What do you expect from a server monitoring service ?

[ed0]

Hello VpsBoard members,

I am exploring ideas with the intent of starting a company and I came up with the idea a creating a server monitoring service.

My plan is to do something more complete then a ping based monitoring service, less hassling than setting up your own service (cacti, munin, …) and customer oriented.

If you want to help me in this big adventure, please take a few minutes to answers to the few questions below.

Here are the questions, please answer them realistically:

1. Do you own servers as a hobbyist or as a professional?
2. How many servers do you have?
3. What frequency of check are you expecting?
4. For how long will you need the data (data retention)?
5. What kind of metrics do you need? (CPU load, RAM usage, …)
6. What kind of notifications would be useful according to you? (email, sms, …)
7. Do you think that a mobile website would be useful?
8. Do you have ideas of plans? (Features/Prices. Keep in mind that we will have to pay wages, bills, …)
9. Do you need custom metrics? Are you ready to code to have them?
10. Do you know or use monitoring services? What can make you use ours instead?
11. What are the features that you dream about when server monitoring service comes to you mind?

I am also open to advice, warnings or ideas.

Thank you for reading me.

Ed0

 

[drmike]

Do you own servers as a hobbyist or as a professional? Both.
How many servers do you have?  50+
What frequency of check are you expecting?  60 second.
For how long will you need the data (data retention)?  from account origin.
What kind of metrics do you need? (CPU load, RAM usage, …) all of those + network, throughput, disk space use + performance
What kind of notifications would be useful according to you? (email, sms, …) XMMP, API, email, SMS...
Do you think that a mobile website would be useful? meh.
Do you have ideas of plans? (Features/Prices. Keep in mind that we will have to pay wages, bills, …)  Nope.  Affordable.
Do you need custom metrics? Are you ready to code to have them?  Custom code ability is appealing.
Do you know or use monitoring services? What can make you use ours instead?  Yes... I try lots of offers/products.
What are the features that you dream about when server monitoring service comes to you mind?  Monitoring isn't something I dream about, but have had nightmares about downtime.

 

[NodeWest-Dan]

Do you own servers as a hobbyist or as a professional? Both.
How many servers do you have? 50+
What frequency of check are you expecting? 60 second.
For how long will you need the data (data retention)? from account origin.
What kind of metrics do you need? (CPU load, RAM usage, …) all of those + network, throughput, disk space use + performance
What kind of notifications would be useful according to you? (email, sms, …) XMMP, API, email, SMS...
Do you think that a mobile website would be useful? meh.
Do you have ideas of plans? (Features/Prices. Keep in mind that we will have to pay wages, bills, …) Nope. Affordable.
Do you need custom metrics? Are you ready to code to have them? Custom code ability is appealing.
Do you know or use monitoring services? What can make you use ours instead? Yes... I try lots of offers/products.
What are the features that you dream about when server monitoring service comes to you mind? Monitoring isn't something I dream about, but have had nightmares about downtime.

This. I really like pretty graphs and charts.

 

[Jack]

I wike pretty things.

 

[drmike]

... with legs

 

[Aldryic C'boas]

Dude looks like a lady...

 

[NodeWest-Dan]

Dude looks like a lady...

Waynestock!

 

[raindog308]

I am also open to advice, warnings or ideas.

What are you offering that is different than the many companies that already offer this service?  

There are many that offer everything you list and quite a few things you didn't (e.g., StatusCake, NodePing, etc.)

 

[tchen]

1. Do you own servers as a hobbyist or as a professional?  Both
   
2. How many servers do you have?  5-24 depending on season
3. What frequency of check are you expecting?  5 mins
4. For how long will you need the data (data retention)?  30 days
5. What kind of metrics do you need? (CPU load, RAM usage, …)  Custom (also window aggregation, see CodaHale Metrics)
6. What kind of notifications would be useful according to you? (email, sms, …)  Pagerduty integration
7. Do you think that a mobile website would be useful?  Yes - but only needs subset of features.
8. Do you have ideas of plans? (Features/Prices. Keep in mind that we will have to pay wages, bills, …)  You're competing against my time + EC2 reserve pricing.  
9. Do you need custom metrics? Are you ready to code to have them?  Yes
10. Do you know or use monitoring services? What can make you use ours instead?  The other metric provers ramp up price ungodily unlinearly.  If you don't do that (like Librato) you at least have my ear.
11. What are the features that you dream about when server monitoring service comes to you mind?

The problem I'm facing is integrating logging alongside metrics.  My options right now are New Relic + Loggly or roll my own graphite/giraffe/nagios/logstash monstrosity.  I don't relish my cluster expanding 30% just to do better logging & metrics

 

[HenriqueSousa - WebUp 24/7]

Almost all of the existent services provide this features, I lost some time trying to find a good app for Android to check my Server Stats, this would be helpful.

- Henrique

 

[ed0]

Hello,

Thank you for your replies, I am waiting for some more before starting to draw conclusions.

However, it seems that nice (looking) graphs is essential

What are you offering that is different than the many companies that already offer this service?  

There are many that offer everything you list and quite a few things you didn't (e.g., StatusCake, NodePing, etc.)

Almost all of the existent services provide this features, I lost some time trying to find a good app for Android to check my Server Stats, this would be helpful.

- Henrique

Well, I obviously have not seen all the service providers available in the business, but from what I have seen, most of them provide status based on ping (your server responded in x ms or it is down), some of them provide server metrics (CPU load, RAM & disk usage), but very little are really complete (custom metrics, API, means of notification besides SMS and email, smartphone APP). Does it mean that the service providers have not thought about it (or it is not cost effective), or does it mean that the clients are not interested in those features? This is what I am trying to guess using this survey.

Ed0

 

[k0nsl]

For me I just want to have the most essential information shown along with a beautiful interface. That's what makes me happy.

One thing that would make you stand out (I think) is having a client for win32 - *nix which people could run and it would collect all the information and fill the client — plus the webpage. That'd be cool.