Fidelia Helix Quick Start

Click here for Troubleshooting Guide

How Do I:

  1. Log into Helix?
  2. Run auto-discovery on my network?
  3. Add a single new server or router for monitoring?
  4. Setup Email or pager notification?
  5. Monitor bandwidth?
  6. Monitor disk space?
  7. Monitor Exchange server or SQL Server?
  8. Monitor web page or Apache or IIS performance
  9. Delete a device
  10. Delete all my devices
  11. Setup my correct TimeZone? Change my password?
  12. Setup and use a Business Container?
  13. Get a trend and capacity report on my disk space?
  14. Where is the User Documentation?

Logging into Helix

  1. Use your web browser to connect to http://your_host/ where your_host is the fully qualified name or ip address of the server that the Helix web application is running on. You can connect to http://127.0.0.1  if you are on the same machine where you installed Helix.
  2. You should get a Helix Login screen (with Fidelia Helix logo). If not, you probably have IIS running on your machine which should be stopped and the Helix web application restarted using "Start -> Fidelia Helix". Another possible reason is if you have a slow machine, in which case you should start all services one by one with a 15 second delay to give each service some time to startup.
  3. If this is a new installation, you should run an Auto-Discovery by logging into Helix username helix and the password helix

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Auto Discovery

  1. Log into Helix using username helix and the password helix
  2. Click on  Manage and then Discover in the sub-menu. Click on "Start a new discovery" on the left side.
  3. Make sure you have the SNMP passwords ("community strings") for your routers and switches to enter into the discovery form (you can enter multiple strings one one each line if needed). Most of the discovery pages have default options already selected, so you just need to select the OK or Submit buttons. It is suggested that for the initial discovery, enter a class C subnet (e.g. 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0   or  10.1.2.0/255.255.255.0)
  4. After running the discovery, Provision the devices and tests
  5. Click on "Turn Filter Off" to see all the devices being monitored (Helix normally hides the devices that are OK when the filter is ON).

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Adding a single Router or Server

  1. Log into Helix as helix with password helix
  2. Go to  Manage -> Devices -> Create a new device
  3. Select the device type, enter the SNMP string if known and version.
  4. On the next screen, select SNMP and PING checkboxes. If you are adding a Windows server, try selecting the WMI checkbox instead of the SNMP checkbox.
  5. Hit Continue on the next screen and wait while Helix scans the target device.
  6. A list of all tests on that device should be displayed. Click on the "Provision Tests" button to add the device.

The device will automatically be scheduled for monitoring.

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Adding Email or Pager Notification

  1. Log in as helix with password helix
  2. Go to   Manage -> Actions  -> Create an Action Profile
  3. Give an action profile name, and set "Notify Using" field. Enter your email address in the "message recipient" box. For Pager notification, you will need to attach a modem and configure the dialup number as described in the user manual
  4. Normally it is recommended to set the "Notification should happen:" to "after 2 tests" to avoid false alarms.
  5. Click on the Create Action Profile button.
  6. Back on the Manage Action Profiles page, click on "Select Devices for Action" and select all the devices and all tests that you are interested in getting notified.

If the topology was discovered during the initial auto-discovery, then you will not get notified if a downstream device fails.

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Monitor Bandwidth?

Helix automatically detects all active network interfaces on all IP devices using SNMP. It detects the link bandwidth and automatically displays the line utilization in percentage and also traffic in KB/sec.

  1. Log in as helix with password helix
  2. Click on Manage -> Devices -> Create a new device
  3. Select the appropriate device type, and enter the proper SNMP community ID for the router or switch.
  4. On the "Available Test Types" page, select the SNMP checkbox and click "Add Tests", and "Continue" on the next page.
  5. The system will automatically discover all available tests on the device, and display them (including all available bandwidth tests). Just select the tests that you want to monitor.

Helix will automatically schedule the tests provisioned. You can then go back to Status and click on the device and the test name to get traffic statistics. Helix can display trend analysis as well as historical data for up to an year.

