Many organisations have over spent on hardware without realising it. About a year ago I looked into proper server monitoring tools, and of course being Linux servers I wanted to monitor I found some very capable free open source solutions. First is munin, which runs over a web interface, but has standalone server which means you can monitor Apache, along with mail services and any other services you may need to keep an eye on. It also emails when a service restarts or dies. For our own purposes we have written a WAP gateway for munin to allow us to check and restart services and server status when an internet connection is not otherwise available. We have also set up email alerts to be redirected to SMS as events occur.

Another nice piece of software is monit, which generates reports on just about every aspects a sys admin would need to know about a system, CPU, disk usage, tasks, mail queues and a host of other useful tid-bits along with a full historical graphing for most too…this can easily identify bottlenecks or under usage of server resources.

Plenty of details on setting these up can be found on howtoforge.net

If you would like to obtain the WAP/SMS solution outlined above, please get in touch with sales@bluestar.ie for a quote. SMS solution only available in Ireland, but WAP application can be used anywhere.