1. Working With Microsoft Security Tools
Security as one of the most important concerns of an IT department. This post covers four popular Microsoft security products: Forefront Family, Microsoft Security Essentials,Windows Intune / Windows Update / Microsoft System Center Family, and Windows Firewall (with Advanced Security). Each of these products is thoroughly described and compared with competitors. Also discussed are two less popular products, Microsoft Security Compliance Manager and Microsoft Security Assessment Tool.

2. Network Bandwidth Monitoring Made Easy
This article shows how to monitor one of the most important sets of metrics: network bandwidth or throughput. First it covers performance counters used for this custom monitor and the information each metric provides, such as BytesReceivedPerSec, BytesSentPerSec, etc. Sample code is provided that collects the metrics within the network and pushes them to Monitis. Installation instructions for the script and graphical outputs from the Monitis dashboard are also provided.

3. 20 Ruby Performance Tips
We’ve all heard about Ruby lagging in performance behind other programming languages like Java and Python. This post picks apart some of the criticisms and benefits of Ruby, and lists 20 Ruby performance tips which will keep your apps, servers, and databases running smoothly. One of these tips is to use Ruby Enterprise Edition which provides up to 33% lower memory usage.

4. Introducing Open Source MongoDB Monitoring Library
The last post in this series introduced MongoDB and touched on some monitoring tips. This post goes deeper into the monitoring part and highlights some custom monitors that help you do it with Monitis. The sample code is provided. Simply download it and run it with CRON or any other scheduling software and you have a fully functional MongoDB monitor.

5. M3 Timers – improved server monitoring
M3 (Monitis Monitor Manager) has lacked timers. To schedule its tasks, you had to use Crontab. Well timers have finally been added to the M3 library. This post shows you how to use the timers that have been added in two files, TimerRun.pl
TimerDryRun.pl. They will run your M3 scripts every X minutes and feed the perf data to Monitis custom monitors.