Tell us a little about yourself.

I'm a systems manager at A. Porr AG, a construction company based in Austria but with locations in Germany, Switzerland, and several countries in Eastern Europe. I first used WhatsUp Gold in a previous position, but when that company was purchased by Porr, I brought WUG over with me. I needed to start from scratch, scanning the network and adding devices. I've been using WUG for around 10 years in total. I have nine employees on my team, but I'm the only one who uses the program on a daily basis.

How are you using WUG?

We monitor about 1,200 devices, which are primarily network equipment and servers. Most of our applications of WUG are relatively straightforward. As for scripts, I don't use very many, but I have one in particular that I use fairly regularly. When a device goes down and is up again, I run a script to replace the attributes and description automatically. It's very useful.

Do you have any unique alert configurations?

I have a few SMS alerts configured, and I do have several sent via e-mail. The alerts are sent to a central mailbox, so everyone has access. For the most part, we use the reports on the dashboard, and don't need to rely on alerts. Everyone can see the crucial information firsthand, and we're able to proactively avoid most problems.

What's your installation look like?

We primarily monitor equipment and servers, mostly Cisco and APC devices. We monitor all Windows servers. We're actually still Windows 2003, but will be migrating to 2008 in anticipation of WUG v15. I've had the chance to play around with the new release a little in the TPP, and the UI is very different. We're excited for the upgrade, though.

Which workspace view do you prefer?

I use a customized workspace that shows me my devices, state changes, devices in maintenance and unknown devices. I use it often; I usually keep it open on a tab in Internet Explorer all day. We also have a special workspace for several dashboard PCs, so my team and our colleagues can see what's happening in the network at all times.

What's your favorite thing about WUG?

Well, I need to know what's going on in the network, so I really like that I can check the device configuration and narrow it down by country, city or site location. At a quick glance, I am able to see everything that is going on across all of our locations.

How have things changed for you since implementing WUG?

Now, we have a clear documentation of the network. Before, it was connected to Cisco, but nobody cared about it or paid attention to its status. There weren't even any alerts set up. So, once we implemented WUG, we set up new alerts and were able to get an idea of all device locations and IP addresses.

Which reports do you use the most?

I use the system reports to see how the WhatsUp Gold server is working. I also pay attention to problems that are evident in the State Change Timeline report.