# Monitoring tools? experience with fiveruns.com?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242>\
**Category:** Deployment\
**Created:** [February 20, 2007, 9:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242 "2007-02-20T21:24:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 13\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 9:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/1 "2007-02-20T21:24:59Z")

</div>

Hi all,

I was wondering what experience the group has for monitoring tools,  
particularily monit and nagios? We have a PHP platform that we are  
pushing live in Rails soon, and we need to get a better handle on the  
health of our servers and the overall load we have to deal with. Our  
site is growing and just having a terminal open for every server  
running ‘sar -u 2 0’ doesn’t scale very well =).

Also, any real world experiences with [fiveruns.com](http://fiveruns.com) would be great.

thanks,  
Rob

> **[Home](https://robsanheim.com/)**
>
> Just another WordPress site

> **[Seeking Alpha | Stock Market Analysis & Tools for Investors](https://seekingalpha.com/)**
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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 10:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/2 "2007-02-20T22:35:09Z")

</div>

On 20-Feb-07, at 3:10 PM, Rob S. wrote:

> Also, any real world experiences with [fiveruns.com](http://fiveruns.com) would be great.
> 
> thanks,  
> Rob  
> [robsanheim.com](http://robsanheim.com)  
> [seekingalpha.com](http://seekingalpha.com)

Hey Rob - I can’t answer your question, but I did come across this  
other - [http://www.hyperic.com/](http://www.hyperic.com/) - nice eye candy there.

one to add to your list.

Cheers,  
Jodi  
General Partner  
The nNovation Group inc.  
www.nnovation.ca/blog

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2007, 4:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/3 "2007-02-21T04:21:43Z")

</div>

We use both monit and nagios – I find nagios hard to setup, every  
time, but it sure does work well. On the purely rails and mongrel  
side of things, I use a custom capistrano task to setup monit along  
with mongrel\_cluster to manage mongrels. It looks a little something  
like this:

desc “Setup monit daemon monitoring”  
task :setup\_monit do

monit\_configuration = render :template =\> \<\<-EOF

# This monit configuration was generated dynamically

# 

EOF

(0…mongrel\_servers-1).each do |server|  
monit\_configuration +=\<\<-EOF  
check process mongrel-#{mongrel\_start\_port + server} with pidfile  
#{deploy\_to}/current/log/mongrel.#{mongrel\_start\_port + server}.pid  
group mongrel  
start program = “/usr/local/bin/ruby /usr/local/bin/mongrel\_rails  
start -d -e production -p #{mongrel\_start\_port + server} -a 127.0.0.1  
-l #{deploy\_to}/current/log/mongrel.log -P  
#{deploy\_to}/shared/log/mongrel.#{mongrel\_start\_port + server}.pid -c  
#{deploy\_to}/current”  
stop program = “/usr/local/bin/ruby /usr/local/bin/mongrel\_rails  
stop -P #{deploy\_to}/shared/log/mongrel.#{mongrel\_start\_port +  
server}.pid”  
if totalmem \> 100.0 MB for 5 cycles then restart  
if failed port #{mongrel\_start\_port + server} protocol http with  
timeout 10 seconds then restart

EOF  
end

put monit\_configuration, “/etc/monit.d/rails.conf”

end

You’ll need to add the appropriate --user and --group in there too,  
otherwise they start back up as root. I’ve been experimenting with  
that timeout – it’s pretty low… Also probably could use the  
addition of Bradley Taylor’s mongrel\_cluster --cleanup with single  
mongrels specified…

Let us (rails-deployment) know what you go for.

shameless plug – I also use heartbeat for simple monitoring of my  
site and making sure important rails actions are still responding in a  
timely manner: [http://heartbeat.highgroove.com/](http://heartbeat.highgroove.com/)

## cheers

Charles Brian Q.  
self-promotion: [www.seebq.com](http://www.seebq.com)  
highgroove studios: [www.highgroove.com](http://www.highgroove.com)  
slingshot hosting: [www.slingshothosting.com](http://www.slingshothosting.com)  
main: 678.389.9462 fax: 678.826.0969

