Offsite Monitoring - What Are You Using?

Looking for recommendations on offsite network monitoring services ...

...something that will check that certain web portals are available from offsite (OWA, Sharepoint, Help Desk, HVAC, etc) VPN is up, and even another layer of exchange connectivity apart from Postini.

Some suggestions I've gotten already via the Church IT IRC channel:

dyndns.org
mon.itor.us
internetvista.com
montastic.com
websitepulse.com

Other input?

Comments

[Travis Phipps]

Another one: http://siteuptime.com/

Again, I've only used their free service, but it works.

[wvpv]

I'm currently monitoring 5 sites with mon.itor.us. I was using montastic.com. I'm not that enthralled with either one. I was just thinking today that I should dump mon.itor.us and start looking for something else.

[John De Souza]

We use siteuptime, but it is not great. I often don't receive one of the 2 SMS notifications (either the up or the down message.)

[Jeremy Czarnecki]

http://www.pingdom.com/ has been working for us pretty well.

[Andrew Mitry]

Montastic works ok for basic ping monitoring, Pingdom is pretty slick for more advanced monitoring.

[Brandon Huff]

We use Managed Workplace by Level Platforms ( http://www.levelplatforms.com ). It rocks! It manages anything from site, website, or device availability to services and hardware. We were even alerted the other day of a bad block on one of our client's disk. It also monitors SNMP devices and manages and schedules any scripts that you create. It also has a ticketing system and does WSUS management but we currently aren't using those fetures but probably will try out the WSUS management eventually. If you want more info or even if you're interested in having us monitor your site, shoot me an email and we can discuss. Hope this helps!

Brandon

[Tony Dye]

Adding to Brandon's comments above, there's actually one more took we use, and it's named "Brandon." Every day, Brandon does a quick monitor of the monitor. That really does add that last 1% on confidence...

[Tony Dye]

/took/tool/

Darn it's hard to type some days!

[Joe Madden]

Hello,

I am new to this forum, it is great to see the Body and IT collaborating.

Before I respond, I feel it appropriate to offer full-disclosure so my perspective can be adjusted 'accordingly'

I am the principal of an IT service company, Greenlight Group out of SLC, Utah. We are a Gold HP SW partner - meaning we do alot of HP OpenView (now known as HP Software). We have just recently picked up the MSFT System Center product line as well - so my team does monitoring for a living.

Now with the disclosure out of the way - We are in the process of rolling out System Center Essentials (SCE)for my home church South Mountain Community Church (www.smccutah.org) as well as our own company environment (10 employees). So far what I am seeing I really like - There were some interesting 'requirements' mentioned in the original post about snmp devices like HVAC etc - we have shaken it down enough that I am content in the core monitoring - but we haven't deployed the WSUS functionality nor app pushing.

So that is the path we are going down - I am careful to say we are not 'there' yet - so I am definitely not advocating this is *THE* solution.

I am curious to know if anyone else has used these tools. One of the great services this blog has done is the survey of Church IT environments, it has helped me and our executive pastor 'benchmark' where we are relative to the others.

I was surprised to see the overwhelming use of MSFT as a core technology - so I am wondering if there is a reason that their tools aren't implemented more?

Anyways sorry for the epic post - if folks are interested in our roll-out with this let me know and I will provide updates as we shake it all down.

Joe

[Dean Tuckerman]

I had cause to monitor Montastic this week. According to my logs montastic is not checking my sites every 10 minutes as claimed. Instead it seems to be rather regular 6 hours 57 minutes between hits. Consequently I'm looking for an alternative also.