Syslog Center

Anything can happen on a network and finding out what and when can be challenging in certain situations. If you want to be informed of any events on your network, without standing in front of a computer all day long, then you should try Syslog Center. It can monitor syslog events and collect messages or notifications from any device on your network. The application can also provide you with detailed logs, which can be exported, and it can perform a series of automatic actions, like sending commands, exporting logs or sending email notifications.

Syslog Center is free to try for 30 days, without any functionality restrictions. It works on Windows 2000 and all later versions, including the 2000, 2003 and 2008 server editions. The application asks for a 800 MHz processor or better and at least 256 MB of RAM, which should not be a challenge for any modern day computer.

The software can work in the background, but you can bring up its user interface, on which you can find a list of logged events, reports and miscellaneous tools, in separate sections. You can also view a general status and overall statistics for different event types, on a home screen. While reviewing the logged events, you can double click individual items to display additional information, on a separate window.

You can retrieve different types of reports, like host correlation, message, priority or time and date correlation and filter them by their creation dates. Reports can be printed right away or exported as text or CSV files. Furthermore, Syslog Center can be set to export reports automatically, every few minutes, in plain text or CSV format. Alternatively, you can set it to export the reports to an SQL or Access database.

It is also possible to assign automatic actions to one or more remote hosts. You can select various facilities, like kernel, user, mail and so on, set a severity level, a custom message and set up the action itself. The software can automatically send commands, with or without parameters, send emails and log Windows events.