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Amon - server monitoring, simplified logging and error tracking for web apps

amon.cx

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Re: Amon - server monitoring, simplified logging and error tracking for web apps

#21

Post by sovande »

bradleyland wrote: post #15
wwwhizz wrote: post #12

Why would I prefer this over a well-configured monit? http://mmonit.com/monit/

Amon appears to have a slightly different goal set than Monit. Monit is more of a "Is this process running and ok?" tool for keeping processes running as expected. Amon seems a bit more like Munin.

Monit is a bit more than that. You can also use Monit to check remote hosts. Not only can it check http, but ftp, ssh smtp and more. You can use Monit to test your web-application via the HTTP protocol (404 or 50x) and use regex to check if certain content exist (or not) on a web-page. Monit is free, open source and does alerts for free.

Re: Amon - server monitoring, simplified logging and error tracking for web apps

#22

Post by silverlight »

martin_rusev wrote: post #7
rplnt wrote: post #2

I couldn't find some comparison chart or anything that would tell me what extra features the pro version has.

The normal version can monitor only the server it's installed on. The Plus version has alerts and you can use it to monitor as many servers and apps as you like - there are no internal restrictions besides the memory of the VPS it's installed on. So if you want to monitor 10-15 servers - you will manage with a 128-256MB VPS, if you have more than that, all you have to do is to upgrade it to 512MB RAM or more.

So, is that something where the "central"/plus server polls the other servers that are running the normal Amon logger/monitor for their info then just displays it in one place?

Re: Amon - server monitoring, simplified logging and error tracking for web apps

#23

Post by rbanffy »

bradleyland wrote: post #17
cicloid wrote: post #13

Besides the fuzzy feeling of helping a open source project with comercial endeavors, how does it compare to services like Server Density, Nagios, Monit, etc?

I'm looking at replacing Munin with Amon. We used to use a pay-per-month monitoring service, but I find the setup and maintenance of many services to be equal to the headache of maintaining something like Munin. The most obvious difference is that Amon runs on your hardware, so the data stays with you. The pricing model is fundamentally different than services like Server Density, New Relic, Scout, etc in that you pa…

> I'm looking at replacing Munin with Amon

Amon Plus can monitor more than one machine.

Also, on the open source thing, it's closer to open-core. The single-server version is open, but, if you want to monitor more than one box, you'll need the Plus version, which, despite being distributed with source, is not, AFAIK, open.

Re: Amon - server monitoring, simplified logging and error tracking for web apps

#24

Post by bradleyland »

sovande wrote: post #21
bradleyland wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amon appears to have a slightly different goal set than Monit. Monit is more of a "Is this process running and ok?" tool for keeping processes running as expected. Amon seems a bit more like Munin.

Monit is a bit more than that. You can also use Monit to check remote hosts. Not only can it check http, but ftp, ssh smtp and more. You can use Monit to test your web-application via the HTTP protocol (404 or 50x) and use regex to check if certain content exist (or not) on a web-page. Monit is free, open source and does alerts for free.

Thanks for the clarification, but my intent wasn't to describe the full feature set of Monit. All those things you described are still limited to the scope of "is X running?" type questions. Can Monit graph time series data?

EDIT: My point isn't that Amon is "better" than Monit, only that it's different. There is some overlap in feature set, but ultimately, the tools have different goals.

Re: Amon - server monitoring, simplified logging and error tracking for web apps

#28

Post by strags »

Why is the trend today towards installations like this?

curl install.amon.cx | bash

I'm looking at you, rvm, npm et al. Yeah, I'd just love you to poop files randomly into my filesystem, with no tracking, and a completely non-standard uninstall process (if I'm lucky enough to have one at all).

We evolved package management for a reason - I know it's a pain to have to make a .deb, a .rpm and a .tar.gz - but is it really that much more work than making an entirely custom install script?

Re: Amon - server monitoring, simplified logging and error tracking for web apps

#30

Post by martin_rusev »

silverlight wrote: post #22
martin_rusev wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The normal version can monitor only the server it's installed on. The Plus version has alerts and you can use it to monitor as many servers and apps as you like - there are no internal restrictions besides the memory of the VPS it's installed on. So if you want to monitor 10-15 servers - you will manage with a 128-256MB VPS, if you have more than that, all you have to do is to upgrade it to 512MB RAM or more.

So, is that something where the "central"/plus server polls the other servers that are running the normal Amon logger/monitor for their info then just displays it in one place?

It's the other way around. On the servers you install a 10KB agent that collects the data and sends it to the central instance
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