SMS notification of failures

[steve]

We currently use Ipswitch What's Up Gold to monitor our network. As part of this notifications can be sent via SMS.

I was wondering if anyone else uses SMS for notification of failures of servers / switches, and who you use to provide the SMS service.

I've just been looking at FastSMS which might fit the bill.

[mark]

Is there also a cheaper way to achieve this? The SMS message handling seems cheap at £10 for 100 messages (if i'm reading that right!)

[plexer]

This account has a 90 day time limit.

The next step up is £80.

Ben

[CyberNerd]

Currently I don't do it, but if I did I'd use csoft
(because I have an account there and use it for texting, I never figured out that stupid autocomplete text - I need a real keyboard).

I'd then use one of these scripts http://csoft.co.uk/api to send important server events to me. In practice I just have the servers email me if they have any problems because I'm never that far from a computer.

edit: this link http://www.csoft.co.uk/sms/example_code/index.htm

[steve]

This account has a 90 day time limit.

The next step up is £80.

Which gives 1000 texts with an unlimited life - 8p each isn't bad.


I've been looking further at this and there are a couple of issues I need to sort out in my head:

What if one of the following fails-
email server fails - no SMS
switch between monitoring server / email fails - no SMS
switch between email / internet - no SMS
internet is down - no SMS

So there will be at least 4 situations where I would be unaware of any problems. Is it still worth sending SMS's without everything being reported?
Hmmmmm....

[plexer]

nokia 5110 with datacable and pre paid sim card plugged directly into serial port on server.

Relevant software to send messages.

Ben

[plexer]

http://www.x11.net/wiki/index.php/Se...an_SMS_Gateway

[CyberNerd]

What if one of the following fails-

Redundancy ?

[Geoff]

nokia 5110 with datacable and pre paid sim card plugged directly into serial port on server.

Relevant software to send messages.

Linux servers can use gnokii to do this.