Monitoring Activity on Multiple Network Servers

Proactive monitoring of network servers is useful in predicting network problems so that they can be prevented. Log files frequently record errors which can be clues to predict larger problems. Centralized logging can be used to help monitor many log files from many servers. In this report I describe a system of centralized logging which I have set up at IOT, using freely-available standard tools, thus minimizing the training needed to maintain the system. A script is run nightly which e-mails network administrators a summary of the important log messages from all servers from the previous day. Administrators should read these e-mails and attempt to respond to every message. This can be either by fixing the problem that caused the message, or by deciding that the message is unimportant and adding it to the list of unimportant messages so that the nightly e-mail does not include it again.NRC publication: Ye