Draconis Software Blog

Thought I’d take a minute to talk about the latest version of RSP we just released today, version 2.2. If you’re not already familiar with RSP, it’s a cross-platform server monitoring and analysis program (and, as of 2.2, now has hardware tracking) with a web interface. Systems administrators, webmasters, and just about anyone else who has a server can (and should) use a monitoring system like RSP so they know if there’s anything affecting their users’ performance.

For version 2.2, we’ve been focusing on a new aspect to the software: hardware tracking. Using the RSP agents, we’ve been able to collect an extensive amount of hardware information (CPU models, SCSI controllers, hard disk types, network cards, etc). This info can then be sorted and compared against other data. So why would this be useful? Consider a shop that has only a set amount of money to spend on upgrades: the best use of this money is for the systems that are most crucial to users’ performance: you can quickly see what hardware is installed on each of your crucial systems and decide what to upgrade. There are many other uses too, of course.

Additionally, we’ve added several new interface enhancements, including a new page for each individual server: kind of like a dashboard on a per-server basis. It shows the current performance, the hardware installed, any ongoing problems with it (using the incident tracking features); you can even leave comments. One of the big pushes we’ve been making is for a real Web 2.0 interface: we use a lot of AJAX and slick interface effects to keep the interface as intuitive and simple as possible.

Be sure to check out RSP 2.2 – we’re very proud of it, and hope you find it useful.

I’ve just put the finishing touches on a new “logo” for RSP. I decided to put it together after noticing that small, rectangular logos are the rage for a lot of tech companies (something that’s easy to recognize, easy to add to a blog, etc). Be sure to let me know what you think.

Thought I’d post a quick teaser about the new version of RSP (version 2.2, if you’re keeping track). First, there’s going to be a big focus on hardware management. We’ve been especially interested in tying performance data to the underlying system resources of a computer system. This should prove especially useful for capacity planning and figuring out what needs to be upgraded (i.e. a web server with 2 gigs of RAM that’s heavily used might better benefit with another 2 gigs of RAM, rather than upgrading a backend database that’s still chugging along on an older CPU).

Second, we’ve done a number of cosmetic improvements to the interface. We’re big fans of the new Web 2.0 visualization technologies (such as tying AJAX with slick UI effects), and we’ve spent a lot of time trying to make the interface as easy to understand and use as possible.

We’re looking to release the new version of RSP early next week, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled. More details be out then (and in the meantime, you can let me know what you think about the logo).

The latest version of RSP (now at 2.1) has just been released and is available for download. Some of the things that have been updated include:

• The ability to manually create tickets
• Fine-grain control over messages you receive
• An automated check-for-updates feature so you can more easily stay in sync with the latest version
• Several bugfixes and other minor changes

We’ve also put up a link to our new product brochure for RSP.  Enjoy!

The founders, Costa and Ryan, have set up this blog as a medium to share our thoughts and opinions on current technology trends, interesting development information, and entrepreneurial information.

We’re two tech entrepreneurs who founded Draconis Software three years ago to develop and sell our network monitoring/management software, RSP. Over the years, we’ve realized there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on around us that we’d like to share with you. Hopefully you’ll be able to pull something interesting out.

Some of things we’re most interested in are Web 2.0 technologies and start-up information (i.e. how to create your own company), and we’re hoping to keep a steady stream of this info coming.

So enjoy! And be sure to let us know what you think.