How do you monitor a monitoring server?

Solution 1:

With a second monitoring server, of course. The second one can be much simpler, since all it needs to do is monitor the first. And it should be monitored by the main monitoring system in turn, of course.

If your group is part of a larger organization with separate IT infrastructures, you may be able to make arrangements for another group's monitoring service to watch yours.

You could also make sure the server sends an "it's okay" message every day, and get in the habit of looking for it. (That's only effective if you're not already overwhelmed with routine messages, of course.)

Solution 2:

Obviously your postfix should be monitored too, but thats another topic ;)

I use Nagios checker plugin for Firefox, it is always running in a status bar on any computer I use regularly.

In addition I have a custom script on the outside host that pings the nagios host and sends SMS if its not responding to pings.

So far (5+ years) it worked ok (knock on wood).

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Solution 3:

For monitoring server monitoring (nagios in our case), the free or basic plan of Pingdom or alertfox works great.