recommendations for external montioring services?

[Eric J Esslinger <eesslinger () fpu-tn com>]

I'm not looking to monitor a massive infrastructure: 3 web sites, 2 mail servers (pop,imap,submission port, https 
webmail), 4 dns servers (including lookups to ensure they're not listening but not talking), and one inbound mx. A few 
network points to ping to ensure connectivity throughout my system. Scheduled notification windows (for example, during 
work hours I don't want my phone pinged unless it's everything going offline. Off hours I do. Secondary notifications 
if problem persists to other users, or in the event of many triggers. That sort of thing). Sensitivity settings (If web 
server 1 shows down for 5 min, that's not a big deal. Another one if it doesn't respond to repeated queries within 1 
minute is a big deal) A Weekly summary of issues would be nice. (especially the 'well it was down for a short bit but 
we didn't notify as per settings')
I don't have a lot of money to throw at this. I DO have detailed internal monitoring of our systems  but sometimes that 
is not entirely useful, due to the fact that there are a few 'single points of failure' within our network/notification 
system, not to mention if the monitor itself goes offline it's not exactly going to be able to tell me about it. (and 
that happened once, right before the mail server decided to stop receiving mail).

__________________________
Eric Esslinger
Information Services Manager - Fayetteville Public Utilities
http://www.fpu-tn.com/
(931)433-1522 ext 165

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