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VPS Tips *anyone got reliable free monitoring tools to share?

nicericenicerice
edited February 2013 in Need Help
Hi

I am on a W Server 2008 VPS and occasionally GSA loses the plot and I have no idea its locked up until I log back in.

Does anyone have any timely advice on tools to use to monitor the health of processes?

Ideally I am looking for something that reports when a process locks up or is using too much ram as that is what seems to be happening.

A godsend would be a tool that shows me the active processes on the server live at a glance as a desktop tool here at home on my w7 lappie although I am sure that things like this exist but have no idea where to look.

I thought to ask here first as a fair group of us are VPS users.

Thanks in advance
NR
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Comments

  • BrandonBrandon Reputation Management Pro
    Good thinking...I'd love to get a text message when GSA freezes!
  • nicericenicerice
    I would love that too!

    for the moment however I finally thought laterally on the subject and got this program to do some magic

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/autoscreencap/

    its a screen capture tool that automates screen capture to a folder of your choice.

    I use a dropbox folder and have it capturing every 600 seconds so at a glance I can see if gsa is close to being over burdened memory wise or has lost it randomly otherwise ( on my vps it just goes blank and freezes when it does this so it will look obvious on a screencap )

    It's not ideal but it's working well enough for now.

    If you have a better monitoring tool please let me and the rest of us VPS nuts know.

    Thanks
    NR
  • nicericenicerice
    edited February 2013
    I would love that too!

    for the moment however I finally thought laterally on the subject and got this program to do some magic

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/autoscreencap/

    its a screen capture tool that automates screen capture to a folder of your choice.

    [edit] sorry guys... its not working so well... still looking

    I use a dropbox folder and have it capturing every 600 seconds so at a glance I can see if gsa is close to being over burdened memory wise or has lost it randomly otherwise ( on my vps it just goes blank and freezes when it does this so it will look obvious on a screencap )

    It's not ideal but it's working well enough for now.

    If you have a better monitoring tool please let me and the rest of us VPS nuts know.

    Thanks
    NR
  • RockDieselRockDiesel
    I use Splashtop

    Installed it on my VPS.  Now I just remote into my VPS from my iPhone.

    I check it all the time now.  In the car.  While on the shitter.  Sometimes do a quick check before bed too.

    It's also nice because if SER locks up I can just restart it using my phone.  No reason for me to get out my laptop.

    I highly recommend it.
  • nicericenicerice
    Wow... cool @RockDiesel... I will check it out... ignore that previous recommendation for the screencap software... it only works when I am logged in even if it's run as an administrator process.... Silly.

    Thanks
    NR
  • nicericenicerice
    edited February 2013
    Ok checked it out.

    It looks good but again its pretty much the same as remote desktop and not really a server monitor.

    If there was something that could monitor processes and then send alerts when something goes awry according to set parameters then that would be a lot better. I don't want to have to log in to look at it.

    I would rather a remote monitoring device that just popped alerts visual and audio when something was not right.

    Thanks for the suggestion however... I am still looking.
    NR
  • AlexRAlexR Cape Town
    What are the parameters you want to monitor?
  • poweruphostingpoweruphosting Los Angeles
    edited February 2013
    Like @RockDiesel pointed out, you can always RDP via your iPhone or Android phone whenever you want.

    I personally love using the following app and it's free as well:
    http://www.2x.com/rdp-client/
  • nicericenicerice
    Thanks GG and Powerup for answering.

    @GlobalGoogler ideally I would like to have a list of what processes are running and how much memory they are taking.


  • thisisalexthisisalex
    ???

    perfmon? sysmon?
  • theorbitaltheorbital
    do you want something that emails you the tasklist every so often? If so I could make something like that for you pretty easily. Hit me up on a PM.
  • nicericenicerice
    edited February 2013
    @theorbital... thanks for the offer...

    I figured it out today with this on my windows 2008 VPS

    Finally figured it out using powershell

    What I did was this:

    I created a new task that is set to trigger every XX minutes.

    I also set the task to remember the pwd and gave it the privileges to operate.

    I created a command to run a program with this line :

    program is : powershell

    arguments : -command &{get-process | where-object{$_.WorkingSet -gt 100000000} | Out-File C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\DROPBOX\GSA.process.report.VPS1.txt}

    I started the scheduled event and tested it running with and without me logged in to prove it was working.

    It lists all process items with a Byte usage over 100MB to a text file of a location of your choice every XX minutes of your choice.

    After proving itself at 5 minutes I chose 30 minutes as that is enough to tell me what is going on.

    It outputs this :


    Handles  NPM(K)    PM(K)      WS(K) VM(M)   CPU(s)     Id ProcessName         
    -------  ------    -----      ----- -----   ------     -- -----------         
       1737     182   399140     336072   747 ...71.25   2440 Search_Engine_Ranker

    ...which tells me enough


    Solved!

    more info here :

    http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/feature/How-to-get-process-information-with-Windows-PowerShell

    http://ss64.com/ps/

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee176924.aspx

    http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2011/01/12/use-scheduled-tasks-to-run-powershell-commands-on-windows.aspx

    potential issues : if you change your vps pwd you will have to update the stored password for this to keep on running.
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