Big Brother (software)

Last updated
Big Brother
Original author(s) Sean MacGuire
Developer(s) Sean MacGuire, Robert-Andre Croteau
Initial releaseNovember 1996 [1]
Stable release
4.60 / December 13, 2011 (2011-12-13) [2]
Operating system Unix
Linux
Windows
Type Network monitoring
License Commercial
Website http://www.bb4.com/ at the Wayback Machine (archived 2013-08-07)

Big Brother (alias BB) was a tool for systems and network monitoring, generally used by system administrators. The advent of the dynamic web page allowed Big Brother to be one of the first monitoring systems to use the web as its user interface. Prior to this, monitoring tools were generally console based, or required graphic terminals such as X Window to operate. Big Brother produces HTML pages containing a simple matrix of hosts and tests with red and green dots to denote system status.[ citation needed ] Big Brother was named after George Orwell's character Big Brother from his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four . E-mail from Big Brother originated from the Ministry of Truth, and users of the software were called Brothers. [3]

Contents

The application was designed to allow non-technical users to understand system and network status information through a simple interface and presentation, using a matrix to display status information for overhead displays in Network Operations Centers (NOCs). It was designed to monitor computer systems and networks, and for this reason does not use SNMP natively, instead using a client–server model and its own network communication protocol. Clients send status information over port TCP port 1984 (possibly a reference to the novel 1984) at five-minute intervals. Since the clients only send information to a specific monitoring server, its creators claim it is more secure than SNMP-based protocols, which poll clients for information. For this reason, Big Brother was featured at SANS Institute security conferences in 1998. [4] 1999, [5] and at a SANSFIRE conference in 2001. [6]

Big Brother has also been cited in a number of books on system administration, [7] [8] [9] [10] computer security, [11] [12] and networking. [13] The application supports redundancy via multiple displays, as well as failover. Network elements can be tested from multiple locations and users can write custom tests.[ citation needed ]

An open-source version of the project exists: between 2002 and 2004 it was called bbgen toolkit, between 2005 and 2008 it was called Hobbit, but to avoid breach of trademark, it was renamed Xymon which is still in development and use. [14]

Background

Sean MacGuire wrote Big Brother in 1996 after he received what he believed to be an overpriced quote for network-monitoring software. He introduced it in an article for Sys Admin magazine in October 1996. [15] In August 1997, it was mentioned in an article by Paul Sittler in Linux Journal [16] Shortly after the initial release, Robert-Andre Croteau joined MacGuire and added notification rules, which he described in a Sys Admin article published in September 1998, [17] and created the Windows version.[ citation needed ]

In 1999 MacGuire and Croteau started the company BB4 Technologies, to commercialize Big Brother. They licensed the product under what they called the "Better than Free" or BTF license - "better" because 10% of the license fee went to the charity of the purchaser's choice. [18]

In 2001 Quest Software acquired BB4 Technologies. [19] MacGuire and Croteau, the only employees of BB4, later went to work at Quest Software and continued to work on the product. The Big Brother Professional Edition (BBPE) was released shortly thereafter. In January 2012, MacGuire left Quest software and is no longer associated with the product he created. Quest Software was acquired by Dell in 2012 to form Dell Software. [20] In June 2016, Dell announced the sale of their software division, including the Quest business, to Francisco Partners and Elliott Management Corporation. [21] On October 31, 2016, the sale was finalized. On November 1, 2016, the sale of Dell Software to Francisco Partners and Elliott Management was completed and the company re-launched as Quest Software. [22]

Versions

There are two versions of Big Brother available — the BTF version (source-code visible), and the pre-compiled, fully commercial, professionally supported Big Brother Professional Edition (BBPE). In 2009, they released the "Big Brother — Modern Edition", an Adobe Flash-based display for Big Brother, and formally added graphing and trend monitoring support.[ citation needed ]

Testing

Related Research Articles

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behaviour. Devices that typically support SNMP include cable modems, routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers, and more.

macOS Server Server software for macOS

macOS Server, formerly Mac OS X Server and OS X Server, is a discontinued series of Unix-like server operating systems developed by Apple Inc., based on macOS and later add-on software packages for the latter. macOS Server added server functionality and system administration tools to macOS and provided tools to manage both macOS-based computers and iOS-based devices.

