Automated server heartbeat and health check

For 2023 (and 2024 ...) - we are now fully retired from IT training.
We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

Lisa and I (Graham) now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We are far from inactive - rather, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to be active!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))

Occasionally - very occasionally - we may have a problem on our public facing web server that's hosted in some network operation centre or other. It could be a software glitch, or it could be an internet connectivity issue. And we need to know about it quickly!

The problem is than none of us might actually be using the server. I could be giving a private course in Kent, Lisa may be in the office confirming a public course booking, and Chris could be at home in Calne. We have some excellent customers who have been known to alert us by email (thanks, customer Chris, the other day!) but really it should not be necessary for that - in fact, we should find the problem before it gets widely noticed.

I had a bit of a rant the other day about someone who's running a script that pulls a page off our site every five minutes to see if we're still running (see here) but it also set me thinking that we could monitor our own server in a similar way - it's a very different matter to monitor yourself that to monitor someone else uninvited, after all! And we do have a second (backup) server.

So ... here's what we are now doing:

a) I have installed a PHP program that runs stand alone on our backup server which checks with our main server and emails all three of us "techies" if the main server does not respond. (source code)

b) We have a regular times (crontab) job running 4 times an hour ... running this program. The crontab line is in the source code as a comment / example

And it can be that easy!

I have chosen to go one stage further - the page I am calling up on the public server is actually a status line generator, so that our backup server can do more that just say "live" or "dead" - it can also say "live but looking a bit sick" if it needs to. The status script is actually called up from within my Ajax Demonstation too, and you can see the source code here if you wish.

((As an extra, I should have our main server heartbeating our backup server in an equal and opposite arrangement so that we'll be notified if either one falls over))
(written 2009-01-16)

Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles

H307 - PHP - Web2 and caching
  [1633] Changing a screen saver from a web page (PHP, Perl, OSX) - (2008-05-06)
  [1647] Exchange Rates - PHP with your prices in your users currency - (2008-05-19)
  [1733] memcached - overview, installation, example of use in PHP - (2008-08-02)
  [1812] Starting Ajax - easy example of browser calling up server data - (2008-09-27)
  [1813] Ajax - going Asyncronous and what it means - (2008-09-28)
  [1814] Javascript/HTML example, dynamic server monitor - (2008-09-28)
  [1926] Flash (client) to PHP (server) - example - (2008-12-06)
  [2196] New Example - cacheing results in PHP for faster loading - (2009-05-24)
  [2321] Uploading and Downloading files - changing names (Perl and PHP) - (2009-08-04)
  [2545] Scraping content for your own page via PHP - (2009-12-21)
  [3029] PHP data sources - other web servers, large data flows, and the client (browser) - (2010-11-04)
  [3094] Setting your user_agent in PHP - telling back servers who you are - (2010-12-18)
  [3186] How to add a customised twitter feed to your site - (2011-02-27)
  [3458] On this day ... one PHP script with three uses - (2011-09-26)
  [3955] Building up from a small PHP setup to an enterprise one - (2012-12-16)
  [3999] Handling failures / absences of your backend server nicely - (2013-02-08)
  [4055] Using web services to access you data - JSON and RESTful services - (2013-03-29)
  [4075] Further recent PHP examples - (2013-04-28)
  [4106] Web server efficiency - saving repetition through caches - (2013-05-30)
  [4136] How do I post automatically from a PHP script to my Twitter account? - (2013-07-10)
  [4627] Caching results in an object for efficiency - avoiding re-calculation - (2016-01-20)

A690 - Web Application Deployment - Clustering and load balancing
  [934] Clustering, load balancing, mod_rewrite and mod_proxy - (2006-11-21)
  [1121] Sharing the load with Apache httpd and perhaps Tomcat - (2007-03-29)
  [1771] More HowTo diagrams - MySQL, Tomcat and Java - (2008-08-24)
  [1993] Load Balancing - Hardware or Software? - (2009-01-15)
  [2059] Sharing the load between servers - httpd and Tomcat - (2009-02-28)
  [2482] Load balancing with sticky sessions (httpd / Tomcat) - (2009-10-29)
  [2483] Clustering on Tomcat - (2009-10-30)
  [3293] Distributing the server load - yet ensuring that each user return to the same system (Apache httpd and Tomcat) - (2011-05-18)
  [3339] Simplest ever proxy configuration? - (2011-06-28)
  [3892] Distributed, Balanced and Clustered Load Sharing - the difference - (2012-10-13)
  [4432] Java web application for teaching - now with sessions and clustering / load balancing demonstrations - (2015-02-20)

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Some other Articles

How low can you sink?
Text on a background image
Travelling to a course - station pickups
Advise before my Apache / Tomcat course
Automated server heartbeat and health check
tomcat-users.xml; what a difference a space made
A good time to travel
Rules for a King
Speaking all the languages

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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

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