Windows IT Pro Magazine’s latest issue, the section “CTRL+ALT+DEL” – a section reserved for funny and odd message boxes that occasionally appear in software – features “Top 10 IT Admin Fears”.  Number 1 is “Fear of silence in the server room”.  Yes that is quite scary.  Number 5 is “Fear that the server running your […]

Continue reading " IT Admin Fears "

So you are monitoring your web application, but are you really covering the 3 basic levels that will fully ensure it is available and responsive?  Monitoring of a web application can be as simple as testing a single web page; however, going deeper and covering your bases is better.
 
Level 1: Monitor web server availability - […]

Continue reading " Three Levels of Web Application Monitoring "

Perhaps one of the more important aspects to setting up a monitoring solution is knowing where to monitor from. 
SaaS (Software as a Service) vendors that monitor from PoP (Points of Presence) around the world, offer a way to analyze performance from those locations.  This type of monitoring can be useful for websites that only have […]

Continue reading " A View from the Inside Out "

Most companies with Intranet web applications are concerned about uptime and performance for their internal users but fail to show it.  Since internal applications are typically supported by a very small staff, usually one person, let’s call him John, who also has other responsibilities, monitoring uptime is an often overlooked component because “if it goes […]

Continue reading " Intranet Web Applications are Important Too "

A good resource for finding network / website / server monitoring software is the one located at the Stanford University SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) website.  Since 1996, Les Cottrell has been cataloging an ever increasing and enormous list of tools for the network and systems admin.  As the list has grown, the design of the […]

Continue reading " Can’t See the Forest for the Trees "

Monitoring Software is prolific in the IT world; however, to the newly initiated sys admin, figuring out what you need for your servers is not nearly as hard as finding out what all of the terminology means.  The problem is that there is no standard terminology that we (the IT world) can use to effectively […]

Continue reading " What Type of Monitoring Software Do You Need? "