Requirement:-
I have to write code to monitor all the running applications on the server and give their name as output if it's down.
Research:-
During my research I found that:-
There are several tools like azure and monito that themselves monitor all the applications but this does not match our requirements.
We can write code that can check all the running services on the local desktop or the server and from there we can also check the running status of the required applications and if the status is stopped or sleep then we can easily notify.
We can send requests to the deployed URL at some regular interval and if we get a response status rather than 200 then we can notify the user as something is wrong and this particular website is not working.
If anyone can through some light on this and can suggest some more methods or references from their experience, it will be highly appreciated.
Related
I wanted to ask does anyone know what the definition of a degraded service is?
I'm monitoring some systems using nagios and check_wmi_plus, it runs the following WMI query:
select name, displayname, Started, StartMode, State, Status FROM Win32_Service
The State comes back as running, but the Status as degraded for one particular service (an in house application that is known for crashing).
This status only seems to be mentioned in WMI so now I'm in a bit of a battle because from the front end everything seems fine but from the monitoring system we warn of the system being degraded, so any additional information on this problem and how to resolve it (other than just bouncing the service) would be great.
The most I've found is the service didn't close down correctly.
Many thanks.
In the check_wmi_plus change log for 1.62 the following was added:
Added some additional text when services were in a degraded state.
Previously they were listed/counted as being "bad" but the display
message was confusing as it still showed them as "running". Thanks to
Paul Jobb.
According to Mircosoft a service in a "degraded" state is as follows:
"Service is working, but in a reduced state."
I have developed a chat application and now I want to update the status of my buddies (my friends list) with the message online or offline based on their status. How frequent I should update status of user to the db and how frequent my client application should check for their status ?
Are you sure you want to update the status at regular intervals? Depending on your server side, you can find a solution that will not poll the server, and notify the client. In any case, the implementation long polling pattern will positively affect the performance of your application. I had server side on PHP and use control WebBrowser in my WP App to subscribe to status updates, etc.. The client code was written in Java Script and it works fine. But there are more interesting solutions, I advise you to read about the library http://signalr.net/.
I am wondering if there is a way to monitor these automatically. Right now, in our production/QA/Dev environments - we have bunch of services running that are critical to the application. We also have automatic ETLs running on windows task scheduler at a set time of the day. Currently, I have to log into each server and see if all the services are running fine or not, or check event logs for any errors, or check task scheduler to see if ETLs ran well etc etc... I have to do all the manually... I am wondering if there is a tool out there that will do the monitoring for me and send emails only in case something needs attention (like ETLs fail to run, or service get stopped for whatever reason or errors in event log etc). Thanks for the help.
Paessler PRTG Network Monitor can do all that. we have very good experience with it.
http://www.paessler.com/prtg/features
Nagios is the best tool for monitoring. It checks for the server status as well the defined services in it and if any service goes down or system goes down, sends the mail to specified mail id.
Refer the : http://nagios.org/
Thanks for the above information. I looked at the above options but they have a price.. what I did is an inexpensive way to address my concerns..
For my windows task scheduler jobs that run every night - I installed this tool/service from codeplex that is working great.
http://motash.codeplex.com/documentation#CommentsAnchor
For Windows services - I am just setting the "Recovery" Tab in each service "property" with actions to do when it fails. (like restart, reboot, or run a program which could be an email that will notify)
I built a simple tool (https://cronitor.io) for monitoring periodic/scheduled tasks. The name is a play on "cron" from the unix world, but it is system/task agnostic. All you have to do is make an http request to a unique tracking URL whenever your job runs. If your job doesn't check-in according to the rules you define then it will send you an email/sms message.
It also allows you to track the duration of your jobs by making calls at the beginning and end of your task. This can be really useful for long running jobs since you can be alerted if they start taking too long to run. For example, I once had a backup task that was scheduled every hour. About six months after I set it up it started taking longer than an hour to run!
There is https://eyewitness.io - which is for monitoring server cron tasks, queues and websites. It makes sure each of your cron jobs run when they are supposed to, and alerts you if they failed to be run.
I am building a Windows service that will watch for specific occurrences of events and disk activity. When such an event occurs my plan is to alert the user to the event via a client app, and provide remediation if necessary. I have (mostly) completed both the client and service components, which work great... unless the client app isn't running.
