Reasonably accurate uptime reporting stats

[spaceman]

Hi All,

I reasonably confident that WHM doesn't currently include a feature that reports server uptime (however you choose to define that) over any given time period, e.g. a day, a week, a month, or a year.

In particular I'm after a statistic that says "over this time period your server has been up for 99.45% of the time".

Why? Because the board of a prospective new large client of ours is asking for it!

Please note: by and large I see this statistic as a semi-irrelevant marketing number. I'm a particular fan of this article:

Don't scale: 99.999% uptime is for Wal-Mart - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

But when a big prospective client insists they need this number, well sometimes you just gotta give 'em what they want!

fyi: We use the Munin Service monitor plugin for our WHM installations, and it's great. But AFAIK it doesn't explicitly include this % figure I'm looking for, even though it might be able to easily given that it's already reporting on server activity grouped by day, week, month and year.

Can anyone throw me a bone here? Another plugin perhaps? Or a feature request for the cPanel guys to consider?

Thanks.

[DomineauX]

If it was an internal uptime counter then it would mean less than nothing since all it would count would likely be the server actual uptime since reboot.
You should use an external monitoring source such as hyperspin/etc so that the uptime figure is independently monitored and more meaningful.

[spaceman]

If it was an internal uptime counter then it would mean less than nothing since all it would count would likely be the server actual uptime since reboot.
You should use an external monitoring source such as hyperspin/etc so that the uptime figure is independently monitored and more meaningful.

I take your point. In a perfect world, IMHO, there's probably a place for reporting of this nature from both within the data centre AND externally.

Obviously there are a few external monitoring services out there, e.g. Hyperspin Website Monitoring, Web Server Monitoring Service that you mention. We're also aware of SiteUptime - Website Monitoring Service. Does anyone have any particular referrals/recommendations to give in this regard?

Thx.

[DomineauX]

Having used siteuptime in the past I found it decent but my experience with Hyperspin has impressed me much more after many years of use.

[johnburk]

Having used siteuptime in the past I found it decent but my experience with Hyperspin has impressed me much more after many years of use.

I second that. We have been using siteuptime for 7 years and Hyperspin for the past 18 months together with siteuptime and Hyperspin is more accurate and faster in sending messages.

But if you want a accurate uptime, it MUST be from an external source and cannot be part of cpanel.

[DomineauX]

Plus Hyperspin has nicer reporting such as:

All servers:
UnitedHosting Service Status - Network and Server Status - Server Uptime Reports - Uptime History - 99.9% Uptime Record - Network Status

Click on a server name to see the uptime history for it.

[spaceman]

Thanks to all for that.

In our eagerness we've just sign-up with siteuptime, but given the relative inexpensive of these service we may well setup hyperspin in parallel to see which one better cuts the mustard.

Thx again.