Monitoring multiple java web applications and services

Question

We have multiple java web applications and processes that are deployed on a server. we would like to find a mean to easily monitor these applications and check their status remotely. by motoring we mean the following :

1. Check if the websites are up, send notifications by email otherwise.
2. Easily access or display logs in real-time that are located in different places on our servers. Send emails when exceptions occurred and are logged
3. Issue commands and run scripts that are located on our servers. the os of the server is linux. commands could be like restart tomcat...
4. ? not sure if there are other ideas about monitoring

My question is that is there any application that is already available that provide such functionalities or some of them? if not do you know what API can be used to build such applications (in JAVA).

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UPDATE: The tool should be free

Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

For monitoring Java applications as well as website availability, issuing custom commands in your servers and in general, monitor applications go for a general-purpose monitoring solution, like Pandora FMS. I'll try to answer your questions in order:

1. Check if the websites are up, send notifications by email otherwise.

Doing a network check to TCP port 80 and parsing a 200 OK response.

2. Easily access or display logs in real-time that are located in different places on our servers. Send emails when exceptions occurred and are logged

Easy thing to do with the log retrieval feature. Check it out in the wiki.

3. Issue commands and run scripts that are located on our servers. the os of the server is linux. commands could be like restart tomcat...

I'd suggest using Pandora Agents in this case. Quite powerful, yet very low resource consumption. They allow to do post-actions if your app is down, your CPU is high, or in general terms, anything you can measure happens. Check out the server monitoring more deeply: http://pandorafms.com/monitoring-solutions/server-monitoring/

Answer 2

If you want to monitor java processes, there is nothing better than MoSKito: http://www.moskito.org. The only problem is that it covers much more, than you stated as your requirements, you will also get:

• health thresholds and notifications
• detailed performance metrics of your java code
• dashboards with most important information about your app
• mobile applications to monitor your app on the run
• detection of slow transactions in your application
• and more more more ;-)

http://www.moskito.org

http://newest.moskito.org/moskito/ (nightly build of the UI)

Step by Step guide: http://blog.anotheria.net/msk/the-complete-moskito-integration-guide-step-1/

Answer 3

On Linux, you an use monit. You can use it to any monitor services such as apache as well as wildfly running behind apache. It is actually easy to configure and it also gives all that you have requested.