[_] Website monitoring software?
Matt Hamilton
matth at netsight.co.uk
Wed Nov 1 12:50:51 GMT 2006
Tom Gidden wrote:
> My problem is that they're all far too complex for my tastes, and the
> code tends to be pretty messy. When it comes to fault monitoring, I
> want a simple, clean, reliable piece of code doing the job. I also
> want redundant off-site monitoring, so I can see if the monitoring
> mechanism itself has failed.
I have to agree with you there. They are all pretty complicated. As
Scott said, we use Nagios here, mainly cos it was one of the first ones
we came across. We used to use Argus which I liked quite a bit, but
Nagios has much better dependancy checking. But it is still not 100% great.
> Incidentally, using email and SMS for fault notification isn't actually
> something you should rely on, as both can fail silently... doubly-so
> when using an email-to-SMS gateway. Just this week, I had some SMS
> texts arrive over 8 hours after sending. That was Orange to Orange,
> with both phones getting a good quality signal.
We use a Wavecom GSM modem plugged into the serial port of the
monitoring machine, on the same GSM network as our office phones. At
least this way we reduce the number of points of failure en route.
-Matt
--
Matt Hamilton matth at netsight.co.uk
Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd. Business Vision on the Internet
http://www.netsight.co.uk +44 (0)117 9090901
Web Design | Zope/Plone Development & Consulting | Co-location | Hosting
> My problem is that they're all far too complex for my tastes, and the
> code tends to be pretty messy. When it comes to fault monitoring, I
> want a simple, clean, reliable piece of code doing the job. I also
> want redundant off-site monitoring, so I can see if the monitoring
> mechanism itself has failed.
I have to agree with you there. They are all pretty complicated. As
Scott said, we use Nagios here, mainly cos it was one of the first ones
we came across. We used to use Argus which I liked quite a bit, but
Nagios has much better dependancy checking. But it is still not 100% great.
> Incidentally, using email and SMS for fault notification isn't actually
> something you should rely on, as both can fail silently... doubly-so
> when using an email-to-SMS gateway. Just this week, I had some SMS
> texts arrive over 8 hours after sending. That was Orange to Orange,
> with both phones getting a good quality signal.
We use a Wavecom GSM modem plugged into the serial port of the
monitoring machine, on the same GSM network as our office phones. At
least this way we reduce the number of points of failure en route.
-Matt
--
Matt Hamilton matth at netsight.co.uk
Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd. Business Vision on the Internet
http://www.netsight.co.uk +44 (0)117 9090901
Web Design | Zope/Plone Development & Consulting | Co-location | Hosting