Just wondering what everyone uses to monitor their uptime for the misc services.

Or does everyone just use a custom solution?

I don't have a control panel, so there may be different solutions from there.

But i guess the services would be like email, web, database, dns etc.


Lawrence

HyperSpin.com are popular; they monitor by port (so you can monitor per service), or per website overall.

Hm, that's not bad. Do you know if the price is competitor? We seem to have a lot of servers. :)

Alternatively, i suppose one could program their own monitoring tool.. unless of course your own server goes down, then who will monitor the monitor?

Lawrence

Hm, that's not bad. Do you know if the price is competitor? We seem to have a lot of servers. :)

Alternatively, i suppose one could program their own monitoring tool.. unless of course your own server goes down, then who will monitor the monitor?

Lawrence
They offer bulk discounts, and payment discounts; plus you can become a reseller (and get a 15% discount) easily enough. So you can get the price down a lot. Plus there's quite a difference between the cost for 1 minute monitoring ($12 per month basic) and 2 minute monitoring ($7 per month basic).

As an example, if you wanted to monitor 50 servers, you could get the price down to just over $100 per month at a 5 minute monitoring interval.

It is a tad expensive I guess if you have lots of servers, so making your own monitoring tool could be good. But of course, whilst unlikely, as you say the monitoring server could go down - this is why monitoring companies have multiple servers running the monitoring (from different locations).

I guess it all depends upon how mission critical your services are, and how much you wish to spend. You could get a $25 per month VPS and run monitoring from that, or get multiple servers in different locations etc - it all depends on your needs.

They offer bulk discounts, and payment discounts; plus you can become a reseller (and get a 15% discount) easily enough. So you can get the price down a lot. Plus there's quite a difference between the cost for 1 minute monitoring ($12 per month basic) and 2 minute monitoring ($7 per month basic).

As an example, if you wanted to monitor 50 servers, you could get the price down to just over $100 per month at a 5 minute monitoring interval.

It is a tad expensive I guess if you have lots of servers, so making your own monitoring tool could be good. But of course, whilst unlikely, as you say the monitoring server could go down - this is why monitoring companies have multiple servers running the monitoring (from different locations).

I guess it all depends upon how mission critical your services are, and how much you wish to spend. You could get a $25 per month VPS and run monitoring from that, or get multiple servers in different locations etc - it all depends on your needs.

Thanks for your input, it is a lot to think about. I guess i really have to define what i'm looking for. I know my data center monitors the main services every 5 minutes, which is good in most cases.

The other thing i'm looking for is to figure out whether a client has moved, or if the website is down etc. Not sure what is best for that?


Lawrence

We have around 150 servers and we use hyperspin. For the price and the geographic locations, you can't beat it.

--Tina

We used Pingdom.com as well as an in house server to monitor our network.

Try http://siteuptime.com/ that's always been good, I think it used to be one of the best.

@AH-Tina: Wouldn't a custom solution be cheaper? As in, you have a server that pings everything and you can customize it? or are there are a lot of diff reports and stuff?

@StarkServers: Why do you need two different types of monitoring?

@KW-Host: Site up-time looks pretty good as well. Have you had personal experience with them?

Lawrence

I've been using my custom coded monitoring tool, works great as expected :)

@AH-Tina: Wouldn't a custom solution be cheaper? As in, you have a server that pings everything and you can customize it? or are there are a lot of diff reports and stuff?

@StarkServers: Why do you need two different types of monitoring?

@KW-Host: Site up-time looks pretty good as well. Have you had personal experience with them?

Lawrence
Hey,

I used to use them all the time back in the day. However they've lost popularity and I think someone else is in control now.

Hey,

I used to use them all the time back in the day. However they've lost popularity and I think someone else is in control now.

So what do you use now? (if anything)?


Lawrence

So what do you use now? (if anything)?


Lawrence
Hi,

At the moment we do not use anything, however there is a little script we have on our server that tell's us everything :).

Hi,

At the moment we do not use anything, however there is a little script we have on our server that tell's us everything :).

Er.. so what happens if your server goes down? Like the NIC fries or there's a DDoS happening? :)


Lawrence

If you want a hands on approach, there are tools like Nagios, Cacti, and lots more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_network_monitoring_systems

If you want to just monitor uptime using a third party service, I've been pretty impressed with Pingdom when I used it, and plan to use it again soon for a new project of mine. As far as I've seen, it's not all that expensive either, comparatively speaking.

If you want a hands on approach, there are tools like Nagios, Cacti, and lots more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_network_monitoring_systems

If you want to just monitor uptime using a third party service, I've been pretty impressed with Pingdom when I used it, and plan to use it again soon for a new project of mine. As far as I've seen, it's not all that expensive either, comparatively speaking.

With a clever name like Ping-dom, how can you go wrong??? :)


Lawrence

siteuptime.com for me

Pingdom works great :)

Well. I'm trying pingdom's free trial. I'll see how it goes!

Thanks for everyone's help. I think overall, a custom solution is what i'm actually looking for, but for actual monitoring, this may be good enough to check if the servers are running.

Lawrence

You can use 3 Software.

1. ConfigServer CSF, to secure and monitor ddos attacs and prevent all attacs, he email you when anything go down..

2. Munin and nTop, for monitor all service by graphics... is nice but the software don't allert you when any service go down..

3. to monitor the uptime on the world, you can use http://host-tracker.com/

You can use 3 Software.

1. ConfigServer CSF, to secure and monitor ddos attacs and prevent all attacs, he email you when anything go down..

2. Munin and nTop, for monitor all service by graphics... is nice but the software don't allert you when any service go down..

3. to monitor the uptime on the world, you can use http://host-tracker.com/

Host-Tracker.com is a very good choice.

Host-Tracker.com is a very good choice.

Exactly ;)
i have find an issue of https of my site using host-tracker..

Exactly ;)
i have find an issue of https of my site using host-tracker..

Not all the services offer https. And of the ones that do, some charge extra for ssl. It does use more resources, but not really enough to justify an extra charge. It's probably more along the reasoning of, "if they are running an ecommerce site, then they can afford to pay more".

We used Pingdom.com as well as an in house server to monitor our network.

I signed up for Pingdom yesterday and I like it a lot.
It's pretty cheap, does SMS notification, per minute scans and even has a cute iPhone app and API that you can use

Hyperspin is our choice across our production and in-house servers. They've always been the best value for the money for us, and are very reliable.