[olug] Web server monitoring services

[Daniel Linder]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I'll second the solutions that everyone has mentioned.

A: GlobalNetWatch (globalnetwatch.com) that Terry mentioned has some
really nice options to give you all the eye-candy that some managers seem
to feed off of.
 - Pros: From what I remember, they have a number of monitoring sites in
multiple ISPs across the world so they can start to help you see regional
outages that some customers might notice and call your helpdesk about.
 - Cons: I believe they were quite pricy if you just wanted them to do a
quick "ping scan" of a single server if all you were interested in is
your end of the Internet connection and/or ISP.

B: Vorteon (www.vorteon.com) mentioned by Dave Walker (owner and friend of
mine).
 - Pros: Dave is a really sharp guy and a big FOSS supporter (aren't we
all here).  I can't speak to his pricing, but I know when he did his own
monitoring of his servers which were housed at the ISP I worked at, we
could count on him calling us about 5 minutes after we had any service
impacting incident. :)
 - Cons: Not really a con perse, but if his monitoring server is in the
rack right next to yours at the same ISP (or located at the same ISP
provides your Internet) then the only thing he is testing is the internal
infrastructure between your server and his -- probably not a real good
test until you have a flaky T1.

C: Your ISP - Implied (?) by a couple pages.
 - Pros: Might be part of your existing service contract but you don't
know it!  Could be an inexpensive feature add on.
 - Const: If the ISP's upstream Internet connection has issues itself,
they might not have to alert you.  Most ISPs have a "down-time" clause,
but it is up to the customer to report each and every outage.

Does this help any?

Dan

- - - - -
"I do not fear computer,
I fear the lack of them."
 -- Isaac Asimov
GPG fingerprint:9EE8 ABAE 10D3 0B55 C536  E17A 3620 4DCA A533 19BF

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFB1NRkNiBNyqUzGb8RAvjoAJ9iQANr7MUuSREzD2SWuM0RHiP5tACfUeiL
HtAuMq22MpkusXpGyPr88SU=
=RC0n
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----