White Paper

This white paper discusses how Big Brother can be a real-time, cost sensitive monitoring solution for your network servers and devices. Learn how you can quickly, easily and affordably improve uptime, meet SLAs, and solve problems before they have far reaching impact!

Read now »

Tech Brief

This guide will help you plan for your Big Brother deployment and leverage the product’s features to maximize both the IT and business benefits.

Read now »

Webcast on Demand

Join industry expert and Microsoft MVP, Don Jones and Quest Software's Big Brother team as they discuss how to easily manage your complex, heterogeneous environment with a single solution: Big Brother...without compromising your budget.

Watch now »
Join the Brotherhood!
Download, create, and share custom plug-ins, join a conversation, or find technical expertise in the Big Brother plugged-in community.
Join now »

Big Brother Professional Edition

Simple. Flexible. Scalable. Extensible.

When it comes to server monitoring, Big Brother® is a trusted solution for flexible, affordable, and dependable coverage. Our professional edition provides heterogeneous server monitoring on any network — within minutes of installation. You can even operate Big Brother from your Smartphone, as well as, support Windows Server 2008, and VMware. Plus, it’s supported by an active online community that offers more than 800 free monitoring plug-ins and scripts. So get comprehensive infrastructure IT monitoring at a cost that fits in any budget.

Features

ComponentDescription
ArchitectureA client-server architecture, used in conjunction with mechanisms to both push and pull data, permits Big Brother to run agent-less for network tests or use agent-based configurations for more detailed client information. This provides low overhead and high flexibility.
RedundancyTo ensure a catastrophic failure does not restrict alerts, redundancy is supported to allow multiple instances of Big Brother to run in parallel. Clients can report into multiple web displays and notification servers.
DisplayA graphical interface displays real-time system status information in either a web-based or WML-based format (Unix/Linux version only) for WAP-enabled devices. An intuitive display shows which servers or devices are experiencing issues, allowing users to quickly determine what areas need immediate attention.
Network TestsOut-of-the-box support includes the ability to test ftp, http, smtp, pop3, dns, telnet, imap, nntp, and ssh servers. Easily add support for additional tests.
Local TestsWhen installed on a local machine, Big Brother monitors disk space, CPU usage, messages, and the existence of user-defined processes.
NotificationSophisticated notifications based on time of day, machine, or failed tests are generated. Advanced features such as paging groups, acknowledgments, escalations, and delay before paging (to eliminate erroneous notifications of self-resolved problems) are also supported.
Availability ReportingHistorical information about status changes is stored and used to generate availability and service level agreement reports.
Plug-ins and Extensions

Big Brother was designed with extensibility in mind. Plug-ins can be written in any language.  Active community users from around the world have written hundreds of extensions to monitor everything from VMS and AS/400 clients to CPU temperature on Solaris machines.

There are more than 1000 plug-ins available at: http://communities.quest.com/community/big_brother

Please visit our Big Brother website: www.bb4.com

Sys Reqs

System Requirements

Before installing Big Brother Professional Edition, ensure your system meets the following minimum hardware and software requirements:

PlatformIntel x86, PPC, Sparc, Itanium, PA-RISC
Memory4GB
Hard Disk Space1GB for installation

40GB (enabling the performance/trending feature and using will require significantly more disk space)

Operating SystemRed Hat Enterprise Server 3.0/4.0/5.0 (x86)

SUSE Enterprise Linux 9.0/10.0/11.0 (x86)

Solaris 8 and greater (Sparc and x86)

HP-UX 11.0 or 11i (PA-RISC client & server) (Itanium, client only)

AIX 5.2, 5.3 or 6.1 (PPC, client only)

MAC OS X (x86 darwin 9.7, client only)

Windows 2000 Server, Professional, 2003 server or Windows XP with most recent Service pack, Windows 2008, Windows 7

Additional SoftwareWeb browser

Adobe Flash player 9 or higher (if Flash display is used)

Videos

Screenshots

Screenshot Tour

Take a tour of Big Brother

# of Screenshots: 11

Easy Configuration

Easy Configuration

Configuration editor wizard allows for easy configuration so management of the infrastructure can begin quickly.

Data Displayed by Geographic Location

Data Displayed by Geographic Location

Custom Flash console featuring displays defined by geographical location

Data from Multiple Consoles in a Single View

Data from Multiple Consoles in a Single View

Custom Flash console featuring multiple location testing for 3 unique management consoles.

Easy to Understand Status Details

Easy to Understand Status Details

Custom Flash console showing “GREEN” status details window with native performance charts/graph launch buttons.

Easy to Understand Status Details

Easy to Understand Status Details

Custom Flash console showing “RED” status and details window containing historical data status changes.

Native Performance Graphical Trending

Native Performance Graphical Trending

Custom Flash console showing native performance graphing and trending charts.

Deep Dive Diagnostics and Resolution Capabilities

Deep Dive Diagnostics and Resolution Capabilities

Custom Flash console showing in-context integration with Quest’s Spotlight on Windows diagnostic utility for diagnosing and resolving alerts.

Deep Dive Diagnostics and Resolution Capabilities

Deep Dive Diagnostics and Resolution Capabilities

Conduct deep-dive diagnostics for the Windows Operating System via integration with Quest’s Spotlight on Windows.

Deep Dive Diagnostics and Resolution Capabilities

Deep Dive Diagnostics and Resolution Capabilities

Spotlight on Windows freeware allows you to diagnose problems captured in Big Brother and resolve them using Quest expert advice.

User-defined Views

User-defined Views

Custom Flash console displays allows you to define the required data to assess the health of your IT infrastructure – at a glance.

Sleek Geographic Maps

Sleek Geographic Maps

Geographical maps of your systems using the Microsoft Virtual Earth SDK are provided.

Docs

Support Docs, Notes and Guides

Release Notes and User Guides back to top
 

Learn More

Support for This Product