Big Brother Professional Edition

Windows Client
Getting Started Guide
Version 3.01
© Copyright Quest Software, Inc. 2002–2004. All rights reserved.
This guide contains proprietary information, which is protected by copyright. The software described in this guide is furnished
under a software license or nondisclosure agreement. This software may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of
the applicable agreement. No part of this guide may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording for any purpose other than the purchaser’s personal use without the written
permission of Quest Software, Inc.

Warranty
The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. Quest Software makes no warranty of any kind
with respect to this information. QUEST SOFTWARE SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF THE
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Quest Software shall not be liable for any direct,
indirect, incidental, consequential, or other damage alleged in connection with the furnishing or use of this information.

Trademarks
Quest, Big Brother, Foglight, and Spotlight are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software, Inc. Other trademarks
and registered trademarks used in this guide are property of their respective owners.

Acknowledgements

SocketTools by Catalyst Development Corp.

Portions of this software based on SocketTools(TM) licensed from Catalyst Development Corporation

Regex++ library © Copyright 1998–2000 by Dr. John Maddock

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted
without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission
notice appear in supporting documentation. Dr. John Maddock makes no representations about the suitability of this software for
any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

Cryptographic routines
This product includes cryptographic software written by Eric Young (eay@cryptsoft.com)

Numeric paging
This product includes POWERP32.DLL, a product written by Ron Tanner of Tanner & Associates.

SMS Messaging
Portions copyright(c) 1997-2001 LANGNER Communications AG. All Rights reserved.

World Headquarters
8001 Irvine Center Drive
Irvine, CA 92618
www.quest.com
email: info@quest.com
U.S. and Canada: 949.754.8000
Please refer to our Web site for regional and international office information.

Big Brother Professional Edition Windows Client Getting Started Guide

Updated – May 2004
Software Version 3.01
Table of Contents
Description of Big Brother Professional Edition .................. 1

About This Document ............................................................. 1

Big Brother Professional Edition Terminology..................... 2

Getting the Product ................................................................. 2

Installing the Big Brother Client............................................. 2

Setting Configuration Options ............................................... 4

Upgrading the Big Brother Client Software .......................... 6

About Quest Software............................................................. 6

Contacting Quest Software .................................................................7
Technical Support ................................................................................7
Permanent License...............................................................................7

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Description of Big Brother Professional Edition

Big Brother Professional Edition (BBPE, or Big Brother) is a software tool for monitoring computers,
other devices with an IP address, and processes. As long as the machines are connected to a network,
the physical locations of the stations being monitored are not important. This lets you monitor
computer networks remotely, 24-hours a day. Big Brother generates web pages that can be viewed
internally or externally and can notify one or more people of the network status via e-mail or pager.
Here is a sample of the Big Brother status display Web page:

Big Brother consists of two parts: a server and a client. The server monitors services which can be
tested over the Internet: HTTP, FTP, and so on. It does this by sending messages over the Internet to
the host and seeing if it receives a reply. The server also collects status logs, prepares and makes
available the display Web pages, and processes all notifications. The server can be installed on one or
more than one computer; a single server instance can monitor many host computers.

The Big Brother client tests services which can only be monitored internally by checking the computer
itself: CPU and disk space usage, message files, and so on. The client must be installed on each host
where you want to monitor these internal processes; it sends the results of its tests over the network or
Internet to a Big Brother server.

Big Brother is very flexible. You configure the hosts to monitor and what tests to perform on each. You
also select when e-mail or pager notifications are sent based on test results, and who they are sent to.
You can have different recipients based on the host, the test, the day, and/or the time. You can also add
external scripts to extend the processes and services Big Brother can monitor.

About This Document

This document describes installation and initial configuration of the Big Brother client software on a
Windows host. It does not discuss installing or using the Big Brother server.

For more detailed information about the Big Brother software, please see the online help.

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Big Brother Professional Edition Terminology

This guide uses the following terminology throughout. Understanding the terminology is important to
running Big Brother successfully.

• Big Brother server — A computer running the Big Brother server software. It may function as
any or all of BBDISPLAY, BBPAGER, and BBNET.

• BBDISPLAY — The computer that accepts incoming reports and prepares them for display. It
is also called the display server. Big Brother uses the Web as its user interface, so it can be
accessed by anyone with clearance to access the Big Brother site.

• BBPAGER — The computer that sends notifications if alarm levels are exceeded. It is also
called the pager server.

• BBNET – The computer that performs all network tests for each protocol, for each system
listed in the bb-hosts.cfg file.

• Big Brother client – A computer that retrieves CPU, disk, memory, process, and service
information and messages using the Big Brother client software. This document describes how
to set up the client software.

Getting the Product

You can download the product from the Quest website at http://www.quest.com/bigbrother.asp.

Installing the Big Brother Client

Before installing the Big Brother client, you should have a running installation of the Big Brother
server on your network. The client software can only provide information through a Big Brother server.
At a minimum, one working BBDISPLAY server is required.

These instructions are for first-time installation. If you are upgrading an existing Big Brother client
installation, follow the upgrade instructions on page 6.

