This little utility monitors the health of your Windows software RAID. It's based on Java, but can easily be called periodically from Windows task scheduler, and/or at system startup (configuration and batch file is included). WinRaidMonitor can send emails to a specified email address (supports SSL connections to SMTP server and user/password authentication).
When executed, WinRaidMonitor calls the standard Windows tool DISKPART in order to check the health of a given mirror/RAID. WinRaidMonitor queries the health of a given RAID via the drive letter it is mapped to your system (such as C:), you have to provide this letter when you call the software. See section 3 of this manual for more information on the usage of WinRaidMonitor.
Installation of WinRaidMonitor is quite straight forward. Simply extract both files "WinRaidMonitor.jar" and "run.bat" from the WinRaidMonitor ZIP archive into a directory of your choice. Afterwards, open the "run.bat" file in a text editor and configure the software runtime parameters as described in the next section of this manual.
Since WinRaidMonitor is based on Java, you have to install the Oracle JRE onto your computer (which is likely already the case). If you have not installed Java yet, you can obtain a copy for free under: https://www.java.com/en/
All program execution features are controlled via a few command line parameters. When you start WinRaidMonitor on your Windows command line, you will see this output:
usage: WinRaidMonitor [-a] [-d] -f <arg> -h <arg> -l <arg> [-m <arg>] [-o <arg>] [-p <arg>] [-s] -t <arg> [-u <arg>] [-w <arg>] -a Always send mail, even if mirror is healthy (optional) -d Print debugging output (optional) -f <arg> FROM mail address -h <arg> SMTP host to send mail to -l <arg> Drive letter of the mirror to check -m <arg> What to look for instead of 'Mirror' on non-EN systems (optional) -o <arg> Diskpart OK status for healthy mirror on non-EN systems (optional) -p <arg> Port the SMTP is listening at (optional, default: 25) -s Encrypt SMTP connection via SSL (optional) -t <arg> TO mail address -u <arg> Username for STMP authentication (optional) -w <arg> Password for STMP authentication (optional)
As described in section 1 of this manual, WinRaidMonitor checks the health of your software mirror/RAID by the drive letter it is mapped to on your system. This drive letter must be specified via the -l switch when calling WinRaidMonitor.
Since WinRaidMonitor sends status reports via email, you have to provide the recipient's email address and a SMTP server host name when you call the software. Since most of today's mail servers require you to provide a sender email address when you send an email, you also have to name this sender email address when you run WinRaidMonitor.
Thus, a call of WinRaidMonitor with minimal parameters could look like this:
java -jar WinRaidMonitor.jar -l C -f your@mail.com -t your@mail.com -h host
However, there are some more options to control runtime behaviour of the software. In order to easily control and run WinRaidMonitor, we provide a small Windows batch file which helps you in calling the software (run.bat, you should have received a copy of this file together with WinRaidMonitor; if not you can download it from here).
NOTE: Since the Windows DISKPART utility needs to be executed with Administrator privileges, you have to run WinRaidMonitor from an Administrator command shell as well!
Beside running WinRaidMonitor directly from command line, you can also periodically execute it from Windows task scheduler. Simply start the task scheduler (e.g. under Win7 by hitting the Windows-key on your keyboard and typing "task scheduler") and create a new task (NOT a basic task). There you can give a name for your new task, specify the Windows account you want to use when calling WinRaidMonitor, and define when (how often and in which interval) you want Windows to execute the RAID monitor. Please note that since DISKPART needs to be executed with Administrator privileges, you have to provide a suitable Windows account name when creating the new scheduled task. Also check the "Run with highest privileges" check box on the "General" tab of the "Create task" dialog. For your convinience you can start WinRaidMonitor from the scheduled task via the batch file provided, as described in section 2 of this manual.
NOTE: You should set your configuration in the batch file and test it by calling the batch file from an Administrator command shell before you set up the scheduled task. In order to check mail sending functionality you can set the ALWAYS_SEND parameter to 1 within the WinRaidMonitor batch file. When set to 1, this parameter lets WinRaidMonitor send an email in any case, even if your RAID seems to be healthy.
Even though we have tried to develop WinRaidMonitor as robust as possbible, it still might contain some bugs. We do not provide any kind of warranty when you use WinRaidMonitor on your computer. However, we are interested in keeping our
software free from failures. Thus, if you think you have found a bug or failure in WinRaidMonitor, please don't hesitate to contact us via email.
Thanks for using WinRaidMonitor!
sourceforge.net project page:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/winraidmonitor/
THIS SOFTWARE ("WinRaidMonitor") IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.