WebHost Service Monitoring

[Echelon17]

Hi guys,

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum, but here goes.

Being a server administrator and sys admin for many dedicated servers, it's obviously high priority for me to be able to know when the server is experiencing any problems. Sites being down means that I get it in the ear from clients, and they nag the hell out of me to fix them instantly. It's obviously nicer for me to know when they're down BEFORE the client does, and fix them accordingly.

Because I'm slightly competent in the world of coding, I've developed monitoring systems that actually send me an SMS alert when services are down, and alerts me to them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I know some people use e-mail notifications, but obviously that's no good when you're AFK or you're asleep. Most of us carry our mobile telephones with us everywhere anyway, so this seemed like the ideal solution.

So my question is, how do you monitor your servers? Would anyone actually be interested in the use of my monitoring services?

 

[weblord]

i think hyperspin.com and internetseer.com already has those services - they offer free for email alerts and as a paid member you get sms alerts as well, layeredtech also offers free sms alert when server is down, coupled with their services.

 

[Echelon17]

Interesting.

Shame they're only bundled in with their own services, though I guess that makes sense in a way, even though it doesn't cater for people who run their own servers or webhosts who want to offer the same kind of services.

 

[weblord]

both hyperspin and internetseer are separate entities and internetseer has hosting services now as well. one of theiir new services. they're slowly catching on. :imho: mostly hosting services must be bundled with this kind of services as yours'

 

[Echelon17]

I'll take your word for the SMS monitoring.

In my experience of UK hosts, not many offer it, for obvious reasons. Why would you want your new client knowing that their new server is down? I also find that those 'monitoring' systems are inaccurate because they're using the same network as the server itself.

Example:

- You have a server with SomeDumbWebhost.tld

- SDW (As I'll now refer to them) offer you free 24/7 SMS alerts if your server goes down.

- SDW have some major routing issues over the weekend, making your site unavailable to anyone not already on the existing SDW network.

- SDW's monitoring services INACCURATELY detect your sites as being available, even though most of the world can't view them, because they're on the same network. The services on the machine themselves are fine, but the external connectivity is the issue.

So as you can see, though the services might be thrown in, they may in reality give you a false impression of your sites uptime instead of the reality of the situation.

 

[weblord]

as mostly hosting servers need to concentrate on their hosting services and same as well with monitoring services not unless they want to lower the quality of their services i agree on your ideas as well on this part, that's why i said i have 2 monitoring services wouldn't hurt if I add another one just for accuracy purposes. uptime is actually the services/product server admins are selling.