satool - A System Administrator's Cockpit, An Implementation

Monitoring a large number of machines in a distributed environment can be time consuming and inefficient. Often a system administrator discovers there is a problem with a machine or network link when a frustrated user calls. satool provides a way to efficiently monitor groups of machines and identify problems and potential problems quickly; it’s sort of an early warning system for sysadmins. satool is composed of three independent parts: an SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) agent that runs on each machine being monitored, a database that collects data from each client machine, and a graphical user interface (GUI) that acts as the interface between the user and the database.