But it is not only webmasters who have an interest in monitoring pages, domains and servers. Regular users sometimes may also be interested in website monitoring solutions, for instance to receive notifications if their favorite website is down, and when it is back up again.

Server Monitor for the Google Chrome web browser is a website monitoring solution for both situations.

The extension adds an icon to the Chrome address bar that offers several features. It first and foremost displays all monitored websites and their status when it is clicked on. The second feature is the ability to initiate manual update checks for every website, and to open the options page of the extension to add servers to the list of monitored properties, or edit or delete existing entries.

Icons in front of each website or server indicate the availability. Green indicates that the site responded with the expected content, yellow that the content was different, and red that the site failed to respond at all.

New servers and notification settings are configured in the extension’s options, which are accessible with a right-click on the address bar icon and the selection of Options.

The notification settings on top are all enabled by default. A popup notification is therefor displayed when the following events occur.

• unexpected responses
• connection errors
• server or website is restored

Some or all of the notifications can be disabled in the options. Server Monitor runs automatic checks every minute by default with the possibility to change the interval.

New servers and websites are added in the lower half of the options page. Each site is identified by a unique name (that appears if the address bar icon is clicked) and a url.

No specific contents or responses are expected by default. A user can change that in the “This Response” field. I was not able to find out which responses are accepted by the extension, since the “UseCurrent response” link did return a blank page, and the extension’s description did not reveal details either.

Google Chrome users who would like to monitor websites or web pages can install the Chrome extension directly from its page over at the Google Chrome Extensions gallery. (via)

The system administrator starts by adding new servers that should be monitored to the application. Required information are a unique name, the server address and the monitoring type. Available monitoring types are TCP / IP, Ping or Services. Additional information might be required depending on the type selected. A TCP / IP monitoring for example requires a port that can be added in the same interface.

The events and notifications that can be configured are quite extensive. Events can be configured for positive and negative results. Positive results – meaning the remote server is up and running – are limited to playing a sound or running a command while negative results (server down) include the additional options to reboot the computer or start a service.

Three notification types are available. The administrator can be informed by email, message box or net message.

Specific parameters for every server can be configured in the Configuration View tab. It allows the user to change the monitoring interval, configure the connection timeout, set the mail server and enable the logging of events.

DreamSys Server Monitor can be used as a Internet or network monitoring software. It lacks some of the features of advanced monitoring applications that offer website or database monitoring but could be enough for administrators who do not need that functionality.

The main interface of the monitoring software is divided into a quick server check option at the bottom which can be used to check if services such as HTTP, FTP or POP are running on a IP or domain. The networking monitoring software will automatically display the results in the same interface. Probably more interesting than the quick check function is the option to add servers permanently to the monitoring tool.

The user needs to enter a server name which is used for identification and a server address which is usually an IP address. A list of services are preselected and will be checked unless unchecked by the user. Alerts can be enabled or disabled in the same interface as well. These do have to be configured separately and can inform the user by email, screen message, executing a program or playing a sound.

There is also the possibility to add http url checks next to the default services that can be monitored by Open Monitor. This allows a user to specify an url, port, alerts and words that the page should include or exclude. This can be used for example to verify that a page is up by checking for a word on that page that is always appearing. Can also be used to run scripts that output a simple message in the end, e.g. a database check that is displaying ok if the database is up and running.

Open Monitor is a straightforward, easy to use, network monitoring software that can monitor popular services. Alternative programs are the server monitoring software IT Service View, Newt, the website monitoring software SiteMonitor or the Microsoft Network Monitor.

The Server Monitoring Software however is offering a wealth of tools and options to monitor networks, servers and websites of which some are restricted to the commercial version of the monitoring software. The user can add a number of IPs or domain names that should be monitored by the software. It monitors response time and packets in real time and graphs that display the data as well.

Alerts can be set if the host is not responding or if the server response time or packet loss rate reaches a certain number. Four events can be configured: Message on the desktop, send an email, play a sound or show an icon in the system tray.

The free version of NetTools provides access to several network tools like Ping, Lookup or Trace but also more advanced tools like network and host scans.

I personally think it’s a bit unfortunate to mix free and commercial versions into the free version which might confuse the user at the beginning. Networking Monitoring Software Look@Lan offers most of the features as well but is completely free.

The Yahoo Server Monitor Widget is a nice to have widget that is displaying several information about a server on the user’s desktop. It is by far not a complete solution but it works quite nicely for the time the user is working on the PC.

The Server Monitor Widget displays information like CPU Load, Server Uptime, Hard Disk Space, Server Address and Cache which is nice for a quick overview. It pulls the data from the free phpSysInfo script that has to be installed on the server.

This script does not check specific services like MySQL and Email but it gives information if a server is up or down.