Workstation Monitoring

Overview

Workstation monitoring keeps track of the laptops and desktops your team uses, in the same way server monitoring tracks your infrastructure. It uses the same agent as server monitoring, installed in workstation mode.

Workstations are aimed at asset visibility rather than uptime: hardware inventory, disk space, installed applications and resource pressure. If you need minute-by-minute availability alerting, use a Server monitor instead.

INFO

Workstations count toward your plan's monitor limit, like every other monitor type. See Plans & Limits.

How Workstations Differ From Servers

These differences are deliberate, not missing features. Knowing them up front avoids a lot of confusion:

	Servers	Workstations
Reporting interval	Every minute	Every hour
Maintenance periods	Supported	Not supported
Docker monitoring	Yes	No
Network trigger types	Yes	No
Sub-pages	Overview, CPU, Memory, Storage, Network, Apps, Docker	Overview, System Information, Storage, Apps

Because a workstation reports hourly, an alert can take up to an hour to appear. That is appropriate for a machine that gets closed and carried home, and inappropriate for anything you need paged about.

WARNING

Workstations are hidden from the dashboard's Monitors Overview widget by default. Turn them on via Customize Widgets on the dashboard if you want them there — see Dashboard.

Features

• Hardware inventory: manufacturer, model, serial number, BIOS, baseboard, chassis, CPU, graphics, memory layout and disk layout.
• Storage tracking: usage per filesystem, so you find the machine that is about to run out of disk before its user does.
• Installed applications: the software inventory reported by the machine.
• Resource triggers: CPU, load average, memory, swap, temperature and process count.
• Cross-platform: Linux, Windows, macOS and BSD.

How to Set Up Workstation Monitoring

1. Sign in to your Pingniner account and go to Workstations.
2. Click "New Workstation".
3. Enter a Name — a friendly name you will recognise in the list.
4. Choose the Type — Linux, Windows, macOS or BSD. This determines which install command you are given.
5. (Optional) Under Advanced, set a Group, Tags and Notes.
6. Save. The workstation is created with a status of Unknown until the agent first reports in.
7. Install the agent using the command shown on the workstation's Overview page.

Installing the agent

Open the workstation, then use the Agent action to reveal the install command. It already contains that workstation's key, so you can copy it as-is.

Linux, macOS and BSD:

curl -L -s -o PingninerInstaller.sh https://github.com/pingniner/agent/releases/latest/download/PingninerInstaller.sh \
  && sudo bash PingninerInstaller.sh YOUR_WORKSTATION_KEY workstation

Windows — run in an elevated (Run as administrator) PowerShell:

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://github.com/pingniner/agent/releases/latest/download/PingninerInstaller.ps1 -OutFile PingninerInstaller.ps1 -UseBasicParsing; powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File PingninerInstaller.ps1 YOUR_WORKSTATION_KEY workstation

Replace YOUR_WORKSTATION_KEY with the key from the Agent panel. The installer sets up an hourly scheduled task and starts reporting straight away.

For the full agent reference — what it installs, how to update it and how to remove it — see The Agent.

TIP

The workstation key is the only credential the agent needs. Treat it like a password: anyone holding it can post data to that workstation record.

Viewing & Managing Workstations

Overview

Shows current status, last seen time, CPU, memory and disk usage, plus the group, tags and notes. The Agent panel here holds the workstation key, the install command and the agent version currently reporting.

System Information

The full hardware and software inventory the agent collected: system manufacturer and model, serial number, UUID, BIOS, baseboard, chassis, operating system, CPU, graphics, memory modules, physical disks and block devices.

Storage

Usage per mounted filesystem, with history, so you can watch a disk fill up over time.

Apps

The applications and services the agent discovered on the machine.

Triggers

Workstations support a subset of the server trigger catalogue. All of them are created by you — there are no defaults, so a new workstation alerts on nothing until you add a trigger.

Group	Trigger types
System	No Data, CPU Usage %, Average Load, CPU Temperature °C, Chipset Temperature °C
Memory	RAM Usage % (Excluding buffers and caches), RAM Usage % (Including buffers and caches), Swap Usage %, RAM Usage MB (Excluding…), RAM Usage MB (Including…), Swap Usage MB
Storage	File System Usage % - <mount>, File System Usage GB - <mount>
Processes	Processes count

Temperature triggers only appear if the machine actually reports temperatures — many virtual machines and some laptops do not.

Each trigger takes a Comparison (==, !=, >=, <=, >, <, Contains, Does not contain) and a Comparison Value, except No Data, which has neither.

You also set the Impact (None, Degraded or Down), Occurrences, the Contacts to notify, and whether notifications repeat. See Triggers & Incidents for what each of these means.

TIP

Set No Data generously on workstations. A laptop that is asleep, closed or off the network is not a fault — with hourly reporting, an occurrences value that tolerates a missed check or two will save you a lot of noise.

Alerts

Every incident raised for this workstation, with the trigger that caused it, when it started, when it ended and when the last notification was sent.

Best Practices

• Use groups per team or location. Workstation fleets get long quickly; see Groups & Tags.
• Alert on disk, not CPU. A workstation pegged at 100% CPU is usually someone doing their job. A workstation at 98% disk is a support ticket waiting to happen.
• Expect gaps. Hourly reporting, plus machines that sleep, means history will have holes. Judge trends rather than individual data points.
• Remove the agent when you retire a machine so it stops reporting as No Data — see Managing the Agent.