Monitor and Server Health Group

 View Only
  • 1.  MS7 - Monitor Solution 7 - Please document step-by-step instructions for monitoring a web site

    Posted Nov 29, 2010 09:15 PM

    I want to set up monitoring for a number of web sites.  This will allow me to know whether the internet connection on the NS is working properly *AND* that my external www site is accessible to the outside world.

    I've tried to create a monitor policy that uses the out-of-the-box "HTTP Availability Status (True/False)" metric rule.   The problem is that I cannot see where to enter the URL or DNS name of the server to monitor, and exactly what should I set as the target of the policy.

    Could someone please document the steps required to set up such a policy?



  • 2.  RE: MS7 - Monitor Solution 7 - Please document step-by-step instructions for monitoring a web site

    Posted Dec 02, 2010 07:28 AM

    Unfortunately, you can't get there from here.

    There's no built in checks for websites. 

    You're going to have to use either a command metric that fires off wget, or you're going to have to use another monitoring tool like Nagios, and have it send traps back to the NS.

    I feel your frustration.



  • 3.  RE: MS7 - Monitor Solution 7 - Please document step-by-step instructions for monitoring a web site
    Best Answer

    Posted Dec 02, 2010 08:15 AM

    I guess I should elaborate.

    The only way that the agentless HTTP metric works is if the URL you want to monitor is:
    http://YourMachineNameAsItAppearsInTheInventory/WhateverPathYouSpecifyInTheMetric

    Which is, of course, next to useless.

    If you're in a situation like 99% of the world where you have multiple sites hosted on a server, or if the URL for the site is not the name of the machine it's hosted on, then you're out of luck.

    One of the biggest frustrations with the product is that there's no real connection between inventory and monitoring.  You may have an inventory of all of your IIS and Apache virtual hosts, but there's no easy way to tie that into monitoring.

    The two different methods I mentioned earlier work like this.

    Let's say you have a server named ATLWEB01, that hosts a site named www.mycompanywebsite.com.

    You could create command metric named 'www.mycompanywebsite.com availability'
    with a command line that looks like this:

    wget --tries=1 --timeout=25 -q -nv --no-check-certificate --header="Host: www.mycompanywebsite.com" -O www.mycompanywebsite.com.OUTPUT https://www.mycompanywebsite.com/Welcome.jsf"&&grep -i -m 1 -c SOMEPHRASE www.mycompanywebsite.com.OUTPUT&&rm www.mycompanywebsite.com.OUTPUT

    This will use wget to hit your site, grep the output of the page you're looking for for SOMEPHRASE, only check for the first instance of SOMEPHRASE, and then return the count of SOMEPHRASE that it found.  So, if the site is available, and the phrase exists, you'll get a '1' and if it's down or the phrase isn't on the page, you'll get a '0'

    Then we create a rule named 'www.mycompanywebsite.com is DOWN'
    and we have it evaluate our metric and see if the value is equal to 0.

    You'd then create a policy with that rule in it, and as a target for the policy, point it to a server that has wget installed on it (pretty much any linux server, or any windows machine with grep and wget for windows installed (http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm))

    Or..
    You could use another monitoring tool that can send SNMP traps to the NS, and just have it all sent to the event console.

    You can see where the command metric route it tedious if you have LOTS of websites to monitor.

    Best of luck!



  • 4.  RE: MS7 - Monitor Solution 7 - Please document step-by-step instructions for monitoring a web site

    Posted Dec 02, 2010 03:42 PM

    Thanks, Scott, excellent response.  

    I currently solve this problem "manuall" using a PHP script that presents each monitored web site as a green or red light.  Someone has to check the page daily.  It's not a huge leap to replace the visual output with SNMP traps in my PHP code, running on an internal server, which can be picked up by my NS monitor.



  • 5.  RE: MS7 - Monitor Solution 7 - Please document step-by-step instructions for monitoring a web site

    Posted Dec 08, 2010 07:22 AM

    Hi All,

    Many thanks for the feedback and input here.  It is very much appreciated.  I have cpatured the details here and added this into a feature request.  I will keep you informed on any progress on this feature.

    Many Thanks,



  • 6.  RE: MS7 - Monitor Solution 7 - Please document step-by-step instructions for monitoring a web site

    Posted Dec 08, 2010 03:35 PM

    Thanks, Joseph.  Look forward to seeing HTML monitoring in a future release.