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Server Monitoring and notification by email and SMS
A few weeks ago one of my servers had a melt down. Luckily, I had fairly good backups and survived. A lot was learnt about quality backups, so next time I will be even better prepared.
Running a small hosting business is hard sometimes, and one of the biggest worries I have, and most likely others in the same boat have, are finding out quickly when a problem with a server occurs.
Our co-location facility has a great system that will monitor all our servers, and if a server goes off line, or one of the services goes down like HTTPD, SMTP etc, the co-lo's monitoring system will know within 60 seconds. We also have the option of having the co-lo be notified of the problem so they can fix the issue as soon as possible.
That is a good start, but I still want to know as soon as possible if there is a problem. What happens if I am out having lunch or in a meeting and a problem occurs? Email is okay, but not always possible depending on where you are.
After a brief search for a service that would monitor my servers reliably and notify me of any problems by email and by SMS, I found a good solution. They are not expensive and come with a ton of features too. Sign up is FREE, and SMS's cost 20 cents each. Addtional options are of course available for a fee.
If you are in the same boat as me, check out http://www.hyperspin.com/
I am in no way affiliated with hyperspin but really liked what they offer. If anyone has other thoughts on a similar service, please let me know.
