Ipswitch WhatsUp Log Management Suite 10 review

Ipswitch’s WhatsUp Log Management Suite (WLMS) offers SMBs affordable Windows Event Log and Syslog file archiving, plus compliancy reporting and event alerting tools.

It has four main components. The Event Archiver provides agentless collection and archiving services for Windows Event Logs, Syslog and W3C/IIS logs. It’s simple, with wizards for adding multiple domain or workgroup member systems. You can apply a common set of log-handling preferences and decide how often the logs should be archived.

For Windows systems, Event Archiver copies selected logs to a staging area and can send them onto another location, such as a network share. For long-term storage and linking reports to WhatsUp Gold, you’ll need a separate SQL database.

Event Analyst then accesses the logs collected to provide reporting facilities, beefed up with compliance reports for the SoX, HIPAA, FISMA and PCI DSS standards.

Event Alarm handles real-time monitoring and alerting. Select a log source, the events you want to be alerted to, and choose from notifications including email, pop-up message or pager number.

Finally, the Event Rover provides log analysis and forensics tools. You can connect directly to log files on an active computer, view the contents and apply filters.

Syslog devices must be added manually in the Archiver Module, and also declared to Event Alarm. Special notifications are needed to get events forwarded to the Listener Console, which gives a real-time events view.

There’s no denying WLMS is good value, but the interfaces are in need of a serious refresh. We’d wait for the next version, which should bring tighter component integration and a new browser interface.