Multi Router Traffic Grapher

The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is free software for monitoring and measuring the traffic load on network links. It allows the user to see traffic load on a network over time in graphical form.

The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is a set of computer interface specifications for an autonomous computer subsystem that provides management and monitoring capabilities independently of the host system's CPU, firmware and operating system. IPMI defines a set of interfaces used by system administrators for out-of-band management of computer systems and monitoring of their operation. For example, IPMI provides a way to manage a computer that may be powered off or otherwise unresponsive by using a network connection to the hardware rather than to an operating system or login shell. Another use case may be installing a custom operating system remotely. Without IPMI, installing a custom operating system may require an administrator to be physically present near the computer, insert a DVD or a USB flash drive containing the OS installer and complete the installation process using a monitor and a keyboard. Using IPMI, an administrator can mount an ISO image, simulate an installer DVD, and perform the installation remotely.

IBM Spectrum Protect is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It is the flagship product in the IBM Spectrum Protect family.

Apcupsd, short for APC UPS daemon, is a utility that runs on Linux, UNIX, macOS and Windows. It allows the computer to interact with APC UPSes. Apcupsd also works with some OEM-branded products manufactured by APC.

Net-SNMP is a suite of software for using and deploying the SNMP protocol. It supports IPv4, IPv6, IPX, AAL5, Unix domain sockets and other transports. It contains a generic client library, a suite of command line applications, a highly extensible SNMP agent, perl modules and python modules.

Zenoss

The company Zenoss, Inc. was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company develops hybrid IT monitoring and analytics software.

Pandora FMS Software for monitoring computer networks

Pandora FMS is software for monitoring computer networks. Pandora FMS allows the visual monitoring of the status and performance of several parameters from different operating systems, servers, applications and hardware systems such as firewalls, proxies, databases, web servers or routers.

OpenNMS is a free and open-source enterprise grade network monitoring and network management platform. It is developed and supported by a community of users and developers and by the OpenNMS Group, offering commercial services, training and support.

NetXMS

NetXMS is an open-source network management system. It can be used for monitoring entire IT infrastructures, starting with SNMP-capable hardware and ending with applications on servers.

Intel Active Management Technology Out-of-band management platform

Intel Active Management Technology (AMT) is hardware and firmware for remote out-of-band management of select business computers, running on the Intel Management Engine, a microprocessor subsystem not exposed to the user, in order to monitor, maintain, update, upgrade and repair them. Out-of-band (OOB) or hardware-based management is different from software-based management and software management agents.

The Remote Network Monitoring (RMON) MIB was developed by the IETF to support monitoring and protocol analysis of LANs. The original version focused on OSI layer 1 and layer 2 information in Ethernet and Token Ring networks. It has been extended by RMON2 which adds support for Network- and Application-layer monitoring and by SMON which adds support for switched networks. It is an industry-standard specification that provides much of the functionality offered by proprietary network analyzers. RMON agents are built into many high-end switches and routers.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet Computer network technology

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a computer network technology that encapsulates Fibre Channel frames over Ethernet networks. This allows Fibre Channel to use 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks while preserving the Fibre Channel protocol. The specification was part of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards T11 FC-BB-5 standard published in 2009.

FUDforum Free Internet forum software

FUDforum is a free and open-source Internet forum software, originally produced by Advanced Internet Designs Inc., that is now maintained by the user community. The name "FUDforum" is an abbreviation of Fast Uncompromising Discussion forum. It is comparable to other forum software. FUDforum is customizable and has a large feature set relative to other forum packages.

NetVault is a set of data protection software developed and supported by Quest Software. NetVault Backup is a backup and recovery software product. It can be used to protect data and software applications in physical and virtual environments from one central management interface. It supports many servers, application platforms, and protocols such as UNIX, Linux, Microsoft Windows, VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, NDMP, Oracle ACSLS, IBM DAS/ACI, Microsoft Exchange Server, DB2, and Teradata.

GroupWise Messaging and collaborative software platform

GroupWise is a messaging and collaboration platform from Micro Focus that supports email, calendaring, personal information management, instant messaging, and document management. The GroupWise platform consists of desktop client software, which is available for Windows,, and the server software, which is supported on Windows Server and Linux.

