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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Posts
    66

    What to do if my site goes down while I am away

    Hi,

    It occurred to me that if I go away for 2 weeks and my site goes down during that time, there will be no way for me to notice it and inform my host (VPS) of the problem.

    What would be a good way to solve this issue? I have seen monitoring services around, but they seem to charge quite a lot. Are there any free services that will inform my host of the problems with my site automatically and enable them to fix it?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Posts
    1,767
    Hello,

    Who is your VPS provider? A lot of providers provide this service free of charge.
    How frequently do you need it checked? If it's only every 30-60 minutes you should be able to find a 3rd party sponsored one to take care of it free.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2002
    Location
    Quad Cities, Iowa
    Posts
    1,606
    I don't know of any free ones that inform your provider of trouble.

    Do you have any budget for this at all?

    Acunett offers a service called server sitter. Might want to see if they fall within your budget.
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  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Posts
    1,767
    Quote Originally Posted by HostRefugee-Vince
    I don't know of any free ones that inform your provider of trouble.

    Do you have any budget for this at all?

    Acunett offers a service called server sitter. Might want to see if they fall within your budget.
    If your VPS provider has a support email address (eg. support@vpsprovider.com) then you can simply set the automated emails to be sent to this address.

  5. #5
    There's a way to do it for free but requires that you have a computer running, and connected to the Internet.

    Servers Alive http://www.woodstone.nu/salive/ will allow up to ten monitors at any interval you want. It will retrieve a preset page from your site at the interval you set. It will look for a word on that page that you specify should be on the page. If it fails to get that word it can be set to call you.

    You need the program, constant Internet connection, and a modem in the computer.

    There are services which will do it for you, but most simply ping the server. A successfull ping is a far cry from a site being up and serving pages.

    If its a VPS provider I'd assume the rest of the people on the VPS would inform the host the server was down though.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    875
    Use HostTracker and instead of your e-mail adress, put your hosts.
    hosted by HawkHost
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  7. #7
    Join Date
    Dec 2004
    Location
    New York, NY
    Posts
    10,710
    Quote Originally Posted by VT6
    If your VPS provider has a support email address (eg. support@vpsprovider.com) then you can simply set the automated emails to be sent to this address.
    Not sure if many providers would really appreciate that...

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Posts
    1,025
    You could setup a filter to forward just the down emails when the site goes down. That way they would not get any of ther emails from them.
    Matt Armour
    OpenReaction

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Earth
    Posts
    8,154
    You can use the monitoring service provided by http://www.platinumservermanagement.com/ - for $9 they will monitor your server and reboot or contact your data center / web host if the server is down.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    New Zealand
    Posts
    271
    This is how I do it. It works for me, because all my sites are rather small (usually 10-15MB).

    1) All my sites have 2 hosts: a main host, and a backup host. Whenever I make changes, I upload them to both hosts. Needless to say it is important to check that both hosts are totally separate and use different infrastructures. Hosting is cheap enough nowadays to allow this.

    2) My sites are monitored by the excellent free service www.host-tracker.com . I use only the GET method (which looks for a specific word on my site). In my case, I am always travelling with a laptop and check my email several times a day. If necessary, SMS alerts can be setup (for a fee).

    3) If I see that one of my sites has a longer downtime, I simply login to my DNS and point the IP to my backup hosting.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Posts
    284
    Phone Support, Just call them a check up?
    Or get a friend you trust to work with you.
    trevnetmedia.com
    Fully managed hosting. Custom website design. Custom web application development.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Posts
    47
    If your business (website) is critical, do not look at how much the monitoring costs. You'll have to spend a bit money on that, if you need your website to be up all the time and keep your customer base happy.
    Outsourced Web Hosting Support

    24x7OutsourcedSupport.Com

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Posts
    280
    I think you may hire the 3rd party for this purpose.

  14. #14
    You've been given wonderful suggestions, just one more service is siteuptime.com, they have free plan, which means monitoring your site server every 30 min, if you want more frequent monitoring it's advanced plans 5$ and 10$.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    USA
    Posts
    523
    As VT6 stated - why not do the obvious and contact your hosting provider and explain?

    I'm not sure why others recommend other options for this "temporary" circumstance? If you don't trust your hosting provider enough to provide this service for you - change hosts..

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Posts
    66
    Thanks guys. Decided to get a free siteuptime.com account and get it to email my hostings support email.

  17. #17
    I had recently blogged about this. Try hyperspin monitoring services, they have an option to send an automatic email to your provider, if the site is not available, requesting for a reboot of the server/VPS or any other message you want to send. You will still continue to receive availability reports in your mailbox.
    Web Hosting Blog - An exclusive blog on Web Hosting Industry and hosting related topics.

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