Monitoring production web-based applications [closed]

Question

I have several applications that are running 25 hours a day, 7-days a week. They are all web-based, saas applications running on Ruby on Rails. We host our production apps currently on Heroku.

I need a notification system to let me know when the applications are off-line. I know there are a number of options.

I've used Nagios in the past, but it's a bit too configuration intensive for what I need. Also, I'd like an application that I don't host.

Also, I have some worker instances that are running batch jobs. It might be nice to be able to monitor those as well.

It's important that the solution be able to still provide notifications even if Amazon EC2 is down -- so one based on Heroku or Engineyard probably wouldn't work.

Answer 1

OK, based on your initial need --- I would go with either for heroku monitoring. Neither requires SSH to install

• http://www.uptimerobot.com/ (checks and emails you when page is not responding) ... I use this and it works well
• New Relic Availability http://newrelic.com/features/availability-monitoring --- if you're already using new-relic, just turn this on.

Answer 2

For your worker instances that are running as batch jobs, look at http://www.pushmon.com. You just need to call a URL whenever your batch jobs run successfully. Note I'm associated with PushMon.

We use UptimeRobot for website monitoring.