Ruby on Rails Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch  
Intensive Ruby on Rails Training:  
[http://www.bignerdranch.com/classes/ruby.shtml](http://www.bignerdranch.com/classes/ruby.shtml)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2007, 6:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/4 "2007-02-22T06:24:35Z")

</div>

On 2/20/07, Charles Brian Q. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> monit\_configuration = render :template =\> \<\<-EOF  
> start -d -e production -p #{mongrel\_start\_port + server} -a 127.0.0.1  
> EOF  
> mongrels specified…  
> self-promotion: [www.seebq.com](http://www.seebq.com)  
> highgroove studios: [www.highgroove.com](http://www.highgroove.com)  
> slingshot hosting: [www.slingshothosting.com](http://www.slingshothosting.com)  
> main: 678.389.9462 fax: 678.826.0969
> 
> Ruby on Rails Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch  
> Intensive Ruby on Rails Training:  
> [http://www.bignerdranch.com/classes/ruby.shtml](http://www.bignerdranch.com/classes/ruby.shtml)

Thanks for the advice here…we have nagios installed, just not  
configured at all yet.

Also, I _knew_ someone had developed a very simple monitoring app like  
Heartbeat, I just couldn’t remember the name. Thanks for reminding me  
off it before I went a wrote something myself =). It seems the  
Railsday SVN doesn’t work anymore, is the code still available and  
open to play with or extend?

- Rob

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2007, 2:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/5 "2007-02-21T14:18:37Z")

</div>

I hadn’t heard of fiveruns before, but this looks totally sweet! I’ve  
setup nagios before and like others have said its a complete pain to  
setup :-\

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2007, 5:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/6 "2007-03-15T05:29:44Z")

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I tried [fiveruns.com](http://fiveruns.com) and was frustrated. You have to install their  
binary daemon as root. There was no documentation on how to monitor  
different services.

Rob S. wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I was wondering what experience the group has for monitoring tools,  
> particularily monit and nagios? We have a PHP platform that we are  
> pushing live in Rails soon, and we need to get a better handle on the  
> health of our servers and the overall load we have to deal with. Our  
> site is growing and just having a terminal open for every server  
> running ‘sar -u 2 0’ doesn’t scale very well =).
> 
> Also, any real world experiences with [fiveruns.com](http://fiveruns.com) would be great.
> 
> thanks,  
> Rob  
> [robsanheim.com](http://robsanheim.com)  
> [seekingalpha.com](http://seekingalpha.com)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2007, 7:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/7 "2007-03-15T07:21:17Z")

</div>

I’m using Monit and have had a few issues that I documented on my blog  
here  
[http://blog.craz8.com/articles/2007/03/10/rails-page-caching-and-monitor-services/](http://blog.craz8.com/articles/2007/03/10/rails-page-caching-and-monitor-services/)

One other strange thing I’ve seen is that sometimes Monit dies if I  
try to restart Nginx using the web UI

In general though, Monit has worked pretty good for me keeping sites  
running.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 5:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/8 "2007-03-16T05:27:21Z")

</div>

There are obviously lots of monitoring tools out there, but one that  
I’ve  
had recommended a few times and we’re looking at is Zabbix:

> **[Zabbix :: The Enterprise-Class Open Source Network Monitoring Solution](https://www.zabbix.com/)**
>
> Zabbix is a mature and effortless enterprise-class open source monitoring solution for network monitoring and application monitoring of millions of metrics.

