Who Uses Web Server
Monitoring Services?
Most Web hosting companies state they offer '99% or 99.9%
server uptime'. That's pretty much a standard claim these
days but the difference between these 2 regular statements
is 80 hours of downtime each year. Do you know that 99% uptime
means the server is unavailable 87 hours a year? Almost 4
days a year the server is off. Using a Web monitoring service
gives you the ability to keep an eye on the downtime which
is especially important when your Web site is a money-making
venture - where downtime can cost your business a lot of money.
Web Monitoring Reliability
Monitoring Web server uptime once every 60 minutes is not
a particularly reliable method of determining server uptime.
Sure, it will catch the servers that out for long periods
of time, but will not often catch Web servers that intermittently
have downtime for shorter periods of time. There is a balance.
The price is the balance! If tests are frequent the monitoring
is much more exact, but the price is significantly higher.
The more accurate method is to check every minute or so -
but for most individuals and organizations, this is just a
bit too much for their budgets. Some companies even like to
use server 'uptime' as a marketing gimmick - 'Hey, look everyone,
100% uptime' - which of course is not accurate - even load-balanced
servers can experience a little downtime.
Web Server Uptime Services
Typically, most Web server uptime monitoring services test
your server anywhere between once-per hour to once-per-minute.
Charges are on a sliding scale, depending on the frequency
of 'tests' and the number of ports/protocols you want testing.
In exchange for a monthly fee, you should get access to reports,
graphs and tables (accessible via your Web browser) giving
you an overview of your Web server's performance.
There are dozens of Web site monitoring services. Most are
paid-for services - some are FREE services. The FREE server
uptime services usually offer 60-minute monitoring and aren't
very feature-packed - but can still be OK for Web site owners
trying to gauge server uptime.
Conclusion
Whatever you do, monitor your website's uptime. It's good
to know if your website is up and verify if the host is providing
a good service. Go for a free service if you really can't
pay for monitoring, but do it! You need this kind of feedback;
you really cannot rely on your own, "manual" monitoring.
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