Xymon Network monitoring application

Xymon, a network monitoring application using free software, operates under the GNU General Public License; its central server runs on Unix and Linux hosts.

PA Server Monitor is a server and network monitoring software from Power Admin LLC. PA Server Monitor focuses primarily on server and network health through numerous resource checks, reports, and alerting options. The agentless, on-premises software can monitor thousands of devices from a single installation. The monitored devices can be desktop computers, servers, routers and other devices.

Endian Firewall Linux distribution

Endian Firewall is an open-source router, firewall and gateway security Linux distribution developed by the South Tyrolean company Endian. The product is available as either free software, commercial software with guaranteed support services, or as a hardware appliance.

References

  1. ↑ "The MacLawran Group Inc". maclawran.ca. Archived from the original on 12 December 1998. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
  2. ↑ Big Brother - Product Documentation
  3. ↑ MacGuire, Sean (3 March 1997). "Commercial Version of bb?". Big Brother (Mailing list). Archived from the original on 18 January 2013. Retrieved 3 March 2010.
  4. ↑ MacGuire, Sean; Robert Andre Croteau (May 1999). Big Brother is Watching (PDF). Monterey, California: SANS Conference. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-08-21.
  5. ↑ MacGuire, Sean; Robert Andre Croteau (May 1999). Big Brother is (Still) Watching (PDF). Baltimore, Maryland: SANS Conference. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2004-02-04.
  6. ↑ MacGuire, Sean; Robert Andre Croteau (August 2001). System, Network and Security Monitoring using Big Brother (PDF). Washington, D.C.: SANSFIRE Conference. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-08-21.
  7. ↑ Horwitz, Jeff (2002). Unix system management: primer plus. Sams Publishing. p. 169. ISBN   0-672-32372-9.
  8. ↑ Well, Nicholas (2000). Guide to Linux installation and administration. Cengage Learning EMEA. p. 548. ISBN   0-619-00097-X.
  9. ↑ Bookman, Charles (2003). Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters. Sams Publishing. p. 178. ISBN   1-57870-274-7.
  10. ↑ Mancil, Tony (2002). Linux routers: a primer for network administrators. Prentice Hall. p. 248. ISBN   0-13-009026-3.
  11. ↑ Andrés, Stephen (2004). Security Sage's guide to hardening the network infrastructure. Syngress. p. 252. ISBN   1-931836-01-9.
  12. ↑ Northcutt, Stephen (2003). Inside network perimeter security. New Riders Publishing. p. 678. ISBN   978-0-672-32737-7.
  13. ↑ Mauro, Douglas (2005). Essential SNMP. O'Reilly Media. p. 400. ISBN   0-596-00840-6.
  14. ↑ "www.xymon.com website". www.xymon.com. Retrieved 2019-10-18.
  15. ↑ MacGuire, Sean (October 1996), "Big Brother: A Web-based Unix Network Monitoring and Notification System", Sys Admin, pp. 1–6
  16. ↑ Sittler, Paul (August 1, 1997), "Big Brother Network Monitoring System", Linux Journal
  17. ↑ Croteau, Robert-Andre (September 1998), "BBWARN: A Notification Extension for Big Brother", Sys Admin, vol. 7, no. 9, pp. 1–6
  18. ↑ MacGuire, Sean (2001). "better than free / charities". Archived from the original on 12 February 2001. Retrieved 4 March 2010.
  19. ↑ "Quest Software Acquires BB4 Technologies, Creators of Big Brother System and Network Monitor; Acquisition Strengthens Quest Software's Monitoring Business". Press release. Business Wire (bnet). 2002-03-13. Retrieved 2010-03-03.
  20. ↑ "Dell to Acquire Quest Software". www.businesswire.com. 2 July 2012. Retrieved 2017-11-16.
  21. ↑ Miller, Ron. "Confirmed: Dell sells software division to Francisco Partners and Elliott Management". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2017-11-16.
  22. ↑ "Quest Launches as an Independent Software Company Backed by Francisco Partners and Elliott Management". www.businesswire.com. November 2016. Retrieved 2017-11-16.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.