Site24x7, the cloud infrastructure monitoring service from ManageEngine, announced the launch of the first free, cloud-based service to monitor traditional on-premise network, system and application monitoring products.

Available immediately, this new service enables IT groups to monitor the monitors themselves to make sure the software that companies rely on is working effectively - which is critical for the continuity of operations.

On-premise monitoring software that fails is not in a position to report on its own failure. By monitoring the health of on-premises services from the cloud, Site24x7 can ensure that the enterprise does not lose the software eyes and ears it depends on for data center uptime, infrastructure reliability and performance.

"Many traditional IT management solutions can monitor your local - and cloud-based assets," said Gibu Mathew, director of product management, Site24x7. "They're critical to uptime, and we rely on them all the time. But how can we monitor the uptime and integrity of the monitoring products themselves? That's the job we've built our new Site24x7 monitoring service to perform."

Moving Beyond Homegrown Scripts

Many organizations try to monitor their monitoring software using homegrown scripts. At regular intervals, these scripts check to see that the management software is running. If it is not, they may try to alert an administrator. But such scripts typically provide very limited functionality and can be difficult to maintain, particularly in a complex environment with multiple management tools.

Can the scripts reach an administrator who is traveling? Can they reach an alternative administrator if the primary administrator is on vacation? The engineers at Site24x7 wanted to find a more flexible and elegant way to overcome this vulnerability.

"Our software agents reside on the servers running a customer's IT management solution," said Mathew. "The agent monitors, in real time, the uptime of the monitoring system - using port checks, system uptime checks, process uptime checks and more. If a failure is detected in the monitoring software, the software agent reports up to Site24x7 in the cloud, which can immediately alert any individuals that the server owner specifies - via SMS, email, mobile push notifications for iPhone/Android and even voice calls! Operating in a SaaS capacity helps here, for once an administrator receives an alert, he can interact with Site24x7 in the cloud and take corrective actions via his mobile phone."

A Self-Configuring Solution Covering Multiple On-Premise Products

The free Site24x7 monitoring service works with many of the most popular on-premise monitoring products:

- ManageEngine

- HP

- Kaseya

- Nagios

- SolarWinds

- Ipswitch

Clients taking advantage of this service must download and install a lightweight monitoring agent on the servers running their on-premise monitoring software. This agent automatically detects the monitoring product in use and begins monitoring its health. It passes status information to Site24x7 in the cloud using secure, firewall-friendly communications protocols. IT managers can view system status, percentage of CPU and memory use, thread and handle counts and more - for all their monitored servers - through a single Site24x7 console.

"As a SaaS offering, Site24x7 has long provided anytime/anywhere monitoring," added Mathew. "It can alert you immediately about any issues with your websites, servers or applications. With this free service expansion, we can help ensure the effectiveness of your traditional monitoring tools and help safeguard your existing investments. If your traditional monitoring tools ever go down, Site24x7 will make sure you know about it."

This service is free of charge.