VPS server monitor

[infantex]

On 1/22/2023 at 7:44 AM, wolstech said:

If you do actual http monitor (which will make an http request and look at response code), yes it works on CF (CF returns a 5xx code when the origin server is down).

Uptime Robot does report the occasional downtime. I'm seeing 98.6% uptime for infantex.com.mx for the last seven days. Last downtime was reported on 2023-01-24 at 23:15:16 (timezone?) and lasted for 28 min.

[Kairion]

24 minutes ago, infantex said:

For the mail servers:

Monitor type	IP (or URL or Host)	Port	Monitor interval	Monitor timeout
Port	infantex.com.mx	465	10 min	30 s
Port	infantex.com.mx	995	10 min	30 s
Port	zaldivar.mx	POP3 (110)	30 min	30 s
Port	zaldivar.mx	SMTP (25)	30 min	30 s

Both infantex.com.mx and zaldivar.mx are being CloudFlare but it doesn't support any of those ports:

https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/get-started/reference/network-ports/

Your options:

Change your Uptime Robot settings to check those ports with your server's IP address (IPv4 or IPv6, just one of them is enough), your server's hostname (in your case: tommy2.heliohost.org) or you could go to your CloudFlare DNS' settings and disable proxy (gray-cloud / DNS only) on their A and/or AAAA main entries (their name being your domain only).

17 minutes ago, infantex said:

OK, I will change the settings to monitor tommy2.heliohost.org's ports 465 and 995.

But, can I be sure that if Tommy's mail is up so are my domain's?

Absolutely yes since your mail is provided by Tommy. Using your domain is just a "shortcut" (alias) or a "vanity server" (aka using your domain instead of your actual mail hosting address).

12 minutes ago, infantex said:

Uptime Robot does report the occasional downtime. I'm seeing 98.6% uptime for infantex.com.mx for the last seven days. Last downtime was reported on 2023-01-24 at 23:15:16 (timezone?) and lasted for 28 min.

Since CloudFlare supports ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) it'll work as long as you configure your Uptimet Robot monitor type as "HTTP(s)" (meaning it'll perform a HTTP(S) check instead of a port check).

About Uptime Robot's timezone, it's the one you configured on your account (check mine below for example):

Edited January 28, 2023 by Kairion
Add a reply to infantex's latest post.

[wolstech]

With the way Plesk works, sort of. The mail server is the mail server, if it responds for Tommy2 it should respond for you provided DNS is configured correctly (MX and SPF at minimum if you need to receive and send).

That said, unlike the cpanel days, it's possible for the email service to be disabled for a specific account. The server will still accept connections when it's disabled, so it will report as up, but it will refuse incoming email and discard outbound email without sending it. The ways email gets disabled on an account are: sending too many emails (we just turn your mail off now instead of suspending you entirely like we did in cpanel), getting suspended (including for inactivity, you obviously can't check it, and I don't think you can receive it while you're suspended), or manually turning it off (I believe we have to do that for you).

[allu62]

On 1/24/2023 at 1:31 PM, Kairion said:

If possible, I'd suggest you to migrate to another panel.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea. My whole system has been set up by Hestia CP, i.e. the Hestia installation program installed and default configured all servers. So, I think that you can say that Apache, etc "run on Hestia".

Concerning the monitoring, I think that I will write a Perl script that periodically checks if the different services are running, and if one of them isn't, sends me an email. This could be done for all services and shouldn't be too difficult to do.

How urgent would you say that it really is to upgrade Hestia? I am well aware that I'll have to do it. But, I'm always hesitating with such "big steps" to make. What if update fails? Wouldn't that mean that the whole system wouldn't work anymore and had to be re-installed? If I think of how many days I spent with the configuration before I got everything running, when I set up the VPS (of course, I've learned a lot meanwhile and it would take less time). I'm actually searching the web in order to find "the best way" to back up the VPS. The ideal would be to have some kind of global snapshot, with everyting = system, servers, home directory and databases, that you could simply playback (something like taking an image and restoring it on Windows 10)...

 

[Kairion]

1 minute ago, allu62 said:

I'm not sure if this is a good idea. My whole system has been set up by Hestia CP, i.e. the Hestia installation program installed and default configured all servers. So, I think that you can say that Apache, etc "run on Hestia".

I don't see why it would be a problem. I mean all hosting control panels are like that: they install all the required softwares needed to run web hosting (Apache, PHP, MTA/MDA for mails, database servers etc.). Every web hosting control panel will install all of that, in fact that's the reason why before migrating to a different web hosting control panel you have to do a clean OS reinstall.

7 minutes ago, allu62 said:

Concerning the monitoring, I think that I will write a Perl script that periodically checks if the different services are running, and if one of them isn't, sends me an email. This could be done for all services and shouldn't be too difficult to do.

That's a good approach. What you want, as I learned while searching how to help you, is a heartbeat monitor.

Just make a cron job that runs your script and make a ping or get/post request to a monitoring service, here are some free options that I've found (some have "pricing" on URLs because they have free and paid versions but the free versions have heartbeat monitoring):

https://healthchecks.io/pricing/

https://cronitor.io/pricing

https://www.cloudns.net/monitoring/

https://heartbeat.sh/

 

Uptime Robot does have heartbeat monitoring but just on its paid plans (starting from $8.00/month).

