It is
essential that you monitor your own server, and by that it's not only meant be
it up or not, but a much more in depth view into what's going on. Popular open
source checking tools are nagios, cacti, munin, as well as zabbix, and it isn't
uncommon to use them in combination too.
What,
now, are the stats you ought to be monitoring in general:
uptime -
pinging the actual server (provided ICMP replies aren't being filtered) to
check be it alive or not;
disk
space - monitoring all partitions on the free space. A full root partition is
particularly nasty as it can certainly bring your entire server to some stop,
but it isn't difficult to see which any full partition is usually a bad thing
that may cause disastrous side results;
memory
consumption - just how much physical RAM is remaining, how much is getting used
by the system, through applications, etc. Is swap space being used, how often
is it getting used, etc.;
CPU
utilisation - how loaded may be the CPU, do you have sufficient reserves, or
are you already while using CPU near its capability limits, how many processes
are being run simultaneously, etc.;
Server monitoring - are the services on your own server running as prepared? Such as
apache, mysqld, sshd, and so on.;
database
monitoring - what's your database doing, the number of queries per second are
now being executed, how many simultaneous connections have you got, and so on;
network
traffic - is the server generating lots of unwanted traffic, do you've any unusual
spikes, or just how much traffic are you utilizing, anyway?
These
are simply examples, but they give a person an idea of what you can do - the
actual quantity of checks and monitoring scripts is actually legion, and it
will depend on you and your ISP to determine which ones to put into action. It
is always advisable to make use of monitoring, it not only means you'll have
your own alert system when things fail, but it will also provide you with
excellent insights into the general development when it comes to use and
capacity of the server, allowing you to plan ahead a lot more accurately than
without checking and statistics collection.
The
advice: talk to your own ISP about monitoring choices. Some do it free of
charge, some will charge a little, but being ahead from the competition and to
be able to act proactively is a large advantage for any company, especially in
IT, exactly where information is key.
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3140 Keerbergen, Belgium
sales@woodstone.nu
support@woodstone.nu
Tel: +32.15.236632