# Best remote server monitoring solution?



## MannDude (Aug 5, 2013)

Trying to think of something to do with my Digital Ocean box that I bought on a whim. Figured I could use it for a server monitor while I decide if I want to use DO for production stuff or not.

Anyone care to recommend a good server monitoring solution that'll monitor the resource usage of my other servers? I know there are a ton of choices, just been a while since I've looked into them. I usually just have a bunch of terminals open on a different monitor that have 'htop' running, haha. Would be nicer if I could just have one server to login to, and get to see graphs/charts/warnings/alerts, etc, etc.


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## NodeBytes (Aug 5, 2013)

I'm using a combination of newrelic, observium, and pingdom to monitor all my servers.

NewRelic will monitor processes as well as monitor cpu, ram, and io.

Observium is to monitor bandwidth.

Pingdom is to monitor uptime as well as alert for downtime.

Between these three tools I always know what's up with my servers.


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## clarity (Aug 5, 2013)

I am waiting to hear some more replies here as well. I am thinking about installing Nagios. I have tried Zabbix and Observium. I don't particularly like them. No notifications with Obersvium, and Zabbix was just too slow for my liking.


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## MartinD (Aug 5, 2013)

bcarlsonmedia said:


> I'm using a combination of newrelic, observium, and pingdom to monitor all my servers.
> 
> NewRelic will monitor processes as well as monitor cpu, ram, and io.
> 
> ...


You realise Observium can monitor a *LOT* more than Bandwidth, right?


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## shawn_ky (Aug 5, 2013)

Nagios does pretty well!  I am almost tired of the emails though... Definitely need to properly configure it. Depending on what you are running there are a couple of good tutorials out there.


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## prometeus (Aug 5, 2013)

if you have a few host to monitor then munin can do the job....


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## NodeBytes (Aug 5, 2013)

MartinD - Yes, just old habits while putting in new monitoring systems.


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## VPSCorey (Aug 5, 2013)

Cacti + Plugins can do what you want.


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## concerto49 (Aug 8, 2013)

FRCorey said:


> Cacti + Plugins can do what you want.


It can't nag like nagios. Also seen some good stuff from Solarwinds but there's a price to it.


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## TheLinuxBug (Aug 8, 2013)

The company I work with currently uses Solarwind's IP Monitor and it isn't worth the money.  We are currently working to migrate to Nagios from it, so if that tells you anything...

Don't get me wrong, Solarwinds ip monitor works... but there are a lot more well coded options in Nagios.  Some of the things your not able to change in Solarwdinds can be super annoying.  I am not sure if the newer version support external monitoring servers, but the setup we have only has 1 server it does the checks from, so this is also a downside in my opinion.

For a small setup Munin isn't bad, past that I would go with Nagios. 

Cheers!


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## jarland (Aug 8, 2013)

Still loving munin. I just keep hearing that I won't at larger scale, but I run it on a 128mb VPS and it hasn't been resource intensive for 4 servers. I don't ask that it do much but beyond producing graphs and texting me when something hits a threshold. It's been very hands off, stable on it's own. Heck, I should probably update the web server on it...


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## nixcom (Aug 9, 2013)

munin and nagios on my side


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## barryherne (Aug 26, 2013)

I can advise the tool which I have been using for some time Anturis to monitor all my servers. It is not expensive and you can use troubleshooting that can be rather conveneniet for users.


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## Afterburst-Charlie (Aug 26, 2013)

We're using Observium, Pingdom and Icinga. They all work very well together, assuming you have configured proper escalation rules.


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## tonyg (Aug 28, 2013)

How about xymon (aka hobbit).


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## trexos (Aug 31, 2013)

Is there a free ping service like pingdom? I need just emails when my server gets down (checks via ping). I have about 10 servers to monitor.


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## MartinD (Aug 31, 2013)

Just get a pile of really cheap vps's and run a script on cron.


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## OnePoundWebHosting (Aug 31, 2013)

MannDude said:


> Trying to think of something to do with my Digital Ocean box that I bought on a whim. Figured I could use it for a server monitor while I decide if I want to use DO for production stuff or not.
> 
> Anyone care to recommend a good server monitoring solution that'll monitor the resource usage of my other servers? I know there are a ton of choices, just been a while since I've looked into them. I usually just have a bunch of terminals open on a different monitor that have 'htop' running, haha. Would be nicer if I could just have one server to login to, and get to see graphs/charts/warnings/alerts, etc, etc.


Nagios gets my vote, if you take your time to set it up you can monitor anything.

You can also configure php4nagios (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pnp4nagios/) if you want to get graphs from your results.



trexos said:


> Is there a free ping service like pingdom? I need just emails when my server gets down (checks via ping). I have about 10 servers to monitor.


If you register on my site and open a ticket referencing this post I will give you 10 free checks to use our monitoring system, works with PING, HTTP, etc


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## trexos (Aug 31, 2013)

OnePoundWebHosting said:


> Nagios gets my vote, if you take your time to set it up you can monitor anything.
> 
> You can also configure php4nagios (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pnp4nagios/) if you want to get graphs from your results.
> 
> If you register on my site and open a ticket referencing this post I will give you 10 free checks to use our monitoring system, works with PING, HTTP, etc


Did that thanks in advance 



MartinD said:


> Just get a pile of really cheap vps's and run a script on cron.


I have one  Do you have a link to a script? Would be nice


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## ultimatehostings (Sep 1, 2013)

Should be nagios for us.


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