Monitoring with Pingdom

One of the value added services we offer with the OpenSolaris VPS plans is FREE Pingdom monitoring. You need to request services to be monitored.

We can monitor the following checks:

• Web checks: HTTP and HTTP Custom. HTTP can be any http or https URL. HTTP Custom, see below.
• Network checks: TCP or UDP port. Ping. DNS.
• Mail checks: SMTP or POP3 or IMAP (including SSL/TLS).

Other customizable features include:

• Frequency resolution - how often to probe the check
• Send notification after how many failed checks
• Notification when check is back up
• Public response and up-time reports

If the other checks aren't suitable for you, we can also do HTTP Custom check. This checks a http or https web site for specific XML output. The output should be:

<pingdom_http_custom_check>
  <status>OK</status>
  <response_time>96.777</response_time>
</pingdom_http_custom_check>

If the status does not match OK, it is considered a failure. Using this mechanism, you can monitor for example a mysql server. You can write a simple script to connect to a mysql server and does SELECT 1. If connection fails or the output is not returned, you can output a ERROR status in the XML output. This will flag the check is a failed.

We can create one or more contacts that can be alerted if a check fails. We can send alerts to an email address, SMS text message, or a Twitter message (you must follow @pingdomalert for this).

The checks and settings mentioned above must be requested by emailing us. At this time, the account portal does not contain an API for managing all of this. Please be sure to include all of the information being requested above.