How much do I want to know?

I have been thinking recently about my server monitoring. I have had Nagios running for a while monitoring almost everything in my environment. I find it to be a valuable tool for knowing if something is wrong or an event has occurred. Nagios notifies me on my corporate and personal email with warnings and critical notices.

My Nagios server is not redundent, if our Internet access goes down I wouldn't receive any notifications. So I got to thinking I needed some kind of external monitoring so I can be aware of an outage.  I signed up for http://mon.itor.us and found the free version to be exactly what I need.

Then I started to think about what I have created.  I will now be informed 24/7/365 of the status of my servers/network.  This sounds great in theory but what about my personal life.  I work for an organization that has a small feel but truly does have a large amount of users.  I setup all this monitoring under my own direction and not because it was handed down from above.  Should I give myself the stress of knowing an outage exists or would I be better off being oblivious to it?

One of the problems is I have two audiences: my bosses and my users.  Users want systems up, they want to be able to get their work done, meet their deadlines, etc.  Some bosses, not all, are more OK with some downtime.  They see a few hours in the dark as a time to do other things.  I have to agree with those bosses.  On the other hand I do enjoy my work and take pride that my systems work well are available to the best of my ability.  Providing good service make me feel good and that I make a difference here.

I used to have a blackberry where I got all the emails but it felt like I was always working.  I now hardly ever check my work email on the weekend and after hours.  It feels great.  I now have an optimistic look when I head into work.  I am not stressing on the drive in about fixing this or setting up that.

If I keep monitoring notifications going to my personal email I will be able to stay on top of problems with the servers at the office.  But then if an outage occurs I will feel obligated to fix it.  Is my environment that important where it matters or can it wait till Monday?

New site design

Tonight I enabled a new theme on the blog. I have to say the Wordpress platform is getting better every time I make an update.

It is remarkably easy to apply a new theme. The themes are very well done and have the modern web 2.0 feel. I add a little customization for some links and google adsense and I'm all set.

I bet I haven't even scratched the surface on the functionality that is freely available in the Wordpress community.

OpenDNS Update

I previously posted that I was looking into OpenDNS  for my organization.  Since my last post I can say we have embraced it fully and have migrated our IPs at the main office and a half dozen of remote sites.

It has been a tremendous help to locate issues with PCs and servers on our networks.  I have been able to mediate several PCs with spyware and one that was being used to send SPAM.  Although OpenDNS didn't help prevent the computers from getting infected it did mitigate further problems.

It was great for peace of mind on April 1st when that whole Conflicker hype scare happened.  OpenDNS was able to track if any DNS requests were being sent to Conflicker controlled domains.

We are planning on moving more remote site to OpenDNS.  Another update to come down the road.

iPhone wordpress app

Just installed the wordpress iPhone app. It allows you to write and post blog posts via the phone.

I don't write many entries but the app may change that. Free time between tasks should allow me to put down ideas and save as drafts.

It is really a nice app. It handles multiple blogs, it save drafts locally and on server and can post pictures in posts.

WOT

Just installed the WOT add-on for IE on my work machine. I like the concept. The add-on rates site on their trustworthiness. I have a lot of users that are not very careful when it comes to the internet. The free clip art sites get users all the time. Something like this with a little training could go a long way in stopping browser hijacks and spyware.

here is the link to their site: mywot.com

View the demo to view an explanation of the service.

Google tracks shipments..sort of

I am not sure how many people realize that if you Google your UPS tracking number it gives you a handy link to the UPS web site to track your package. You can also do this with USPS and FedEx tracking numbers. Where I feel it become useful is that it is quicker searching for it than going to the shipper's site. Just paste the number into my Google chrome address bar and you're good to go

here is a sample of something I had delivered:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=1Z011A8X0361615688

More evidence that Google wants all of the Internet's data indexed on it's servers.

Web Filtering

Over year ago I saw an advertisement for a site called OpenDNS.  The advertisement was touting free DNS services and faster DNS look-ups.  My curiosity was sparked.  I visited the website and found a free web 2.0ish service that gave you content filtering for free.  Working in the education industry I gave it a once over.  

From what I can remember I liked the idea of having OpenDNS handle all the name requests but I ending up brushing it off because it was free. Also there must have been another feature that was lacking or missing for me to write it off.

Well come to present time...We had to close schools last year due to a large budget deficit.  The decision to close the schools was very controversial in the public.  Anyway...with economic conditions poor these days IT is forced to look at ways to cut costs.  We have two appliances for filtering, one for the district office and one for the schools.  The web filtering subscriptions are due up in August 2009 so picking a solution is a few months.  One problem is that the life cycle of the box is getting near it's end.  That means the cost for the subscriptions has skyrocketed since last year (about a 100% increase).

With the subscription contracts expiring and a renewal expensive that is leaving me with a few options:

• pay the costly renewal fee for both boxes


• buy two new boxes from the same vendor


• buy one larger sized appliance from the vendor


• find another appliance


• find a in the cloud product

The cost for the subscriptions for two years cost about the same as the cost for new appliances after two years (1st year will be included in appliance and 2nd year will be about what we have paid in the past).  I could purchase a beefier appliance that could handle both networks easily but then there is only 1 box so I'll have nothing to failover to if one goes down.

I will be looking at OpenDNS as a viable option to replace both of our appliances in the future.  I will compare that to appliances from my current vendor and other ones.  I have created a free OpenDNS account and set it up in my home network.  When I have some feedback after a few weeks of running it I hopefully with document it here.

I will also look into Google Web Security, but the cost of that per user has look un-doable for my organization.

Till then.....