A Head Nerd’s Guide to Building Custom Monitoring

I have spoken with many prospects and partners over the years and one of the more frequent questions I am asked is: “How do you build Custom Monitoring”.  This is not an easy question to answer as there are so many variables at play, including: what type of device are you trying to monitor, what metrics are you looking for, what thresholds should trigger a warning or failure, etc.

In this blog, I thought it would be good to share the eight steps I take when it comes to building Custom Monitoring, to help you get started on your own.

Step 1: Define what monitoring you want to achieve

Before you even start creating anything, be sure you know exactly what you want to achieve, clearly defining what monitoring you require will help you be focus on the task in hand, and is essential to successfully completing this process.

Related Product

N‑sight RMM

Comece a operar rapidamente, contando com o RMM, projetado para MSPs e departamentos de TI de pequeno porte.

Find out more

Step 2: Check the Product and Automation Cookbook to see if it exists

Why do all the dirty work if someone has done it already? Once you have clearly defined what monitoring you want to achieve, check that it doesn’t already exist today. Just because it’s not currently applied to a device doesn’t mean that it’s not in the product already, someone else hasn’t already built the same monitoring and shared it via the N‑able Automation Cookbook.

Step 3: Search the Web for Existing Scripts That Get the Information you Want

So, if you haven’t been lucky enough to find what we are looking for in the product or the Automation Cookbook, that’s not to say it doesn’t exist in the wider world. Because you have defined exactly what you are looking for, you can use that to search the web for scripts that will help you achieve this. I’m amazed that no matter how niche my requirement is, I often find a script that does exactly what I want—or very close to it—when I search the web.  This step can take a bit of time and often involves reading through forums, but can be very fruitful. One piece of advice is to not to be immediately drawn to the “Best Answer” or “Top Answer”, you may actually find what you need buried amongst the general replies.

Related Product

N‑central

Manage large networks or scale IT operations with RMM made for growing service providers.

Find out more

Step 4: Use AI Tools to Modify Existing Scripts or Create New Scripts to Gather Metrics

Struck out in the web search or found a script that does roughly what you want but isn’t perfect? Not confident in your own scripting abilites? Well, we are “lucky” we live in a world where AI tools are openly available to us. If you had no luck finding a script, ask an AI tool like ChatGPT to create the script for you, it may not get it exactly right on its first attempt, but by testing it you can feed the errors back to it and it will adjust the script accordingly until you have what you need. If you have a script that does some of what you want but needs to be tweaked, again feed this into ChatGPT and ask it to make the required modifications. Again it might not hit a home run with its first reply, but feeding back the errors will help you get what you need. You’ll be amazed how successful this approach can be when it comes to building custom monitoring.

Step 5: Run the Script on Your Test Device to Confirm it Gathers the Right Metrics

Now that you have a script to work with, you need to confirm it gathers the information you are looking for. Before you even consider running the script via your Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solution, you need to run it on a test device and confirm the outputs are correct.

Step 6: Run the Script in Automation Manager on Your Test Device to Confirm it Gathers the Right Metrics

Now that you have the script running natively on your test device, the next step is to ensure you can run the same script via Automation Manager on that device. This is an essential step to ensure you can use the script for monitoring purposes in N‑central or N‑sight RMM. I always download and install Automation Manager on my test device, and then test and tweak the automation policy (AMP) until it does exactly what I need.

If you’re not familiar with Automation Manager, make sure you check out the Head Nerd Boot Camps on Automation that are scheduled to next run live in January 2024. You can click the links below to register

• N‑sight RMM Advanced Automation—Session 1
  January 30, 2024, 08:00 – 10:30 EST (14:00 – 16:30 CEST) REGISTER HERE
• N‑sight RMM Advanced Automation—Session 2 
  January 30, 2024, 13:00 – 15:30 EST (19:00 – 21:30 CEST) REGISTER HERE
• N‑central Advanced Automation—Session 1
  January 17, 2024, 08:00 – 10:30 EST (14:00 – 16:30 CEST) REGISTER HERE
  January 23, 2024, 08:00 – 10:30 EST (14:00 – 16:30 CEST) REGISTER HERE
• N‑central Advanced Automation—Session 2
  January 17, 2024, 13:00 – 15:30 EST (19:00 – 21:30 CEST) REGISTER HERE
  January 23, 2024, 13:00 – 15:30 EST (19:00 – 21:30 CEST) REGISTER HERE

Step 7: Tailor the Script for N‑sight RMM or N‑central

Even though both N‑sight RMM and N‑central use Automation Manager, they handle the output of the scripts differently. If you are using N‑sight RMM you will need to use the Fail Check cmdlet to trigger an alert in N‑sight RMM when certain metrics are discovered by the script, in N‑central you can do this when adding the custom monitoring service based on the AMP.

Step 8: Run the Script Via the RMM Solution on Test Devices Before Mass Deployment

The finish line is insight, but before you pat yourself on the back and mass deploy your brand new Custom Monitoring, I would always recommend you deploy it on a select number of devices first to be sure that it is working as desired, if so it will give you the confidence to roll it out across your entire estate.

So, there we have it my eight step guide to building custom monitoring. With a plan in place, and using existing scripts and AI tools that are readily available, it does not have to be as daunting a task as it may seem. If you are reading this and have questions about anything here, why not join me on the N-Central office hours at www.n-able.com/events or reach out to me directly. 

Paul Kelly is the Head Nerd at N‑able. You can follow him on Twitter at @HeadNerdPaul, LinkedIn and Reddit at u/Paul _Kelly. Alternatively you can email me direct.