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Monitor Disk Space?

Helix automatically detects all available disk partitions on all servers using WMI (on Windows) or SNMP.

  1. Log in as helix
  2. Click on Manage -> Devices -> Create a new device
  3. Select the appropriate device type, and enter the proper SNMP community ID for the server if it is a non-Windows computer with SNMP.
  4. On the "Available Test Types" page, select the WMI checkbox for Windows servers, or SNMP checkbox for other devices. Click "Add Tests" and "Continue" on the next page.
  5. The system will automatically discover all available tests on the device, and display them (including all available disk tests). Just select the tests that you want to monitor.

Helix will automatically schedule the tests provisioned. You can then go back to Status and click on the device and the test name to get disk statistics. Helix can display trend analysis as well as historical data for up to an year. You can also run "days to threshold" from the Reports -> Advanced -> Capacity report section.

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Monitor Exchange, SQL Server, Oracle?

Helix automatically detects Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, Oracle and a number of other applications using WMI (on Windows) or SNMP.

  1. Log in as helix
  2. Click on Manage -> Devices -> Create a new device
  3. Select the appropriate device type, and enter the proper SNMP community ID for the server if you are monitoring the application using SNMP instead of WMI (on a non-Windows computer). For monitoring Oracle, you will need to setup the Oracle master agent and subagent as described in the Helix documentation.
  4. On the "Available Test Types" page, select the WMI checkbox for Windows servers, or SNMP checkbox for other devices. Click "Add Tests" and "Continue" on the next page.
  5. The system will automatically discover all available applications on the device, and display them. Just select the tests that you want to monitor.

Helix will automatically schedule the tests provisioned.

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Monitor Web Pages, Apache, IIS

Helix can monitor the time to download a web page, get detailed statistics from the IIS or Apache process, and even step through a multi-step Web Transaction eCommerce site.

For monitoring statistics from Apache web servers, you must edit its config file (httpd.conf) and set ExtendedStatus ON and also allow uncomment the configuration for <Location /server-status>

  1. Log in as helix
  2. Click on Manage -> Devices -> Create a new device to add a new device. For an existing device, click on Manage -> Devices  then click on Tests -> Create Standard Tests
  3. Select the appropriate device type.
  4. On the "Available Test Types" page, select the WMI checkbox for Windows servers to monitor IIS. Also click on Port to monitor Web pages, and for Apache select the Apache checkbox.
    For Apache servers, you will need to edit the apache config file and allow detailed statistics monitoring.
  5. The system will automatically discover all available applications on the device, and display them. Just select the tests that you want to monitor and click Provision Tests

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Delete a device

  1. Go to Manage -> Devices
  2. Click on 'Update' and select "Delete this device" radio button on the top left side
  3. Hit the Submit button

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Delete ALL devices (Start fresh)

You can clear out your Helix database and start "fresh":

  1. Stop all Helix components
  2. Go to the Helix installation directory (\Program Files\Fidelia Helix\  or /usr/local/helix)
  3. Delete the database/provisioning  and the database/provisioningdict directories
  4. Copy these two directories from database/fresh into the database directory
  5. Start all components

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Setup TimeZone? Change password?

  1. Go to Manage -> Prefs
  2. Change the timezone from the drop-down list, and also change the password.

You can see the current timezone in the upper right corner of the Helix page.

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Setup a Business Service Container?

  1. Go to Manage -> Containers -> Create a Container
  2. Create a Test container which has individual tests from different devices in a single "virtual device".
  3. After creating the container, click on Status -> Containers

You can create any number of containers such as "eCommerce" or "Payroll"

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Run a trend or Capacity planning report?

  1. Go to Reports
  2. Select the devices and date range that you want to run the trend report for.
  3. Click the Go button.

You can then see the top servers or routers with disk or line utilization problems and the number of days to reach the threshold.

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Where is the Helix documentation?

The entire user manual in hyperlinked HTML format is under the HELP menu once you log into Helix

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