Do you send automatic weekly reports about status of your server?

Question

I am working on redoing a weekly report, I send, to anyone on our development team.

The previous version just sent sql server based scheduled jobs status, backup status, and database size.

But for this new version, will have more information from every part of our server.

Coldfusion:

1. Verify Main Datasource
2. List Scheduled Tasks
3. Server Version
4. Undelivered Mail

IIS:

1. Current Connection Count

SQL Server:

1. Database Size
2. Drive Space % LEft
3. Last Backup Date

So what I am asking about is two things.

(1) What other essential must have information, would be useful to have/see on a weekly basis via email?

(2) How to best present or display that information, that looks professional, albeit inside an html email, without looking like eye candy? Because right now i just have a simple bullet list of server aspect and statuses. I want to make it look really professional.

Any suggestions, ideas, links to inspirations...etc...

My goal is to automate keeping my team informed about any key issues about the server, in a way anyone can understand.

Thank You for your time.

Answer 1

Key issues for your particular server may be very different from anyone else's key issues on their server, and so the data you need to send out to your team isn't necessarily the same as anyone else's information.

If the email is just going out to your development team, I wouldn't worry too much about making it pretty, just easy to glance over and make sure nothing's going terribly wrong. A bulleted list usually works pretty well for that.

Personally, I'd be more inclined to put all the information you've listed up on a web page that the development team could log in to and view, and only spam the developers if one of the variables suddenly takes a dive for some reason base on parameters you would set up. That way, anyone could check the server status at any time if they had a question about the status, but they'll treat emails from the server with a lot higher priority.

In my experience, the more email you send to developers, the less of the content they read.

Answer 2

(1) What other essential must have information, would be useful to have/see on a weekly basis via email?

My answer would be what type of information would the developers like to see beyond your original report. Speak with them and to get the essential information they required.

Though we may suggest some good data to show in your report, your developers might not be interested in it.

Answer 3

Is the goal to have the developers be aware of a problem? Then fail loudly and succeed silently. Otherwise the failures/problems will soon be ignored.

Send a report when the drive space is critical with a subject line "DRIVE SPACE CRITICAL!"

Send a report when the backup didn't occur saying "BACKUP FAILED!"

From control room design: every alarm should have a unique response, and no alarm should be generated for events that have no corrective action - the event should be journaled to a log that the developers can go inspect.