FAQ

Common questions and answers
What is CleverUptime?

CleverUptime is an intelligent server monitoring system. It can monitor your servers and detect when services are down or CPU usage is too high. In this case, you will receive a notification via Email, Slack or SMS.

What is server monitoring?

Server monitoring is the process of continuously monitoring the performance and status of a server to ensure that it is running efficiently and effectively. This includes monitoring things like CPU usage, memory usage, network traffic, and more. CleverUptime can monitor all of these things:

  • CPU load, memory and swap
  • disk status and free space
  • DNS and SSL certificates
  • open ports and service availability
  • running processes, users
How is CleverUptime different from other monitoring solutions?

Take a look at this table to see the main differences:

Competitors CleverUptime
Monitor only a few metrics
Usually only uptime detection and maybe some basic cron job monitoring 		360 degrees monitoring
Collect data on the server and use synthetic monitoring to actively probe from different locations.
Run monitoring agent
Usually closed source, not clear what it does 		Run simple bash script
Short list of commands that everyone can understand
Configure monitors manually
Time-consuming and easy to miss something 		Automatic configuration using AI
Easily monitor all metrics of your servers
Send alerts without additional information
Often not clear what has caused the problem 		Send alerts with root cause analysis
Don't waste time on the symptoms, jump to the solution instead!
No further support
Need to figure out alone how to resolve the issue 		Huge Knowledge Base
Alerts include links to step-by-step guides and best practices how to diagnose and fix the problem
Why is server monitoring important?

Server monitoring is important because it allows you to quickly identify and troubleshoot any issues that may arise with your server. This can help to prevent downtime and ensure that your server is always running at peak performance.

How does server monitoring with CleverUptime work?

There's a whole page explaining it here: How it works

Why do I need to run a script on my server?

The script detects the performance metrics such as CPU or RAM usage directly on your machine, and it will help to configure the synthetic monitors automatically for probing your server from the internet. If you don't need these metrics, you can also configure the monitors by hand.

Is the script safe?

You should always be very careful when you run scripts from other people on your server. There's really only one way to make it safe: You need to read the script! Don't worry, it's not very long and easy to understand. We explain how it works here.

What is a "monitor"?

CleverUptime uses the term monitor to describe one specific test that is performed with your server. For example, sending an ICMP ping request to your server is a monitor. Trying to connect to your web server on port 80 is another one. When a monitor fails, for example when your web server responds with an HTTP 500 error, CleverUptime will send you a notification.

I have no idea about servers. Do I really need this?

Well, maybe you don't. If somebody is doing the hosting for you, then you can stop reading. But if ssh or root login sounds familiar, then maybe it's time to verify that your vServer is safe. We'll guide you through all the steps and explain everything, so don't worry if you're not an expert.

Does CleverUptime work with Windows Servers?

No. Right now, we only support Linux-based servers.

I'm happy with my current monitoring system. Why do I need this?

If you're managing servers professionally, there's a good chance that you don't need CleverUptime. You may find it too simple or "low level" for your needs. And we're not a professional penetration testing company.

Why does CleverUptime exist?

Over the past 20 years, we have installed and managed hundreds of servers. Even though we had awesome tools for monitoring and automated scripts to set up new servers, and we always try to use best practices whenever possible, some problems kept coming up again and again:

  • It can be difficult to keep an overview. We have been juggling long-running projects and short projects, some with only a few servers, some with many. Different people we're setting up different servers and lots of VMs across different hosting centers, with different operating systems and DNS names...
    What was that www.somehost.com again? VM or bare metal server? Are these SSDs or magnetic drives? Is it using MySQL or MariaDB? And then there was always that development VM for testing that nobody could remember.
  • Monitoring can be time-consuming to set up. We tried many different frameworks. Basically all of them we're running great, but it took time until we found the best configuration for all the warning thresholds, so we were not spammed by alert emails. And then came an OS update, and we could start all over again from the beginning.
  • Multiple tools are needed. Sure, we could run a port scan on some machine, to verify that the firewall was alright. Or check when an SSL certificate will expire. Or configure an external tool to monitor service availability. But it takes some effort, especially when there's more than a couple of servers.
  • Mistakes happen. Of course, something can go wrong when the new developer installs a server for the very first time. But even when an experienced admin does it, will that machine still be safe in 3 years? What was running on that machine anyway? Oh, we're back to point number one...
  • Nobody knows everything. Is a loadavg of 4.7 good or bad? How can CPU pressure help to resolve a performance problem? How can I check my RAID 5 array? Even the most experienced admin will sometimes have to consult the documentation or google stuff on StackOverflow.

CleverUptime has been created to address exactly these 5 recurring problems and make server monitoring easy and fun:

  • Nice and simple dashboard with all servers and relevant information.
  • Hassle-free setup: Just start a script and forget about it.
  • Run checks on the server but also actively probe the server from the internet.
  • Configure monitors automatically depending on the use case.
  • Collect documentation and best practices related to server management in a public knowledge base.

Here at CleverUptime, we use CleverUptime every day!