Sometime in August this year, visitors to The New York Times websites were greeted with a blank screen.
The website of the mighty NY Times got hacked, some say by Syrian hackers. The monitoring system that was supposed to transmit an alert of a DNS change failed to do so.
This underscores how important a server monitoring system is. In the above case, server monitoring service should have continuously ensured service availability through proactive resolution of malfunctions and errors.
A server is a system of computers, a combination of software and suitable computer hardware that provides network service. Servers provide essential network, either to private users or the public via internet.
A server monitoring service monitors operating systems, associated hardware metrics, and critical operational services. A server monitoring software generally commences by providing minimalistic features and becomes more advanced as and when needed by clients. For example, a web server may require sophisticated checks, such as:
• Responding to ping
• Responding with proper content, when a web page is accessed with a known content
• Responding to port 80
It is important to understand that users often find that a web server is down even if sever monitoring software identifies it as active and healthy. This happens, if the software is unsophisticated. Such a scenario can be catastrophic to server hosts because system admins do not get alerts that the server is down until users complain.
SaaS-based server monitoring helps in capturing and analyzing critical metrics, such as memory, process, CPU usage, network utilization, and more for Windows and Linux machines. SNMP monitoring software monitors bandwidth usage as well as other device readings, such as memory, CPU usage, temperatures, and more.
Agent-based monitoring from the cloud helps in monitoring DNS, websites and applications, mail servers, and also resources within private networks. Monitoring private network can also be a necessity because employees, nowadays, use both internet and intranet applications in their day-to-day work.
In such cases, cloud-based server monitoring service allows users to install lightweight, auto-updating software on their internal networks, so that all mission critical resources can be monitored.
Real Time monitoring
Today, dependability of servers is more important than ever before. Real time server monitoring enables clients to respond to problems in real time to improve reliability and quality of service.
For trade-based online businesses that require constant updates, real time monitoring is crucial. Businesses would not like to be directed to 404, when they should be getting emails and other vital information.
Alda Dishuja Rich
