboard also delivers counts for the number of Devices, Hosts, VMs, and Servers being monitored as well as the number unreachable via a ping.
The Dashboard is quite intuitive, enabling IT professionals to zero in on resource depletion issues, targeting problems based on their severity and persistence.
The availability donut also allows IT to quickly see they if have down devices as well as device detail via a tooltip.
Reporting
Longitude comes with quite a few pre-configured reports for each of the IT Infrastructure components and Applications that it monitors.
You’re just a click or two away from generating reports and graphs of key performance and availability metrics in a clean and concise format.
The Reports also support a drill down capability, allowing users to quickly start with a summary and then hone in on more detail.
Report generation can also be automated.
Longitude makes it easy to get all your performance and availability reports to key stakeholders on a timely basis.
The technology can automatically email reports, publish then in the Reports portal, and even export them for consumption by 3rd party applications like SharePoint.
Another nifty capability, the report data is exportable for deeper analysis and manipulation.
Features & Review
What Does Longitude Do?
- Comprehensive IT Monitoring
- Preemptive Alerts
- Dashboard Data Visualization
- Customized Reporting
How does Longitude help?
- Reduce Down time
- Identify availability, performance, and capacity problems
- Alert staff of key issues via email, sms, and webhook
- Automate Corrective Actions
- Visualize performance and availability of applications and supporting IT infrastructure
- Produce clear and informative reports for both staff and management
Why Longitude?
- Easy drill down for quick problem investigation
- Fast, agentless setup
- Customizable dashboards, alerts, and reporting
- User friendly interface
- Affordable pricing
System Requirements
Recommended Hardware and Software Requirements:
Windows 2008, Windows 2012, Windows 2016, or Windows 2019
2x 2+ GHz Processors
6 GB Main memory
Complete installation requirements can be found here
Pricing
Longitude Enterprise Edition is licensed as an annual subscription.
Pricing is based on the number of managed devices monitored, where a managed device is a physical or virtual Windows/Linux computer, an SNMP based network device, or a virtualization server (VMware or Hyper-V).
Pricing starts at $495
Detailed Longitude pricing can be found here
Conclusion
IT Infrastructure and Application monitoring need not be complicated or burdensome.
It should be simple to configure, alert proactively, deliver real-time dashboards, and provide clear reporting to IT and their constituents.
Longitude reduces downtime, preempts problems, and make the most efficient use of IT personnel and financial resources by:
- Monitoring the most critical of technologies
- Implementing with no fuss
- Requiring minimal ongoing IT administration
- All-inclusive pricing that allows organizations to take advantage of the technology’s full potential!
Official Website & Download Links
The efficiency and intelligence built into Longitude enable better results with less effort, and provides exceptional versatility to address routine as well as unique IT management challenges.
Resource Center – You’ll find all kinds of Help, Videos, and Tech Specs
User Guide – Provides instructions for Longitude installation, initial configuration and use
Interactive Demo – Access an online demo environment, see how to set up IT monitoring, view dashboards, problem events, reports and alerts
Overview Video – Demonstrates how Longitude provides an overview of your IT environment and can be used to detect and investigate problems in real time!
