
Show HN: SeaLion 2 – Linux Server Monitoring, Alerting and Debugging Tool - treskot
https://sealion.com/?v2
======
Karunamon
I've got two problems here.

1) Cloud based. No, no, no, absolutely not, no way, no how. I am not hooking
up server farms to the internet. Monitoring systems stay behind the firewall.
Please come up with a self-hosted version.

Moreso when:

2) They log directly into the system. Unprivileged user or not, if you've got
shell on my box, "you" being a random company on the internet, it's not my box
anymore. Someone hacks you and by extension they've hacked me.

~~~
wernerb
I agree with you, though other people may be entirely trusting of the SaaS in
question or not care that much about security.

Commando.io is basicly the same service command-execution wise, however, it
also offers the possibility for customers to run commando.io self-hosted
(presumably enterprise pricing). Having a SaaS I presume, which is working
(and successful) can be a boon to future enterprise sales that are concerned
with the risks you mentioned.

I wish that all SaaS dealing with access to remote servers have some kind of
(more up-front) disclaimer, noting that no matter how secure the service is
advertised it will not be responsible for future mishaps/breaks/leaks.

------
fr4
Immediately interested by the title of this post as I'm using a competing
product (Scout App) right now, clicked through and subsequently left the site
within 10 seconds.

That is a terrible website considering your target market are UNIX geeks.

~~~
evergre
What's wrong with Linux geeks looking at well designed websites?

~~~
fr4
I'm a UNIX geek and I too love "well designed websites" \- and imho that site
isn't a well designed website.

The majority of us are probably using a touchpad on our laptops and the
scrolling thing is just horrible in that case.

The target customer will expect easily laid out information (as this is a web-
based monitoring service) and if they see this "at the front door" then
they'll run a mile.

~~~
zigara
I'm also a UNIX geek, and I would have to disagree with your opinion.

The design looks solid. I don't know anyone that has troubles scrolling on
their laptop these days. I found that quite bizarre to hear. With daily use,
you can be nearly as nimble as using a real mouse.

Could you give some suggestions on what you would change? I'm curious how you
would display that much data on the screen in a clean manner.

Not trying to argue here, genuinely interested in improving my UI/UX
knowledge. Quite useful when building webapps these days.

------
latch
I've been a pretty big fan of Scout (ScoutApp) for this. To me, Scout's killer
feature is the ease with which you can write a custom plugin. And, if that's
too much trouble, just use the Generic JSON URI plugin and have your
code/cron/whatever dump a json file with whatever you want to track.

This is quite a bit cheaper though.

------
peterwwillis
tl;dr this tool is a cron for your monitoring scripts that reports to a cloud
service which then gives you dashboards

Product information that I wish was on one page but instead is spread across
five:

    
    
      - by default, agent only collects these [linux] stats
        - 1/5/15 min load average
        - cpu usage per cpu
        - memory usage (total,res,virt,cached)
        - network reads per second (RX?)
        - network writes per second (TX?)
        - disk reads per second (only #, so probably iops)
        - disk writes per second (only #, so probably iops)
      - collects output from monitor scripts [that you have to write]
      - sends output to sealion cloud via ssl
      - 'Your password is encrypted' (???)
      - have to edit a couple of files to make it collect info as root
      - have to create your own alerts
      - all data is erased after 3 (free) 15 (paid) or 45 (paid) days
      - features:
        - Dashboard & Charts
        - Alerts
        - Daily Digest
        - Raw output [from your monitor scripts]
        - Quick Setup
        - Enterprise Scale (???)
        - Time Machine (Server data is recorded for a week)
          (this is diff than 3/15/45 days reported above???)
        - Side-By-Side Server Comparison
        - Teams [access controls]
      - Pricing
        - FREE    2 servers  3 days data retention
        - $29/m   5 servers  15 days data retention
        - $49/m   10 servers 15 days data retention 
        - $249/m  50 servers 15 days data retention
        - $499/m  unlimited  45 days data retention
      - agent runs on your servers as unprivileged user
        - made with python 2.6
        - https://github.com/webyog/sealion-agent

------
mihok
I come from using New Relic for our server monitoring, and there are a couple
things that I can see that I already love about Sea Lion, their realtime
stats, and ad-hoc commands really opens up to allow any kind of monitoring. I
would like to see the ability to rename servers instead of using their
hostname.. as well as multiple stats on the page at once.. Other than that,
this is really awesome!

Considering going on one of their paid tiers

~~~
chrisan
Is there an equivalent of New Relics application performance monitoring? For
example the view of time spent in script, DB, memcache, external, etc all in a
stacked line graph?