To install the Big Brother Windows Client:

1. Go to the directory where you downloaded the installation file.

2. Double-click the bbntpe-301.exe file.

3. Select Yes when asked if you want to install the product.

4. Accept the Big Brother license agreement.

5. Enter your name and a company name.

6. Enter the directory to install Big Brother in. The default directory is: C:\Program
Files\Quest Software\Big Brother\BBNT\3.01.

7. Click Next to accept the installation settings or click Back to change them. After you accept the
settings, the installation program copies and sets up the required files for the client.

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8. Click Finish to complete the installation program. (If the installation program asks for a system
reboot, select No. It is not required).

The Big Brother Configuration Editor displays.

9. Your NT Computer Name and BB Name Alias are already filled in with the domain hostname
and the DNS name of this computer. You can use the NT Computer Name field to copy
configuration information to another client; see the online help for details.

10. Set the BBDISPLAY and BBPAGER host addresses:

• Select the DISPLAY hosts address shown and click Del to delete it.

• Type the correct IP address for your BBDISPLAY host and click Add.

• Repeat this for the PAGER hosts.

• If you have multiple BBDISPLAY or BBPAGER hosts, add their addresses also.

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11. You can change the default values in the other fields and enter information in blank fields as
desired to finalize the client configuration. See the online help for information about the fields on
the screen.

12. After making your changes, click Save.

13. Click Start Service to start the Big Brother Client Service with your changes in effect. The client
installation is now complete.

Important! The new client must also be defined on the appropriate Big Brother server(s).
You must add it to the list of hosts on the BBDISPLAY, BBPAGER, and BBNET host or
hosts. Follow the server instructions for adding a host to the etc\bb-hosts.cfg file on a
Windows server or the etc/bb-hosts file on a UNIX server. You must do this even if you
are installing the client on the same computer as the server software.

Setting Configuration Options

You’ve now entered enough information for the Big Brother client to start performing its default tests
and sending the results to the Big Brother server(s). After a few minutes, when you view the Big
Brother Web page, you should see extra columns for tests performed by the client. This is a typical
display as it appears before the client is installed:

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Here is a typical display after the client is installed on both hosts:

There are now columns showing results for the CPU, disk, memory, message file, and processes tests
performed by the client.

You can use the Configuration Editor to modify the behavior of the standard tests and to tell Big
Brother to perform external scripts and report their results to the servers. For information on using the
Configuration Editor, including descriptions of each field, please see the online help.

Starting and Stopping the Client

The client installation adds a menu for the client to the Windows Start menu. There are four entries:
Start and Stop, which let you start and stop the Big Brother client service; Configure, which starts the
Configuration Editor, and Help, which displays the online help. The help includes more detailed
information than is found in this Getting Started Guide.

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Upgrading the Big Brother Client Software

1. If you are going to install the new version of Big Brother to the same location as the existing
version, copy the Big Brother etc, 3.0\ext and logs files (if they exist) to a safe location.
The logs directory is usually in C:\Program Files\Quest Software\Big
Brother\BBNT\. If you will install the new version into a new directory (this is the default),
you do not need to do this.

2. Note your client configuration options. Here is one way to do this:

• Start the Configuration Editor by selecting Start, Programs, Quest Software, Big Brother,
Client, Configure.

• Press Alt-Print Scrn to copy the window to the clipboard.

• Paste the screen capture into your favorite editor.

• Close the Configuration Editor.

3. Install the new version of Big Brother client; see page 2. Stop after step 8.

4. Run the Configuration Tool and set your options to match those you were using before the update.

5. If external scripts are in a new location, copy the scripts from the previous installation and
reconfigure the Saved Logs Location and Add External options, if required.

6. After making all your changes, click Save.

7. Wait five minutes and check update times to make sure everything is updating properly.

8. Reboot your system to make sure the proper version of Big Brother automatically starts.

9. Use the Windows Add/Remove Program feature to remove the earlier version of Big Brother.

10. Add/Remove Program will not remove the Start menu items for the earlier versions. You can
remove these by hand if you wish.

11. Remove or archive the old Big Brother directory.

About Quest Software

Quest Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: QSFT) is a leading provider of application management solutions.
Quest provides customers with Application Confidencesm by delivering reliable software products to
develop, deploy, manage and maintain enterprise applications without expensive downtime or business
interruption. Targeting high availability, monitoring, database management and Microsoft
infrastructure management, Quest products increase the performance and uptime of business-critical
applications and enable IT professionals to achieve more with fewer resources. Headquartered in
Irvine, Calif., Quest Software has offices around the globe and more than 18,000 global customers,
including 75% of the Fortune 500. For more information on Quest Software, visit www.quest.com.

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Contacting Quest Software

You can contact Quest Software for product and pricing information in any of the following ways:

Phone 949.754.8000 (United States and Canada)

E-mail info@quest.com

Mail Quest Software, Inc.

8001 Irvine Center Drive
Irvine, CA 92618
USA

Web site www.quest.com

Please refer to our Web site for regional and international office information.

Technical Support

Visit the support web site for current contact information and hours of operation:
www.quest.com/support

Permanent License

To receive a permanent license, you must purchase Big Brother Professional Edition. To do so, contact
your Quest sales representative, send e-mail to bbsales@quest.com, or call (949) 754-8000. Once
you’ve purchased the product, send your key string in an e-mail to license@quest.com. Please see the
online help for instructions on finding your key string and entering your permanent license.