It's impossible to properly manage a server platform without knowing what's actually happening on it. To this end, monitoring of key services is a core requirement of a good, proactive support regime. In a production environment, this falls into two broad categories: ensuring that the required services are up and running correctly, and managing the resources available on the server, including recognising and addressing any shortfalls before they become a problem.

nagios allows to check that services/websites are up and running. This instantly alerts us to any problems as soon as they occur. As we run this service from a server in California, this also checks that your websites are up and running,

We also an extension of Tobias Oetiker's rrdtool, called munin to provide this. A small program runs regularly on the servers, and reports a snapshot back to our master server. Close tuning of this allows for the timely recognition of any changes on your servers, and any irregularities can be addressed before they become problems. Graphing of these snapshots on the master server provides an elapsed-time view of the resources in use, allowing for necessary expansion to be planned and implemented at leisure. Customization of this package allows for any service that can be quantified to be monitored... something we have in-depth experience of performing.