How do you monitor services on your servers? Do you monitor just with a ping or do you check different services like SMTP, HTTP etc...
I have used Alertra in the past and that worked well. I think I set it to check every 5 minutes. Every minute would have been more ideal but when I used Alertra the company was only small and the cost was a bit more then I wanted.
The kiddie hosts don't need to bother, they put so many accounts on the box that one of the customers is bound to notice and raise a support request
We just have a basic service monitor as our boxes tend to stay up. I'm considering a formal service with history to prove it, however it's only generally the kids that ask for proof, most of our "mature" customers just enjoy the high uptimes assuming it to be normal.
We are in the same situation. I used to use Alertra but things pretty much stay reliable and a lot of customers comment on that, so I dropped it.
We were asked about uptime in a pre sales question the other day and managed to track down some numbers from findmyhosting.com who measure with Alertra. We havent been asked about stats like that for a while... but our main source of clients is referrals and with that happening people just dont ask and accept if their friend likes the account then they will have one too
HyperSpin is another company. We use them and they seem to always been addind extras to their services. We have been with them since they started and we have been pleased with their services and support.
We use Nagios to monitor all of our servers and the servers we manage. It takes a little time to setup the way you want it but after that it's smooth sailing.
"Nagios is a popular open source computer system and network monitoring application software. It watches hosts and services that you specify, alerting you when things go bad and again when they get better."
Seriously, Nagios is an AWESOME utility. The only downfall is that it can take hours to properly configure all the items you want to monitor - smtp, imap, pop, dns, ntp, etc.
Big Brother used to be another good one, but I believe it costs money now. Nagios is free, and is a lot better than Big Brother - the interface is easier on the eyes
If it takes a few hours to configure then I think it's a good few hours spent Server monitoring can be very useful. I used to have a server monitor company text my phone when a service went down. I could bring a server up right away when the text arrived.
Agreed. A few good hours configuring Nagios is a few good hours well spent. I've been using Nagios for 4+ years now, and I've loved the amount of times it has saved us from a huge disaster.
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