Recommend an automatic web application availiblity checker

Question

Hi, I am looking for a piece of software that I can schedule to check that our web apps are up and running. I've used HP open view years ago, but remember it being quite expensive, I'm looking for something open source or cheap.

So it would login in and do some simple actions maybe submit form and check for some text on screen that means the web app is running ok and then email me if the website is down.

I could create a test using the Selenium IDE, and automate it with an Ant script but looking for a more streamlined solution that a non programming could use.

Any suggestions?

Thanks, Scotty

Answer 1

You can use cron to perform the tests. Cron will run the tests after a specified amount of time such as once per hour.

Cron is available in Linux but there are Windows alternatives which you can download. Or you can use Windows' task scheduler.

Answer 2

Would something like mon.itor.us do?

Answer 3

These answers might be useful: How do you monitor the availability of multiple websites

Answer 4

For ASP.Net apps, .Net 2.0 introduced enhanced Health Monitoring to do what you want, as well as handle a wide variety of app events. It can log to the database, event log, or other logs, and can perform noticiation such as sending email.

I realize that you are probably not talking about an ASP.Net app. I'm just adding this reply for others who read this question who may be using (or considering) that platform.

Answer 5

It sounds like Nagios is what you're looking for:

http://www.nagios.org/

Answer 6

I don't believe they can do the actual login, but they can check for content etc, I have used Pingdom.com before with good success.