What's a Netcool Probe?

So what is thing in netcool they call a probe? It has nothing to do with the X-Files or a trip to the proctologist. Probes can be equivalent to monitors, they collect data - apply some logic and then forward events to Omnibus. They can also do no monitoring at all. they can be used to integrate products like TEC with Omnibus and Impact. Omnibus is an event subsystem that receives alerts/events from various source - we will talk about that in a later article

Typically, probe has a "props" or properties file that tells the probe where to connect, how often to do something, any specific user id's and various other parameters. There are also "rules" files, these files let you apply logic to the data you collect.

The number of probes available from IBM/Netcool is incredible, everything from a pring probe that simply pings hostnames/ip addresses to an ODBC probe that remotely connects to compliant databases and extracts data and then you can apply rules to the data. You also have the ability to write your own probes.