From Subscribers:
From Mike Strum, with OIC Tech Solutions, on April 26th, not long after his company subscribed to Watchman Monitoring:
Yesterday we added our 50th machine (we only started using it about 10 days ago) and we got our first alerts that generated billable hours–woohoo!
The first was an ECC RAM Error on a File Server (pretty important and I don’t know how or when we would have caught this otherwise unless we examined the System Profiler on a regular basis). We called the client, swapped in got the bad RAM replaced by the Mfg. and billed 1 hr. flat rate. Everybody wins as who knows what kind of data corruption that bad RAM module could have ben causing…
Second was on a group of 3 machines in a home that instantly let us know Time Machine hasn’t backed up in 42 days! Ya think the client would let us know but NO, they don’t, they just ignore the messages the system gives them every 10 days but now WE know and called them to make an Appt. to reset the Time Capsule that the “cable guy” had for some reason reset to defaults about 42 days ago–what a coincidence! This one will generate about 2 hours of billable time since it will include on-site to fix the network/backup issues and remote to perform updates. NICE!
We’re gonna be adding a slew of machines to this service and can’t wait to see the alerts rolling in (cha-ching!) and our customers love the idea of this (we’re giving it away free) service and how it proactively protects and informs them. We love how it ties us to our customers. I can see how one of our very first Troubleshooting steps on most systems going forward will include simply installing WM and seeing if any alerts trigger instantly–certainly a lot faster than checking all those vital signs manually!
Stay tuned-this is going to be awesome!
From Mike Strum on June 17th, after the release of Watchman Monitoring server 3.0:
“Watchman Monitoring has been a God-send for us and our clients ever since we started using it. It makes us more productive in so many ways and allows us to proactively address issues with our clients Macs often times well before the problems turn into disasters. Don’t know how we would get along with it.”
From Sam Bergin, with MacServ, LLC one of our first Subscribers
As we make the rounds and our clients see the benefits of Watchman, we will then usually push it out with ARD to all of the machines on their network.
I just did this a few minutes ago for a client who runs their business on a Mac mini Server using FileMaker Server, and Watchman emailed me almost instantaneously about a degraded RAID on the mini.
Upon further investigation, I discovered that one drive is down completely. I’m sure we would have found this problem “eventually”, but with so much else going on it’s hard to be proactive sometimes and actually take the time to check the status of so many machines.
Watchman makes it painless. Thanks Allen, thanks Watchman!
Sam Bergin, MacServ LLC
From Customers:
I am very impressed with Watchman. We installed it on our server and immediately it found a serious issue. Our server is used primarily as a data server. We have very valuable and irreplaceable information on the servers drives. Initially Mac Consulting Group, Inc. set up a backup drive to run with time machine to protect the server’s data. Like most servers, ours doesn’t get any attention unless we experience an inability to connect to a datafile or some other similar issue. Watchman was able to detect an issue and generate a report to Mac Consulting Group, alerting them to a serious error. Somehow a cable became unplugged that connected our time machine backup drive to the server. Watchman was looking out for my company! Thanks!
Barry Ivey, CEO, Pinnacle Precision Services LLC