In short, I am looking for a way to start up the client app from the Windows service via CreateProcess to provide information to the user. However, it appears the service can't even see the file/folder of the client app to execute it. I suspect this is due to the credentials under which the service is running, or maybe due to service level restrictions, but wanted to reach out for some advise before I get into this any deeper.
So, the obvious question first... am I thinking about this clearly? Is the architecture plan sound, or should I look at another method? I would prefer not to re-do any of the work I have already completed, but obviously want to make sure the plan and process is solid.
Question #2, what are the limitations I face with this model? Is there a service account that will allow this level of access?
I am obviously struggling with this right now, so any thoughts or assistance will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Kris
As others have mentioned already, you can't (easily) launch an application directly from the service, so I think the easiest way around the problem is to create a process that starts on login and runs with the credentials of the logged in user, eg an app that sits in the system tray, and it opens up a named pipe or a network port to the service. If the service needs to alert the user, it sends a message down that channel and then the client process can either show its own UI or launch an application. Interprocess communication using pipes or ports are the simplest way to deal with the restrictions on session 0 processes.
A Windows service does not have access to the user session in Vista and above, so it is blocked from starting an executable on that session. You can download a white paper from Microsoft that goes into detail: Impact of Session 0 Isolation on Services and Drivers in Windows.
Since Vista, services run in session 0 and the user's desktop is always in a different session. Thus you need to work hard to start a service on the user's desktop.
It can be done but it is pretty tricky. Details can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/winsdk/archive/2009/07/14/launching-an-interactive-process-from-windows-service-in-windows-vista-and-later.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0
At my workplace, we have lab machines that we use to do our testing.
The standard procedure to reserve a machine for testing was to walk around the office to make sure that no one was using the machine.
This is highly inefficient and time consuming.
At first, I set up a web page where people could reserve the lab machine but nobody was keeping the page updated so that turned up to be useless.
I finally found a solution using Microsoft log parser and wanted to share it to the stack overflow community.
It is a batch file that runs on the machine so the user can identify the last users that use the machine and easily IM them to ask if the machine is free.
Is there a better solution to do this?
Use the built-in command qwinsta (Query Win Station) to figure out what sessions (including console) are active or inactive (disconnected) and then act on the given information (creds to krusty.ar btw for linking this already).
If you feel people are abusing the machine in question, refer to rwinsta to nuke their sessions into oblivion...
You will need to install the Microsoft Log Parser
Then create the following 2 files
TSLoginsDetails.sql
SELECT
timegenerated,
EXTRACT_TOKEN(Strings,1,'|') AS Domain,
EXTRACT_TOKEN(Strings,0,'|') AS User,
EXTRACT_TOKEN(Strings,3,'|') AS SessionName,
EXTRACT_TOKEN(Strings,4,'|') AS ClientName,
EXTRACT_TOKEN(Strings,5,'|') AS ClientAddress,
EventID
FROM Security
WHERE EventID=682
ORDER BY timegenerated DESC
TSLogins.bat
echo off
cls
c:
cd "c:\Program Files\Log Parser 2.2\"
logparser.exe file:TSLoginsDetails.sql -o:DATAGRID
Now by placing this batch file on the desktop, the user can see who were the last people to login and contact them by IM to verify if they are done.
How about posting the information from the log file to the website that tells who is currently using the machine as well.
Check and notify when they log in.
Updated the "who is using the machine" page you made prior.
Run a AT job that checks every couple of hours who is on it.
Totally out of the box:
You can install the Software Testing Automation Framework (STAF) on your servers and desktops to manage your tests. It's written in Java, so you can use it on Windows and Unix/Linux desktops and servers.
Using STAF, you can create a resource pool of test servers on which you conduct tests, then write STAX jobs (STAX is a STAF execution framework) to conduct the tests. The job can grab the first available server from the resource pool, run the test, monitor the test status, log results, notify the submitter, then release the server back into the pool when done. If you have multiple people submitting jobs for tests, STAF will manage the queue of requests and satisfy them as they came in. Users can either monitor the job from their desktop, or you can set up email alerts to notify them when the test is complete.
I'm not sure if I understand you, but there are a set of command line tools to deal with terminal server sessions, and there's also a Windows API to do the same if you need to do this from a program.
Since it sounds like you're a microsoft shop, you can set up the machines as resources in outlook/exchange and reserve them that way.