

My startup: Simplified Server Monitoring (pre-launch) - tenaciousJk
http://checkmint.com/TTgyqjDE

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JohnTitus
It's pretty, and sounds good. I've used Nagios for server monitoring in the
past and that can be a bit of a pain, but that's because you can use it to
monitor damn near anything. As a sometimes-sys-admin, I assume that in order
to achieve your claim of "Monitor virtually any Linux, Windows or Cloud
Service" that you're going to be offering only pretty basic metrics. Can you
elaborate on how you'll keep it simple when dealing with virtually-infinite
possible combination of server configs?

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tenaciousJk
Keeping it simple while still remaining functional for "advanced" users is one
of my primary goals. We will start with the basics, but only so we can
actually launch the product asap.

That's really the problem we're looking to solving though. Simplifying the
mess. (that includes billing)

In the end, we have a certain feature set that's our internal goal. Whether
their is demand for every part of that is another topic. Polling and a/b
testing will determine where our development efforts are focused and how the
first iterations shape up.

btw, thanks :)

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JohnTitus
Perhaps use something like uservoice.com as a simple way to track
feature/monitor plugin requests.

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joelhaasnoot
Keep it very affordable or have a workable free plan and I will be happy!

~~~
tenaciousJk
deal.

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nodejscloud
Looks great! We use and love ServerDensity (<http://www.serverdensity.com>).
They just released an amazing looking MongoDB monitoring plugin as well
([http://blog.boxedice.com/2011/02/15/mongodb-monitoring-
dashb...](http://blog.boxedice.com/2011/02/15/mongodb-monitoring-dashboard/)).
Any idea what your pricing will be?

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tenaciousJk
Pricing hasn't been solidified yet. We're competitive...

I believe I have your email address. I'll keep you posted.

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nodejscloud
Perfect. Are you guys YC funded, or just bootstrapping? Also, props, your
landing page is amazing!

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tenaciousJk
Bootstrapped, baby.

And really... thanks for the compliment. We weren't so sure about it :)

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patorjk
This looks cool. How does it compare to something like Big Brother from Quest
Software? And would it be available for use on internal networks?

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tenaciousJk
I haven't used Big Brother specifically. Big Brother appears to be filling an
enterprise level need for "everything". I'm guessing the majority of their
users only actually need 80% of its functionality (if that).

We're starting with that majority-of-users functionality and building from
there. Ease of use will and simplicity are our primary goals. Internal
monitoring by way of server-side agents _is_ part of the plan.

~~~
patorjk
I work with a company that uses Big Brother and they're not fans of it. Its
user interface, ease of use and poor visualizations draw a lot of complaints.
I'll keep an eye on your project as it develops, good luck with it.

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anthonycerra
Cool name and really nice design. Can you elaborate on what frameworks you
used and how long it took to make?

~~~
tenaciousJk
First, thanks!

The website and application are built on Tornado Web services
(tornadoweb.org).

The front-end that you're seeing took about a week to finalize with revisions
and fine-tuning, etc. At some point I just said "enough! let's put this in to
production" and went with it.

The referral portion is also custom built, but only took a few hours total
including the backend admin. The actual monitoring application took /quite a
bit longer/ and is still in development.

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MartinCron
I just requested a beta invite.

This sounds like exactly what I'm looking for for my startup. I had a
love/hate relationship with Nagios/Cacti/Zabbix at my last job. Having
something simple I can set up and (mostly) forget about is all I need at this
stage.

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tenaciousJk
An update to this post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2228000>

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sradu
Looks interesting. How do you compare with Scout? <https://scoutapp.com/>

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tenaciousJk
We're similar in that we're simplifying the server monitoring process.

For now, that's all I can say...

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bradleyland
We used to use Scout. They're a great group of guys, but ultimately, we ended
up just falling back to a Munin install. The biggest challenge for monitoring
software seems to be the wide variety of environments you'll encounter on
various servers. Scout does a nice job of focusing on Rails apps, but their
scripts required just enough of my time tweaking that I ended up deciding that
it wasn't worth the effort for the added insight we gained. Keep that in mind
when developing your service. Make your documentation top notch, and provide
an accessible support conduit for when users encounter issues.

Just to be clear, our decision to not use Scout wasn't because their service
was bad. To the contrary, the service itself was very good. It just required a
little bit too much setup and required a high degree of inference from the
sysadmin. You more or less had to read the code in some of the plugins in
order to make things work. That added up to more effort than I felt we were
getting in benefit when compared to something like a local Munin install.

~~~
tenaciousJk
The best feedback and advice I've gotten so far.

The monitoring product idea was created because of that exact issue. Nothing
seemed to really solve the problem for us. I'll definitely refer back to this
comment often.

You can follow me directly on twitter (same username) for any feedback or
suggestions.

