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What do you use for monitoring (self-managed, not a service)?
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What do you use for monitoring (self-managed, not a service)?

raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran
edited March 2013 in General

Looking for:

  • monitoring public services (http, etc. - the usual)
  • monitoring private info (disk space, memory, etc.)
  • alert me when needed
  • ideally something whose agent is very memory-light and can run on 128MB LEBs
  • agent runs on Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS
  • the master I'm less sensitive about but should fit inside a 512MB VPS
  • free...or very low cost
  • about 10 servers total to monitor

I was going to setup nagios for monitoring, but

  • the plugins package doesn't compile after following the install guide
  • the docs say they are incomplete (and they are). People say it's complex to setup but the docs are weak...that's what I've heard. I'd rather not embark on a voyage of discovery.
  • I'm annoyed to discover there were packages I could have apt-getted instead of following the official docs (which build from source)...why the docs don't just say "run apt-get" is beyond me.

So - what else?

  • Munin, though I don't think monitoring is really its strength or focus
  • Zabbix - heard very nice things about this
  • Observium, though again doesn't seem like a monitoring product per se
  • Monit - haven't read much about this
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Comments

  • kalamkalam Member

    Openstatus. Does a good job of monitoring disk space, memory, cpu, bandwidth, and services. Shoots me an email when I need it to. Light on the resource usage as well.

    http://openstatus.nickmoeck.com/

  • I'm currently using Zabbix on a couple servers. It has lots of templates for various services, like generic linux or mysql or memcached, etc. It also has configurable alerts. DotDeb hosts the latest versions for debian, so easy apt-get install.

    I can't speak to memory use, as I have it on non-LEBs and configured to be high-performing, not low resource use. I know that you can tweak the config to spawn fewer processes.

  • RyanDRyanD Member

    We use Zabbix monitoring a few thousand servers and it scales quite nicely. Their enterprise support and custom development services are great.

    We were long time nagios/icinga users prior and man... Zabbix is sooooo much better.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited March 2013

    Munin is perfect for me. Easy to set alerts, easy to do what I've done with the graphs on my blog. I run it for 3 nodes and munin is hosted on ramnode 128mb.

    I've been toying with observium and I do like it so far, but not sure I'd like to take the time to perfect an snmp setup.

  • tchentchen Member

    Running zabbix agent on a 32mb LEB debian. Using the version from the zabbix repos.

    USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND

    zabbix 2338 0.0 0.0 6268 4 ? S Feb22 0:00 /usr/sbin/zabbix_agentd
    zabbix 2339 0.0 1.0 6268 352 ? S Feb22 3:14 /usr/sbin/zabbix_agentd
    zabbix 2340 0.0 2.2 6284 728 ? S Feb22 2:15 /usr/sbin/zabbix_agentd
    zabbix 2341 0.0 2.2 6284 752 ? S Feb22 2:15 /usr/sbin/zabbix_agentd
    zabbix 2342 0.0 2.2 6284 744 ? S Feb22 2:15 /usr/sbin/zabbix_agentd
    zabbix 2343 0.0 1.0 6268 332 ? S Feb22 0:30 /usr/sbin/zabbix_agentd

  • munin+icinga

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @tchen - running a monitoring agent on a 32mb LEB warms my LowEndHeart.

  • monit.
    you can use munin (with cgi graphics and html on demand) on a larger node to monitor all your vps, but if you need something small to monitor, alert and restart daemons go with monit. Really easy to setup, light and uses very little memory. Give it a try.

    I use munin+monit+ an esternal script i wrote to monitor webpages content and services that alerts me via SMS when there's a serious problem.

  • fislefisle Member

    @NickM
    I'm having problem with OpenStatus, installed it on debian6 with your repo, configured server up, configured client, made nginx vhost. I access the page, log into admin panel and try to add server - it does not get added to the list.
    I restarted php5-fpm, made sure I had all the requirements.
    Debugging the server it only shows receiving JSON from the client.

    Do you have any idea what's up? I have no idea. Could it be some permission problem, or nginx?

    Only errors I receive are from nginx vhost error log:

    2013/03/07 13:54:17 [error] 413#0: *9 FastCGI sent in stderr: "PHP message: PHP Notice:  Undefined variable: lbjs in /usr/share/openstatus-server/footer.php on line 8" while reading response header from upstream, client: 95.211.10.25, server: status.xx.xx, request: "GET /admin.php HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/home/fisle/php.socket:", host: "status.xx.xx", referrer: "http://status.xx.xx/admin.php"
    
  • I personally prefer CopperEgg.com they have a very nice interface, free trial check them out :)

  • Started with Cacti.
    Started using Munin.
    Stopped using Cacti
    Started using Observium.

    Still using Munin and Observium. Munin makes it easier to monitor anything that's not accessible via SNMP.

  • SPSP Member

    https://github.com/mojeda/ServerStatus

    Thought about writing a cron job that would ping me if any of the servers are down, but haven't done so yet. While I do like programs that you can just install and use, there is a certain satisfaction you get from doing it yourself (ish).

    Also using UptimeRobot.com to email me at @vtext.com (Verizon USA) to SMS me.

  • @Sperryman said: to email me at @vtext.com (Verizon USA) to SMS me.

    I do this too. A lot of uptime services offer "SMS credit" to send messages, but most (all?) cell carriers have an email address that will send the contents of the messages to the cell phone. And they're free (other than standard text msg costs, if any)

  • Using Mojeda's though I was hoping for something with IN/OUT statistics, think I'll have to go the Munin route or OS.

  • Munin and Nagios. But sometime on small project this is overkill and I just use hosted service called StatusCake.

  • prometeusprometeus Member, Host Rep

    I'm using too many I think, depending of several factors (not all controlled by me) I'm using:
    nagios
    opennms
    zabbix
    zenoss
    munin

    :-(

  • tchentchen Member

    @prometeus if you had the chance to winnow that list down to two, which would it be?

  • prometeusprometeus Member, Host Rep

    @tchen said: if you had the chance to winnow that list down to two, which would it be?

    without thinking about it I wrote the list in order of preference :-)

    so here you go: nagios and opennms or zabbix

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @chriscm said: I personally prefer CopperEgg.com they have a very nice interface, free trial check them out :)

    Monitoring 10 servers would be $90/month. Too much.

    Thanks for the replies everyone. I think I will check out Zabbix and OpenStatus.

  • Collectd - very lightweight

  • Does using IRC to see if servers ping timeout count?

  • N2...free, open source, written in c and c++, highly scalable, repos available for debian/ubuntu and centos/fedora or compile from source
    http://opensource.cloudvps.com/n2/

  • opsview open source

  • If anyone wants to make a lil' bit o' cash - setup Icinga for me.

  • zabbix for hardware monitoring + site24x7 for uptime monitoring

  • quin5quin5 Member
    edited March 2013

    I've just switched over to StatusCake - statuscake.com. It's free and I haven't had any problems with them yet.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @quin5 said: It's free

    Well, freemium...free + pay for better features. But looks interesting. Thanks.

  • @TheHackBox said: Does using IRC to see if servers ping timeout count?

    Not a bad idea!

  • @raindog308 said: Thanks for the replies everyone. I think I will check out Zabbix and OpenStatus.

    which is easier to setup?

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