 

39 minutes ago, allu62 said:

How urgent would you say that it really is to upgrade Hestia? I am well aware that I'll have to do it. But, I'm always hesitating with such "big steps" to make. What if update fails? Wouldn't that mean that the whole system wouldn't work anymore and had to be re-installed?

My personal policy is to always update everything as soon as available. My professional policy is to always keep everything updated with previously tested/validated software (to avoid "0-day" bugs). On both cases, I'd recommend you to update as fast as you can. HestiaCP is a opensource community developed so whenever there's an update being released you can be sure they're fixing real issues and not doing "cosmetic updates" to boast as being active updated. In your situation I don't think you'll have a problem updating it since there's a good time since they released the last updated version and I couldn't find any complains with problems/bugs/errors during the update process and it's unlikely that it would break your OS (but since it's a HestiaCP update it could break itself so you're right while thinking it could be necessary to reinstall it in the unlikely case something goes wrong).

50 minutes ago, allu62 said:

If I think of how many days I spent with the configuration before I got everything running, when I set up the VPS (of course, I've learned a lot meanwhile and it would take less time).

I'm not sure exactly what kind of configuration you did before, but on my point of view it wouldn't be that hard: reinstalling the OS (Krydos does that since we can't do that on our own yet), installing HestiaCP (it has an unattended installer so it would only need to run a script, which Krydos also does for users that request it), logging in to HestiaCP, create a user account for hosting your site and adding your domain to that user account and finally logging in to that account and restore your site's backup (and database's backup if your site has a database).

57 minutes ago, allu62 said:

I'm actually searching the web in order to find "the best way" to back up the VPS. The ideal would be to have some kind of global snapshot, with everyting = system, servers, home directory and databases, that you could simply playback (something like taking an image and restoring it on Windows 10)...

Unfortunately we don't have snapshots on HelioHost's VPS (and if I'm not mistaken it's a paid service everywhere else) but you could backup your site. Unless you made major changes to HestiaCP settings or on your OS (adding scripts, softwares etc.) doing a backup of them would be pointless. Maybe just making a backup of HestiaCP settings could have some use (since then you would'nt need to change its settings/add users etc. again) but I'm not sure what is and what isn't included on HestiaCP's backup feature.

[infantex]

14 hours ago, wolstech said:

With the way Plesk works, sort of. The mail server is the mail server, if it responds for Tommy2 it should respond for you provided DNS is configured correctly (MX and SPF at minimum if you need to receive and send).

That said, unlike the cpanel days, it's possible for the email service to be disabled for a specific account. The server will still accept connections when it's disabled, so it will report as up, but it will refuse incoming email and discard outbound email without sending it.

OK, from what you said, I understand that, once I have the mail for my domains properly configured (i.e., I am able to send and receive email), checking Tommy's mail servers will suffice to guarantee my domains' mail services are working... unless someone disabled them, either you or me.

14 hours ago, wolstech said:

The ways email gets disabled on an account are: sending too many emails (we just turn your mail off now instead of suspending you entirely like we did in cpanel), getting suspended (including for inactivity, you obviously can't check it, and I don't think you can receive it while you're suspended)

In the case that you were to disable my mail service (as in your example, for sending too many mails), would I get notified of the fact?

14 hours ago, wolstech said:

or manually turning it off (I believe we have to do that for you).

We can activate and deactivate the mail services for our domains ourselves in Plesk, via the Mail Settings page:

8 hours ago, allu62 said:

Concerning the monitoring, I think that I will write a Perl script that periodically checks if the different services are running, and if one of them isn't, sends me an email. This could be done for all services and shouldn't be too difficult to do.

Perhaps that should be the way to go... I've no idea how that would be done, though. 😄 But I can look into it (another learning opportunity).

My concern is that I only use my zaldivar.mx domain for e-mail (vanity e-mail for my family), but it doesn't really get used a lot, most still prefer Gmail and the like. However, my mom's registered e-mail for the tax authority (SAT in Mexico) is a zaldivar.mx mail. Until now, that posed no problem since any official notification had to be done via snail-mail, or by courier. But now, they have implemented a "tributary mailbox" as a means of official notification. That means, they will post a notification there and send an email instructing you to go check it. And even if you don't, after a certain time, you will be considered legally notified of that communication. Those are the kind of emails you wouldn't want to miss.

As of now, every now and then, when I remember, I send an email to her address and check that it's received. So far so good. I just wanted some automated testing for peace of mind... Or perhaps I could register my own zaldivar.mx mail on one of those sites that constantly flood you with email. 😄 

Regards, everyone,

[wolstech]

Yeah I realized you can control it by domain when I got to a computer and looked (I was expecting that to be hidden for end users because domain management is turned off still, but it's not part of that...I'm still learning a lot about Plesk myself). That said, we do have the option to deactivate it for an entire account on our end. If we turn it off, you can't turn it back on.

And no, to my knowledge you're not notified if the mail gets turned off on our end, it just stops working. We've had one guy send too many emails already and get turned off, I believe he found out when he was unable to log into webmail.