Re: Monitoring services

On May 3, 2007, at 3:25 PM, Aron Roberts wrote:

>> Scot Hacker wrote:
>>>  I know  we could probably set something up
pretty  simply, but   
>>> we're
>>>  wondering whether the campus provides any kind
of  monitoring /
>>  > notification service for servers,
>
>   I'm not personally aware of this, but perhaps one of
my IST  
> colleagues might be able to respond here.  It's
definitely  
> something we've needed and have asked about within the
organization  
> in the past ...

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. This is  a huge
category that  
spans the range from simple/free to huge/complex. I think
our needs  
are definitely on the simple end for now. I'm talking things
over   
with my team now and we'll make a decision soon.

A nice addition that someone sent me offline:
http://montastic.com/

Up to 100 servers monitored for free, though it does  http
monitoring  
only. Sends email / SMS, and also has  RSS feeds and Yahoo 
or OS X  
widgets for quick views. If all you need is http up/down,
hard to  
beat. Did some tests with it  last night and it worked like
a charm.

./s




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I usually use a basic scheduled ping and a small filter
script for 
up/down tests on key systems and network printers. A status
flag 
ensures I only get emailed on deltas and not repeats. It
does a good 
job as an alert mechanism, and I have the option of using
more 
expansive checks.

For http checks you could use wget in place of ping.

The real art is setting the threshold for your needs,
however you do 
it. Too much information, or too many status change notices,
or just 
another package to manage, may be more than you need.

Graham

--
Graham Patterson, System Administration
Dept. of Economics, UC Berkeley (510)643-5397

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