Believe it or not but things are no longer 9 to 5 (although some businesses out there really don’t get that just yet – that’s a story for another time). If you’re online then you’re accessible 24×7 and problems can’t really wait for the next business day. While it’s not possible for you to keep an eye on your servers all the time there are server monitoring solutions out there that let you get a good nights rest.
Hyperic make one such system allowing you to monitor and report on all aspects of your data system. Whilst checks can be made to ensure services are live and available for users systems management can look into applications, profile them and see if things are running as quickly as they should be. After all just because Apache is responding on port 80 does not mean everything is fine.
Hyperic offer two versions of their services, Hyperic HQ which is a free open-source version and then Hyperic HQ E for enterprises with enhanced features and support. If you’re just getting your toes wet with server monitoring then the free open source would be great just to see how things go.