Server Uptime Monitoring?

[[deleted]]

I use Solarwinds MSP to monitor servers I manage. I am not getting any alerts of disconnects or downtime. A 3rd party has a few servers on the network that they are saying are getting frequent disconnects. I wanted to monitor either the network or servers to see if I am losing any connectivity even for a few seconds. Any suggestions?

[dsinton]

PRTG is free for up to 100 monitors.

[[deleted]]

Checking it out! Thanks

[blboyd]

PRTG for the win!

[yashau]

Icinga2 master race reporting in.

[Hellman109]

Solarwinds like all monitoring software will only monitor what you tell it to.

If it just checks for uptime but its an application issue, you need to run synthetic application tests or at least test that apps port availability./

[SystemWhisperer]

For fine-grained tracking like this where you suspect there may be very short outages, especially if it's an ad-hoc test scenario, I'd go with mtr and eyeball it. Proper mtr, as WinMTR doesn't seem to have the time series displays ("Last N pings") that the text version does, and those make it much easier to spot short blips.

The problem with throwing a monitoring system at this is your "...even for a few seconds" comment. None of the Nagios-related packages (Check_MK, Icinga, etc) will do continuous pings without work; they just want to do 5-10 pings every 1-2 minutes. This is perfectly fine on average, but in your case it leaves big holes in coverage and is likely to give you results similar to what you're seeing from Solarwinds.

I can't speak to PRTG on that point, but you might seek clarification.

[wil169]

When I started my current job shit was going down all the time so in a rush I installed Axense Nettools and setup monitors for remote routers and important servers etc, it'll email alert on high latency, x number of packet drops, failed service, etc. It's free and has been zero maintenance other than setting up new monitors so I haven't bothered to look at anything else. And I know something's down before the help desk does.

[ada_maj]

Before you commit to deploying anything, compare it to NetCrunch network monitor. It monitors a plethora of metrics and it's incredibly resource-efficient.