Proactive Monitoring

KnownHost’s proactive monitoring is a service available to our Managed VPS, Cloud Hosting, NVMe Hosting, and Dedicated Servers. These are services where we will monitor your server’s services in detail and respond accordingly when something goes wrong – without you having to open a ticket.

What is Monitored?

We currently monitor the key services of your system. You are fully able to control whether or not an individual service is monitored through the client portal at my.knownhost.com, by clicking “Manage” next to the server’s hostname and going to the “Monitoring Alerts” section.

Network

We monitor both the ability to “ping” the server and the status of the monitoring agent itself for any network-related issues.

CPU Usage

We look for high CPU usage in two different ways – high current usage and high historical averages.

Memory (RAM) Usage

We monitor for both out-of-memory (OOM) events as well as high historical averages.

sshd

The sshd service is monitored to make sure it is running.

Chkservd and Tailwatchd

The chkservd and tailwatchd processes are monitored to make sure they are running.

DNS

We monitor BIND (named), MyDNS, NSD, and PowerDNS

ipaliases

ipaliases is responsible for managing additional IPs on your server. If it crashes then additional IPs will be completely unreachable so we want to make sure it’s up and running.

Webserver/httpd

We monitor both Apache (httpd) and Litespeed using advanced flap detection which lets us detect not only if your server is up/down, but if it’s been “flapping” up and down (i.e. multiple restarts within a given period) even between our checks.

MySQL

We monitor MySQL and MariaDB with advanced flap detection so we can tell if it’s been going up and down.

SMTP

SMTP is responsible for sending emails. We monitor the SMTP server to ensure that connections can be made to the server.

POP3 & IMAP

POP3 and IMAP are ways to download email via webmail, or to an email client. We monitor both types of services

Cron

The cron service schedules everything from system updates to functionality needed for your sites. We monitor its status as well.

Disk Usage

We monitor different thresholds of disk usage, as a full root or /tmp the partition will cause services to fail, or a full backup partition on dedicated servers means that new backups will not be generated.

Email Queue

We look for large email queues which can be indicative of outbound SPAM. Outbound SPAM can cause your IP reputation to become tarnished and impact email deliverability.

ConfigServer Firewall (CSF) & Login Failure Daemon (LFD)

The CSF/LFD process needs to be running for the firewall to function properly.

OS & Panel versions

We do not trigger automatic alerts based on OS/Panel versions but we will use the data to contact you if any issues arise. We don’t do it automatically since an outdated version will not by itself cause downtime.

Requirements

There are a few requirements to use our proactive monitoring services. Our support team will take care of any software installations necessary upon your purchase of the service.

• The psrepo yum repository must be installed in your server.
• zabbix-ps-addon package from psrepo.
• ps-openssh-service package from psrepo.
• The server’s firewall (and/or other security software) must be configured to allow SSH access for the Support team.

We maintain the psrepo repository and the packages within it. If you wish to purchase proactive monitoring you must allow us to install these packages.

What Happens When You Detect an Issue?

When our system detects an issue we will automatically open a ticket for you with our support team. The ticket is opened with the priority set to critical and assigned to a technician who will begin looking into the issue.

We will take necessary and reasonable steps to resolve the issue without any input from you. Once we have resolved the issue we will update the ticket with the steps taken as well as the cause of the issue if it can be determined.

In rare circumstances, we will require feedback from you before we can take corrective action if the needed action involves things outside of our scope of work.

Server Access

As part of our proactive monitoring/management services we will install ps-openssh-service from our RPM repository. This will give us private access to work on your server without needing the root password from you.

This system uses secure key-based authentication through the existing SSH process on your server. It does not allow us global access – our team can only use the system to access your server when you have an open proactive support ticket. Further the system is locked down so no one outside of our physical network can access it at all.