Notification Server Outage Software

[kewlphatdude]

Hey guys, I work for a company that is US wide as a IT person. We use citrix servers to connect remotely to servers hosting your application in Houston, TX.

The Help Desk is so-so on notifying us when a server bounces, or when a application gets hung up somewhere.

My question is:
What type of notification system do you guys use?(email,txt)
What program do you guys use?

I wish that when something happened again, not only will the help Desk know about the situation, but so will the IT working in the field, just so they can tell all the employees on whats going on.

thanks

 

[wimwauters]

Shocking

Monitoring services and backups is a prime function of being a sysadmin, this should've been sorted a long time ago.

Get a budget for this from management as it will save loads of disruption for end-users.

The choice is endless: you've got fully managed services, commercially licensed software that charges based on # of watched computers or types of service (exchange, blackberry, SQL, etc...), but of course don't forget the internet was built with BSD unix, so the best monitoring frameworks out there are free source and open standard. Check out nagios and cacti. Only free source will give you maximum freedom and flexibility.

Yes, they also have plugins for SMS messaging and such, but I've got a 'droid (Google G1 mobile, which runs the Android OS), which runs a nagios app which talks to my nagios setup through my mobile internet link. The 'droid is like an iphone, but for techies

But if you haven't got the budget yet for a full time sysadmin, get that sorted out first. A fulltime sysadmin can also keep on top of your disaster recovery strategy. I do hope there is one in some form or other? Is someone checking the backups at least once a month?

 

[kewlphatdude]

Cool, thanks for the reply.

I think my situation is different . Everything is hosted at a off location site (Houston,TX), and well everyone else is all over Texas and the US. When a server goes down, well the first people to know is the actual user using the service (Outlook, Word,etc). The users usually call us first, since we are the local IT at the sites. When we say "Help Desk hasn't email us with any problems", they usually just wait until the service go back online, or they keep calling us and then we escalate the issue.

What im trying to say is that if there is a down server, cut power line, cut fiber line. The Help Desk should notify us ASAP, in order to tell the 400+ employees whats going on.

It could be as simple as just sending us a text message to our Black Berry that server Texas Email is down, or We had to Bounce File server.

Do you have any off site IT people?
If so how do you communicate with them?

thanks

 

[wimwauters]

Cool, thanks for the reply.

I think my situation is different . Everything is hosted at a off location site (Houston,TX), and well everyone else is all over Texas and the US.

It could be as simple as just sending us a text message to our Black Berry that server Texas Email is down, or We had to Bounce File server.

It sounds like you've been outsourcing/outsourced. I believe cloud computing is evil

You need to talk to the helpdesk so they can help themselves by empowering the other IT staff. But the problem you have is probably nothing to do with technical capability, but with money and politics.

Do you have any off site IT people?
If so how do you communicate with them?
thanks

I run nagios clients or servers at either end, and a nagios client (checking up with both ends) on my android mobile phone. Job done.

Having a cheap 'backup' or fallover internet link on your sites also helps. A lot of unix folks also plug a mobile phone in one of their servers somewhere as a backup message service.

If you need pretty graphs for management presentation purposes, add cacti.

 

[PcTek9]

Assuming you are not joking... Some high end servers have the ability to telephone the sysadmin directly. You could also consider remote monitoring software, many remote servers allow this and the software is even free after buying their servers.

...in shock.... speechless.... is this a joke sir?

 

[wimwauters]

Assuming you are not joking... Some high end servers have the ability to telephone the sysadmin directly. You could also consider remote monitoring software, many remote servers allow this and the software is even free after buying their servers.

...in shock.... speechless.... is this a joke sir?

I think the problem is that the helpdesk service is through a different company in the parent group, or is an outsourced cloud/service thing which is trying to take over all IT support...

Your point is spot on. I suspect his problem is the helpdesk people will sabotage the implementation or reliability of the remote monitoring.