Ok, so I have been out of action for a while as our practice has been installing a PACS/RIS solution. What I have found out so far from the experience is that being able to actively monitor your entire environment is key to having a smooth operational PACS/RIS system. Our vendor’s product has multiple servers, services, applications and ports running at our various sites. When something goes wrong it is often difficult to identify where the issue lies within this mess of sub systems.
I therefore decided to write an application that actively monitors all the servers, services, applications and ports throughout the enterprise and allows users to fix problems remotely with 2 clicks.
The application is a mash-up of several utilities, brought together into one simple interface that allows users to self troubleshoot and resolve issues.
When an issue is detected the application alerts the user (see below)
The user can then right click on the affected item and click fix. This will either restart the remote service or launch the application (depending on the type of item affected).
I would highly recommend that any admins out there with a large environment look at writing an application such as this to actively monitor all systems. This system will effectively empower my users to resolve 90% of the issues without my intervention and provide them with a simple means of giving me troubleshooting information when I am not on-site.