On 3/14/07, Tom F. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> running.
> 
> >

–  
Chris B.  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 4:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/9 "2007-04-11T04:15:01Z")

</div>

Jodi S. wrote:

> Hey Rob - I can’t answer your question, but I did come across this  
> other - [http://www.hyperic.com/](http://www.hyperic.com/) - nice eye candy there.
> 
> one to add to your list.
> 
> Cheers,  
> Jodi  
> General Partner  
> The nNovation Group inc.  
> www.nnovation.ca/blog

Thanks for the props, Jodi. Speaking as someone from the industry - its  
really hard to tell whats good and whats lacking out there. I’ll admit  
being a Hyperican right up, but I’ll shoot straight with you on the ones  
you’ve questioned. FiveRuns is an interesting business as it is hosted  
monitoring. Which means someone else is managing your monitoring  
solution. Some find it nice to offload this completely, but most Admins  
I talk to won’t hear of not having complete control and the monitoring  
solution behind their own firewall. Nagios has been around for ages.  
Huge community, generally works well. But it is HARD to set up, very  
fragile, and has challenges when you hit scalability and compatibility  
with anything non-SNMP based for the most part. Hyperic is a much more  
modern approach, that was built for flexibility and web infrastructure.  
A perfect fit for Rails. Hyperic monitors everything from the networks,  
hardware, software and services and does auto-discovery to keep up with  
the changes. Hyperic also just started code on our summer release, and  
are incorporating Rails into our code. So far, we’re HUGE fans. Which  
means we are also building out a plugin to manage the internals of Rails  
specifically as well. The plugin should be simple, as our plugin  
architecture is pretty clean and flexible, we just haven’t had a working  
Rails app to play with until this project. Anyone wants to help out,  
we’d love the contributions - even if its only testing!

Stacey Schneider  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid  
Sr. Director, Marketing & Products  
Hyperic

> **[VMware Products](https://www.vmware.com/products.html)**
>
> With a digital foundation built on VMware products, you can build, run, manage, connect, deliver, and protect all types of applications – everywhere. Learn how.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 10:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/10 "2007-04-11T10:05:11Z")

</div>

For all those who have had problems setting up Nagios in the past  
there is a project in Sourceforge called Blue (http://  
[blue.sourceforge.net/](http://blue.sourceforge.net/)) which is a Java port of Nagios that comes with  
a nifty configuration tool that you can also use on both new and  
existing Nagios installations, its not written in Rails buts its a  
definite improvement!

Jon

On Apr 11, 3:15 am, Stacey Schneider \<ruby-forum-incom…@andreas-

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 4:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/11 "2007-04-11T16:37:07Z")

</div>

Also, for configuring Nagios, there is Fruity:

> **[Best Open Source Mac System Software 2023](https://sourceforge.net/directory/system/mac/)**
>
> Compare the best free open source Mac System Software at SourceForge. Free, secure and fast Mac System Software downloads from the largest Open Source applications and software directory

There is an article in the latest SysAdmin journal about Nagios and  
Fruity.

On 4/11/07, JonnyRestless [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> > > General Partner  
> > > solution behind their own firewall. Nagios has been around for ages.  
> > > architecture is pretty clean and flexible, we just haven’t had a working
> 
> >

–  
Chris B.  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2007, 3:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/12 "2007-02-22T15:36:42Z")

</div>

On Feb 21, 9:23 pm, “Rob S.” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> > like this:  
> > monit\_configuration +=\<\<-EOF  
> > server}.pid"
> 
> > timely manner: [http://heartbeat.highgroove.com/](http://heartbeat.highgroove.com/)  
> > Intensive Ruby on Rails Training:
> 
> - Rob

Big Sister [http://bigsister.graeff.com/](http://bigsister.graeff.com/) is a simpler, but easier to  
configure option. It keeps history by default, I think, and it runs on  
port 1984, which I like.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/47e85d/32.png) [@rsanheim](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rsanheim)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2007, 3:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/monitoring-tools-experience-with-fiveruns-com/86242/13 "2007-04-14T03:15:42Z")

</div>

We sell Fiveruns subscriptions as an add on service to our virtual  
and dedicated server packages. We love the service and our customers  
have been quite happy with. Fiveruns has a strong platform and I’d be  
happy to answer any questions you have about it (although I’m in the  
digest, so CC me with any questions).

- Jesse  
Blue Box Group, LLC  
[www.blueboxgrp.com](http://www.blueboxgrp.com)