Starting a Uptime Monitoring Network

[Chirantha]

Ok, since MOST server uptime monitoring networks are "not free" I was thinking of making a free one... but the problem is... I need couple of hosts...

I dunno if I'll be able to pull it off but with some good advertising it should be profitable.... In return hosts promote their network and its stability.... I mean not every "out of the box" host is willing to be a part of such a thing. Programming is not a problem... Its simple

 

[[JSH]John]

It could be a good idea but you'll need more than simple hosting. At a minimum you'll need VPS's in different parts of the world.

 

[eSupun]

If you think it's simple to program, but it's not!

Most of the good scripts have been developed by groups. Not individuals. Even it's founded by a individual, he'll need support from a group to release it to the public.

And also you need a deep knowledge on kernel and networking to develop such a script.

So think about it before you launch the project. Will you be succeed or will it waste your time.

 

[UKAndy]

If you think it's simple to program, but it's not!

Most of the good scripts have been developed by groups. Not individuals. Even it's founded by a individual, he'll need support from a group to release it to the public.

And also you need a deep knowledge on kernel and networking to develop such a script.

So think about it before you launch the project. Will you be succeed or will it waste your time.

There are a lot of pre-made scripts which you can stick onto a VPS and within a few minutes your away (assuming your advanced in such areas). Its really not hard at all. However, if you are looking to develop your own addon features then you'd need a good understanding of how it all works. Plus, you'll need to know what happens when it all goes tits up.

You really need:
A good understanding of the common protocols (HTTP, etc..)
A good understanding of Linux
Good with whatever language the script is written in, say PHP.


Failing that, just find a reseller, there are a few.

 

[Seraphim]

Uptime monitoring doesn't have to be super complicated either.

http://www.seraphimlabs.net/status.php

I wrote this as part of my site, it checks the status of the http and IRC services on both of my servers and displays their current uptime/load.

Just a simple PHP script that checks that the daemons are responsive and downloads uptime.php from the http to find out the current status. Uptime.php simply returns the result of a shell exec of uptime.

Mix a simple thing like that with a MySQL database and some algorithms to log and record the status checks, and maybe a little PHP mail to send out notifications when something is broken, and you have a very workable status monitor script core.

All that could be written by one person in a couple of weekends, and then the only challenge would be conecting that to a User Interface for people to create accounts and configure monitoring of their services.

Hosting wouldn't need much really, at worst a small shared hosting account with support for fsockopen and php mail. I think my own script only uses like 2kb per hit.

It's all in how you want to go about taking what you have and making it into what you need.

 

[Chirantha]

Uptime monitoring doesn't have to be super complicated either.

http://www.seraphimlabs.net/status.php

I wrote this as part of my site, it checks the status of the http and IRC services on both of my servers and displays their current uptime/load.

Just a simple PHP script that checks that the daemons are responsive and downloads uptime.php from the http to find out the current status. Uptime.php simply returns the result of a shell exec of uptime.

Mix a simple thing like that with a MySQL database and some algorithms to log and record the status checks, and maybe a little PHP mail to send out notifications when something is broken, and you have a very workable status monitor script core.

All that could be written by one person in a couple of weekends, and then the only challenge would be conecting that to a User Interface for people to create accounts and configure monitoring of their services.

Hosting wouldn't need much really, at worst a small shared hosting account with support for fsockopen and php mail. I think my own script only uses like 2kb per hit.

It's all in how you want to go about taking what you have and making it into what you need.

Yea Seraphim, see people think its so complicated :-/