# Simple application monitoring

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simple-application-monitoring/185754>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [March 25, 2010, 4:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simple-application-monitoring/185754 "2010-03-25T16:57:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Owain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/fbc32d/32.png) [@Owain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Owain)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 4:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simple-application-monitoring/185754/1 "2010-03-25T16:57:54Z")

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I have just had a server halt itself and it took me some time to  
notice. I am planning on implementing some application monitoring  
using an external service that polls the website from outside. If it  
can’t reach it then it will SMS me or something. (I would like Prowl  
on my iPhone and Mac at the same time).

I could point the monitoring service at one of the application URLs  
but I wondered whether anyone had come up with a better idea along the  
lines of creating some external monitoring URL, performing a GET and  
then returning some additional information in the XML response, such  
as response time, SQL execution time, number of users logged on,  
memory usage etc etc.

Any thoughts? Is there a plugin or gem about?

O.

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**Author:** ![Owain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/fbc32d/32.png) [@Owain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Owain)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 5:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simple-application-monitoring/185754/2 "2010-03-25T17:10:12Z")

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Well if you are using a unix based system then I would recommend monit (  
[Easy, proactive monitoring of processes, programs, files, directories, filesystems and hosts | Monit](http://mmonit.com/monit/) ). We use it watch the web server, database,  
memcached and a whole heap of services and restart them if they go down.  
It  
will also send you an email when things go down or come back up.

I know this is not a ruby / rails thing but it is a good tool for  
monitoring  
services.

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**Author:** ![Owain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/fbc32d/32.png) [@Owain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Owain)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 5:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simple-application-monitoring/185754/3 "2010-03-25T17:13:43Z")

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Or you could try God. [http://god.rubyforge.org/](http://god.rubyforge.org/)

A ruby-based monitoring system like Monit.

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 12:08 AM, Peter H. \<

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**Author:** ![Owain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/fbc32d/32.png) [@Owain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Owain)\
**Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 5:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simple-application-monitoring/185754/4 "2010-03-25T17:38:19Z")

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Yeah, we looked at that.

Monit is simple and it works, God was neither IMHO.