Website Monitoring Services

[findnetworkingevents]

Hi,

Can anyone recommend any good Website Monitoring Services, ie something that will let me know if my site goes down?

Cheers

Stuart

[fisicx]

What a strange request. Rather than monitor to see if the server/site crashes why not move to a host that is more reliable?

[stugster]

It's not really that strange. Loads of people use solutions like the OP is requesting.
www.pingdom.com being one.

[Dwebs-Ltd]

www.pingdom.com (http://www.pingdom.com)

Monitors our shared hosting platform and managed clients :)

[hostedweb]

Hi,

I've used Basicstate in the past with no issues, basicstate.com

[findnetworkingevents]

I didn't say that my host was unreliable.

I just want to monitor what is happening which seems sensible to me.

Stuart

[openmind]

www.siteuptime.com is very good or if you are looking for a solution that alerts and takes action (assuming you have root access) Servers Alive is excellent...

[fisicx]

I can understand how a ISP/host or a major internation site will need this sort of service but does the owner of a small website really need to worry? Hosting is so reliable these days that websites rarely die for more than a few hours. The OP was specific about knowing if the site goes down and at $10/month pingdom does seem a little OTT.

[stugster]

It depends how serious you are about your website I suppose.

[Dwebs-Ltd]

www.siteuptime.com (http://www.siteuptime.com) is very good

We dumped siteuptime for pingdom in 2007. Siteuptime didn't pickup downtime and gave a high number of false positives. Plus they charge far more for what Pingdom includes as standard :)

[openmind]

I would disagree, the have always provided me with a very reliable and accurate service. Not that I get that many alerts of course ;)

[fisicx]

It depends how serious you are about your website I suppose.

I agree - but if you only want to know if the site has died then I was only suggesting that this isn't really an problem these days.

I you want to monitor the peformance of the site across a range of indicators then yes the tools are useful. But if you have a simple CMS/brochure site how useful are these tools? Is it something I really need to be concerned about?

[Dwebs-Ltd]

I can understand how a ISP/host or a major internation site will need this sort of service but does the owner of a small website really need to worry? Hosting is so reliable these days that websites rarely die for more than a few hours. The OP was specific about knowing if the site goes down and at $10/month pingdom does seem a little OTT.

Maybe OTT but its accurate far more than the free monitoring services available.

Some hosts don't give accurate uptime info so it can be helpful to find out if your site is down when the host says it is up.

[fisicx]

Some hosts don't give accurate uptime info so it can be helpful to find out if your site is down when the host says it is up.

Is downtime really a problem these days? Can't remember the last time I saw a 500 error message.

[Dwebs-Ltd]

I would disagree, the have always provided me with a very reliable and accurate service. Not that I get that many alerts of course ;)

Ah well maybe they have fixed the issues since 2007 who knows.

I do know that pingdom is very sensitive even a small amount of packet loss triggers their system plus they have 12+ monitoring nodes around the world so the results are very accurate. Price per extra monitor is excellent especially in the quantities we deal with :)

Have you tried Pingdom Phil?

[openmind]

Nope as I have Servers alive monitoring from an off site server all of the boxes every 60 seconds. It goes beyond a simple ping of the sites etc, it will monitor servers, applications, RAM, disk space etc...

Coupled with auto restarts, sms alerts etc I don't really need a separate system. The monitoring server is also monitored from another box. As for clients I would recommend either siteuptime or pingdom as I have used both in the past...

[Dwebs-Ltd]

Is downtime really a problem these days? Can't remember the last time I saw a 500 error message.

It can be, pingdom isn' just about monitoring services, you can check page content if the content changes it will send an alert helpful if you have implemented a new system and its hitting errors.

Touch wood we don't see long downtime outages these days but pingdom can help find routing issues or packet loss problems.

[stugster]

I use my own monitoring - but it's not just for a site being down. All services and servers are monitored.

http://www.easypcscotland.co.uk/forumimages/equiphase1.jpg

[openmind]

Looks like Nagios?

[findnetworkingevents]

I agree I wouldn't bother monitoring a brochureware site, but we are offering a service to people and even a few minutes downtime on a site does not look professional to the person who happens to visit at that moment.

Thanks for all the advice, I will look into these!

Cheers

Stuart

[stugster]

Tiz indeed Phil :)

[openmind]

Thinking of chucking that on one of the Linux VPS systems, how do you find it?

[stugster]

i google nagios, and there it is :p

To be honest, I haven't played around with it enough - one of the guys I work with has done the config and stuff. I'll ask him what set-up is like though and let me know. If you're on MSN, feel free to add me :) Stuart [ a t ] equiphase.net

[Dwebs-Ltd]

i google nagios,

You not tried Cacti???

[openmind]

i google nagios, and there it is :p

To be honest, I haven't played around with it enough - one of the guys I work with has done the config and stuff. I'll ask him what set-up is like though and let me know. If you're on MSN, feel free to add me :) Stuart [ a t ] equiphase.net
Sarky git ;)

I'll have a play...

[fisicx]

Touch wood we don't see long downtime outages these days but pingdom can help find routing issues or packet loss problems.

Xactly. Which is why I can see the advantages for someone like yourself but not for the average joe with his little online store or blog. If you presented them with a report like the one sugster gave they wouldn't actually know what to do with it anyway.

To reiterate - I'm not saying the tools aren't useful, it just that they may not be that helpful to a small site owner especially if thay can't do anything about it. Try contacting 1&1 and telling them there's a routing issue!

[openmind]

Try contacting 1&1 and telling them there's a routing issue!
Try contacting 1and1 full stop ;)

[FireFleur]

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