Monitoring automatically your web server allows you to be alerted anytime the server “goes down” or when there are some serious performance issues with it. This is crucial especially when you run a commercial business online and your business depends on the ability of your web visitors to access your content without hindrance.
A Web Host has to actively monitor all the services running on each of its Internet Servers. Customers assume that the services advertised by the host are available 24/7, and hence Internet servers monitoring takes a high priority in the Web Hosting business world. A Web Host can be sure that all promises are being kept through an effective server monitoring system.
What kind of monitoring is to be done
- Website Uptime Monitoring : Ensure your websites and servers are up and running well across the world.
- Monitor web applications : Keep track of the performance of multi-step web applications or business transactions.
- Monitor DNS servers : Ensure your DNS server is up and running and resolving domain names correctly.
- Server monitoring : Monitor uptime and performance of servers and desktops running critical applications.
- Receive instant alerts : Be the first to know if there are problems. React quickly before your users are affected.
- Mail server monitoring : Check the performance of your email servers and calculate email round-trip time.
- Website monitoring reports : Gain useful insight into website and server performance and observe possible trends.
There are a bunch monitoring tools available. Online monitoring tools as well as software’s that can be installed on servers . A software installed on one server which can remotely monitor your Internet servers becomes the best solution. There are Commercial and Free options. Lets take a look at few of them
Online monitoring tools
- www.monitor.us
- tools.pingdom.com
- site24x7.com
- uptime robot
- status cake
Softwares that can be installed on servers for monitoring
- Zabbix
Zabbix is the ultimate open source availability and performance monitoring solution. Zabbix offers advanced monitoring, alerting, and visualization features today which are missing in other monitoring systems, even some of the best commercial ones.
features available in Zabbix:
auto-discovery of servers and network devices
low-level discovery
distributed monitoring with centralized web administration
support for both polling and trapping mechanisms
server software for Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OS X
native high performance agents (client software for Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OS X, Tru64/OSF1, Windows NT4.0, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista)
agent-less monitoring
secure user authentication
flexible user permissions
web-based interface
flexible e-mail notification of predefined events
high-level (business) view of monitored resources
audit log
Hardware and software requirements
The ZABBIX Server requires the following system resources:
Resource | Minimum | Recommended |
Disk space | 10 MB | 100 MB |
RAM | 64 MB | 256 MB |
CPU | Pentium | Pentium IV or equivalent |
Supported platforms
ZABBIX software runs on:
Platform | ZABBIX Server | ZABBIX Agent |
AIX | Supported | Supported |
FreeBSD | Supported | Supported |
HP-UX | Supported | Supported |
Linux | Supported | Supported |
Mac OS X | Supported | Supported |
Novell Netware | – | Supported |
Open BSD | Supported | Supported |
SCO Open Server | Supported | Supported |
Solaris | Supported | Supported |
Tru64/OSF | Supported | Supported |
Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista | – | Supported |
ZABBIX Agent is not required for monitoring of external network services such as FTP, SSH, HTTP, DNS, LDAP, etc.
- Nagios
Nagios is an efficient tool for network and system monitoring. However, first install and configuration is pretty intricate since it requires to understand a major part of the official documentation (250pages). This tutorial is for ones who want to quickly build a working configuration so as to monitorsimple networks including NFSv4 clients and servers. This guide goes through installation and basicconfiguration of Nagios.
With Nagios you can:
Monitor your entire IT infrastructure
Monitoring of host resources
Monitoring of anything else like probes (temperature, alarms…) which have the ability to send collected data via a network to specifically written plugins
Monitoring via remotely-run scripts via Nagios Remote Plugin Executor
Remote monitoring supported through SSH or SSL encrypted tunnels.
Spot problems before they occur
Know immediately when problems arise
Share availability data with stakeholders
Detect security breaches
Plan and budget for IT upgrades
Reduce downtime and business losses
An optional web-interface for viewing current network status, notifications, problem history, log files, etc
Data storage via text files rather than database
System Requirements
The only requirement of running Nagios Core is a machine running Linux (or UNIX variant) that has network access and a C compiler installed (if installing from source code).
You are not required to use the CGIs included with Nagios Core. However, if you do decide to use them, you will need to have the following software installed…
- A web server (preferrably Apache)
- Thomas Boutell’s gd libraryversion 1.6.3 or higher (required by the statusmap and trends CGIs)
Supported Platforms
Nagios packages are bundled with and available for several operating system distributions and security packages, including the ones below.
Platform | Nagios XI | Nagios Core |
Ubuntu | Supported | Supported |
Fedora | Supported | Supported |
Suse | Supported | Supported |
Debian | Supported | Supported |
Mandriva | Supported | Supported |
Dragon Fly BSD | Supported | Supported |
Free BSD | Supported | Supported |
Net BSD | Supported | Supported |
Open BSD | Supported | Supported |
Alt linux | Supported | Supported |
Gentoo | Supported | Supported |
Skolinux | Supported | Supported |
Network Security tool kit | Supported | Supported |
PLD Linux | Supported | Supported |
Univention | Supported | Supported |