Using netstat to monitor a server

It is important to always keep a watchful eye on your dedicated server. Monitoring tools may be external, available through service providers, or internal, already included in your Linux distribution. One important internal monitoring tool is netstat.

Netstat can provide you with useful information about the ports that system services are using. For example, to display information about the services using port 80, type the following command:

netstat -ant | grep 80

The command by itself will show all of the instances running on every port, but you can limit the output to port 80 with grep. This is a quick way to see how many instances of port 80 (your web server) are actually running. If you want to count them, type this command:

netstat -ant | grep 80 | wc -l

Netstat has many other features that you can use to learn about your network ports and how they are being used. For complete documentation on netstat, type “man netstat” from the command line.

Managing your Ubuntu server

When most people think of Ubuntu, they think of the award-winning community-driven desktop Linux distribution created by South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth and his army loyal supporters. But Shuttleworth is still a businessman, and part of his investment is making sure people who use Ubuntu at the server level have support.

Don’t worry. Despite how it sounds, this is a good thing. It means those who use Ubuntu at the server level are not up a creek if something goes wrong. Most server-ready Linux distributions are backed by companies that will offer support for them. Ubuntu offers a service called Landscape that helps you monitor and manage your server.

Landscape has two versions: Hosted Edition, which is hosted remotely and accessed over the web and Dedicated Server Edition, which you install directly on your dedicated server. Canonical currently offers a free 60 day trial, and a subscription to Landscape is $150 per node per year.

Source: Canonical

When Your Dedicated Server Goes Down

Question: I just ordered a remote dedicated server, and I am concerned about trusting my data with someone else. What are my options if the server goes down?

Answer:

Generally speaking, you do not have much to worry about. You most likely did your homework before selecting your web host. There is not a huge risk of you losing your data completely, but you should always keep backups just in case.

The bigger risk is downtime. You want to minimize the disruption of service, especially if you have a business and clients who depend on your website(s). Here are a few steps you can take to minimize downtime.
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Keeping a close watch on your server

Nothing can be worse than getting a call from an irate client, screaming at you because their web site won’t load. You scramble out of bed, tripping over the cat, and log onto your computer. It only takes you a few minutes to realize that the whole server is down. None of your 20, 50, 100, or even 200 clients on that server can reach their websites. For that moment, your world stops.

There are many good software programs and services available that could remedy this problem. One such solution is called Nagios, a free and open source network monitoring solution. Nagios monitors Windows and Linux/Unix servers, routers, switches, firewalls, printers, services, and applications. You can set it to notify you via email, pager, or mobile phone, and it has escalation capabilities if you would like to have different support personnel notified depending on the severity.

Nagios is available for download from their website. With it, you will be able to rest a little easier knowing that you will at least know when something is wrong before you get that dreaded phone call or support ticket. Nagios was the winner of the InfoWorld Best Open Source Software award of 2008 and the Linux Journal Reader’s Choice award of 2009. A list of other network management and monitoring software is available at Wikipedia.