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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">I love the idea of a roll your own probe/remote access/monitoring tools like this. I started playing with a similar idea a few years back using a Soekris. The
great thing about Soekris as a platform was the fact that it had multiple interfaces. I setup two interfaces as a bridge and could insert it inline to gather traffic stats, pcaps, etc., without having to worry about setting up a span port and while still having
a dedicated interface for the host.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Most of our customers were connected to us via MPLS so I had setup a script to e-mail the host IP at startup time, but I like the idea of the reverse SSH connection.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Of course, the great thing about Pi is that the cost is like 10% of the Soekris which makes it easy to justify.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Rob<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif""> VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces@voiceops.org]
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Graham Freeman<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, February 11, 2016 7:38 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Chris Aloi<br>
<b>Cc:</b> <voiceops@voiceops.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [VoiceOps] Recommended Website/IP monitoring tool<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Yep, with my managed network customers. I have a small number of customers, each of which is meaningfully profitable, so a $100/year deployment of a Pi with a fancier USB wifi interface is well worth it. I set up reverse SSH sessions (originating
from the Pi) to distinct per-customer bastion hosts on my management networks, so that the customer's firewall and/or dynamic-IP issues are non-issues. I use Chef, git, and some shell scripts for config management.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I've had 1 Pi fail out of 20. So, reliable enough, though of course not a huge sample size.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">It's great to be able to say "Hey, customer, I noticed a routing issue impacting your web-based accounting software on your ISP A, so I automatically promoted ISP B to primary for that route. Monitoring (graph screenshot attached) indicates
that this was an effective workaround. I'll restore normal routing or promote ISP B to primary off-hours tonight, depending on the outcome of the trouble ticket I've already opened about the issue." before the first tech support call comes in. Similar customer
success story when I call them immediately after getting an alert from the Pi-connected UPS informing me of a power outage. This kind of thing makes the next 2-year renewal negotiation an easy one. :)<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.5pt">Graham Freeman, Principal Nerd<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.5pt"><a href="https://nerdventures.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color:#1155CC">NerdVentures.com</span></a><br>
<a href="tel:+1-510-898-6772" target="_blank"><span style="color:#1155CC">+1-510-898-6772</span></a><br>
<a href="mailto:graham@nerdventures.com" target="_blank"><span style="color:#1155CC">graham@nerdventures.com</span></a><br>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamfreeman" target="_blank"><span style="color:#1155CC">https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamfreeman</span></a><br>
Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/get_nerdy" target="_blank">@get_nerdy</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On 11 February 2016 at 16:26, Chris Aloi <<a href="mailto:ctaloi@gmail.com" target="_blank">ctaloi@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">You have pi's deployed on the customer premise running smoke ping ?<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">Great idea, have they been reliable ? I've only played with them - never production. How do you handle managing a pi fleet ? <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">---<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Christopher Aloi<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Sent from my iPhone<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><br>
On Feb 11, 2016, at 3:36 PM, Graham Freeman <<a href="mailto:graham@nerdventures.com" target="_blank">graham@nerdventures.com</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I use and like <a href="http://statuscake.com" target="_blank">
StatusCake.com</a> as a hosted monitoring provider, and SmokePing as an internally-managed monitoring tool.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">StatusCake has been reliable, and offers nice features such as worldwide monitoring endpoints, outage confirmation, configurable paging methods and thresholds, etc. They also support different types of monitoring, ranging from a simple
ICMP ping to a more complex mix of HTTP(S), keyword monitoring, blocklist monitoring, etc. The pricing is good enough that I've forgotten how much it costs.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">SmokePing's advantages include (1) it's open source, (2) it's relatively easy to install and configure, (3) it's lightweight enough to run on customer-side Raspberry Pis, (4) it supports extremely fine-grained monitoring (e.g. my endpoints
will detect and optionally alert on outages of <5 seconds), and so on. The software is free, as it's open-source, and it could be implemented on a $5/mo VPS at somewhere like DigitalOcean.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">good luck,<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Graham Freeman, Principal Nerd<br>
<a href="http://nerdventures.com" target="_blank">NerdVentures.com</a><br>
<a href="tel:%2B1-510-898-6772" target="_blank">+1-510-898-6772</a><br>
<a href="mailto:graham@nerdventures.com" target="_blank">graham@nerdventures.com</a><br>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamfreeman" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamfreeman</a><br>
Twitter: @get_nerdy <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On 11 Feb 02016, at 12:28, Li Tiatia <<a href="mailto:tiatia@tcnp3.com" target="_blank">tiatia@tcnp3.com</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hi All,<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Anyone have any suggestions on recommended website/IP monitoring tools? There are so many out there and just need help to narrow the list down based on what you're using or have good experience with.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Thank you.<br clear="all">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#222222">_________________________________</span></i></b><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#17365D"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#500050">Li Tiatia</span></i></b><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">_______________________________________________<br>
VoiceOps mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:VoiceOps@voiceops.org" target="_blank">VoiceOps@voiceops.org</a><br>
<a href="https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops" target="_blank">https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops</a><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">_______________________________________________<br>
VoiceOps mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:VoiceOps@voiceops.org" target="_blank">VoiceOps@voiceops.org</a><br>
<a href="https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops" target="_blank">https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops</a><o:p></o:p></p>
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