~~~
edwinnathaniel
You mean something like this?

[http://www.appneta.com/images/graphics/slides/traceview/trac...](http://www.appneta.com/images/graphics/slides/traceview/tracing_1.png)

:)

Our languages support is on-par with NewRelic. We just recently release NodeJS
instrumentation.

Disclaimer: I work for AppNeta. Our TraceView product does what you want and
more (across servers, SOA).

~~~
kolev
Looks nice, but a bit pricey.

~~~
edwinnathaniel
Yes, because our offering does more than what NewRelic does.

~~~
kolev
Well, I doubt it's because that, but because supposedly you have some large
clients so you're not so desperate to become a mass-market tool. I personally
find New Relic to be extremely expensive as well. The hardware cost of our
servers is much less than our New Relic subscription. Also, there are some
cheaper than New Relic or similar in cost solutions that do more than what New
Relic does (AppDynamics, let's say).

------
busterarm
Sorry to be the negative-nancy, but did Nagios (specifically XI) suddenly
become hard or something?

Maybe I'm just an old neckbeard by now, but what's with this trend with cloud-
hosted middle-man applications (read: expensive web 2.0 frontends) for
standard software? If you can't install and configure your own server
monitoring, what are you doing hosting your own servers? Am I missing
something obvious here?

~~~
stuntmachine
Though on one hand I'm inclined to agree with you regarding Nagios, on the
other hand I disagree. What you're missing is the concept of developer
empowerment. I am a sysadmin / operations engineer, and one trend I've noticed
over the course of the past ten years is one toward developers venturing
further and further into what could be labeled "traditional" systems
administration. Do not underestimate developer demand. It's fueled many
technological "movements" in the past ten years, infrastructure automation
being a huge one.

~~~
busterarm
I'm not going to get into the pros and cons of "should you hire a sysadmin",
but I think the priorities of a lot of these businesses are really screwed up.

Fixed costs like an employee are scary even though services cost more and
security isn't even a real concern.

~~~
stuntmachine
I can't argue with you there. I'm fortunate that my current organization isn't
this way, but I have worked at places where this has DEFINITELY been the case.
It was mind boggling then and it's mind boggling now. The only explanation I
can think of is the (at least perceived) speed and impatience of the modern
customer / market. Maybe businesses feel a pressure to make these sacrifices?
I'd even go as far as to say the marketing teams for these various "services"
capitalize on this feeling of urgency, and try to perpetuate it culturally
(e.g. "If you don't use <insert ultra insecure SaaS app here> your company is
going to fall behind. Here, look at this list of all of the other companies
that aren't yours that use our service!"

------
kolev
What if you're using AWS already? I couldn't find any word on CloudWatch
integration.

~~~
gk1
Just sent you an email, but for anyone else who's wondering the same thing:
I'll plug Scalyr, which is a server monitoring service with an option to
import CloudWatch metrics. [https://www.scalyr.com/solutions/import-
cloudwatch](https://www.scalyr.com/solutions/import-cloudwatch)

~~~
kolev
A shameless plug, I guess, but although I've seen Scalyr before, I will take
another look at it today. Thanks!

------
nodefortytwo
Love the simplicity and the extensibility of running ad-hoc commands. Pricing
looks okay, especially the unlimited tier as I hate per server pricing but
$500 cap seems reasonable.

------
ninjastar99
Spelling mistake in the very first screenshot in the very first visual when I
clicked your link. Seperate -> Separate.

~~~
treskot
Good catch. Fixed it. Thanks!

------
vpj
Was very easy to install. But could not figure out how to monitor more than
one indicator at the same time.

------
grimtrigger
How does this work? Do I need to upload some a file on my server or do any
special configuration?

~~~
treskot
Run the curl command once you sign up. Or, download the tarball and install it
manually.

~~~
huhtenberg
Generally speaking,

    
    
      rm -rf /
    

is a good starting point for those open to running random scripts from the
Internet :)

------
girinambari
Can you explain little bit more on "Debugging Tool"? How to use as Debugging
tool?

~~~
treskot
Once you have custom commands set up, you can rely on alerts to zero-down on
the issue and debug it with ease.

You can make use of historical data to go back in time, analyse and debug
issues.

------
calpaterson
The scroll thing is very annoying. Can't you just have a list of product
features?

~~~
kolev
More and more companies copy this blindly. There are cases when this works
well, but here, it's more than just annoying.

~~~
gk1
An unfortunate case of designing for trends instead of designing for users.

