Templates available in Server Health Checks category
Server health checks category offers seven generic templates that can be applied to majority of known servers run by different OS types. Generic SNMP devices are supported – those including network management devices, media players, videocams etc.
Please take a look at Server Health application templates section of our Application Templates Community where you can upload your own templates, or download application templates by other users.
Templates list
Templates description
The below templates belong to Server Health Checks category:
FreeBSD server is known for its high reliability, from among other UNIX-like systems. FreeBSD is used to support network services – as gateways, in hosting industry, for development purposes.
Generic SNMP-enabled Device is any type of network device, including a computer, that can be queried and/or controlled by means of SNMP protocols family. The list includes network management devices of all kinds (routers, modems, switches etc); surveillance devices (such as videocams); household appliances and so on.
Generic UNIX-like Server includes UNIX-like OSes, used on variety of architectures, including AIX, HP-UX, QNX and so on. The mentioned OS types are used on huge variety of devices, from mobile phones to mainframes.
Linux Server is mostly known for its usage as server platform, in both free and commercial distributions. It is used in variety of devices, including network management devices and household appliances.
MacOSX Computer: MacOSX is client OS by Apple, serving multiple personal computers and mobile devices.
Solaris Server, long known Unix operating system, developed by Sun Microsystems; one of commercial server platforms, known for its scalability and several innovations (there are also free derivatives, such as OpenIndiana).
Windows Server platform, mostly known for supporting such Microsoft products as IIS, Exchange, SharePoint etc.
Server health monitoring use cases
- if you own iMac, MacBook or any other PC device by Apple, MacOSX Computer template is natural choice
- for any flavor of Linux (including, but not limited by RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, Debian and its derivatives, including Kali, all kinds of Ubuntu, including Linux Mint, openSUSE, Yellow Dog, ArchLinux, Scientific Linux, Mandriva, Gentoo etc) – choose Linux Server; that includes the absolute majority of non-Windows OSes used by cloud hosting and VDS/VPS providers
- note that Windows Server is very general type of template, since actual Windows features vary greatly across multitude of Windows versions and types; the template will also work in most cases for non-server Windows distributions: term server means, in this case, “computer running various network services”
- in case all the required state variables and system information can be obtained via SNMP, and it is implemented in at least version 2c, using Generic SNMP-enabled Device can be an advantage
Server health monitoring tips
- you can try, while in shell, command like cat /etc/*-release; in most cases it will enlighten you about Linux type and its features available
- if you have specific UNIX-like system type running on many computers, it might be optimal to add your own template, including all the required checks; that includes application servers and software suites (for example, hosting servers at a given facility might use similar set of software and could all be covered by a custom template)
- prioritize checks: certain state variables, such as hardware temperature, UPS battery health etc. can be of much more importance; if the above critical checks fail, less critical ones can be made depending on them, to avoid unnecessary checks: if entire system stability is at risk, that should be handled first, as soon as possible
- if there are critical services (such as email servers), disruption of which can affect the entire monitoring setup, make sure their health is handled in the first place
- make sure that switching to failover resources raises periodic alerts (system might work successfully on backup resources, but primary ones should be brought back/replaced as soon as possible)
