Adding hosts
Adding a new host in CloudRadar is simple, you just have to choose the Add host button on the Dashboard or Hosts pages. Then you should choose how the monitoring data would be collected.
The support for SNMP monitoring has been dropped 2021-01-01.
The basic procedure for adding hosts is described in Creating a new host. Here you can find details about the options provided by CloudRadar for collecting monitoring information. Consider that all these options can all be combined:
- Monitoring through the public Internet.
- Monitoring with agent.
- Monitoring inside a private intranet.
This is suitable for all hosts and servers that have a public IP address, like Web servers, e-mail servers, and the public part of a router or gateway.
The checks are performed through the Internet, and CloudRadar behaves like a regular client accessing the service you exposed to the Internet. While the checks are limited to availability and uptime, they are still crucial for alerting.
When adding a host to be monitored this way:
- 1.Enter a name.
- 2.Enter either the FQDN or the public IP address of the host.
You can activate agent-based monitoring at any time later.
If you want to monitor more parameters than availability or uptime, or if your host is not reachable via a public IP address, then the installation of a monitoring agent is mandatory. The agent is available for almost every operating system and the installation is quite easy. This agent collects data about the running operating system. Along with a heartbeat it sends the resource consumption of CPUs, disks, memory, and network.
The agent does not open any ports. All data is sent from the inside to the outside using only encrypted HTTPS connection. So it does not matter how your hosts are connected to the Internet, and a fixed IP address is not needed.
If you want to monitor resource usage, you should install the agent. If your host is not exposed to the Internet and you have full control over the operating system, installing the agent is an easy option for monitoring. But not the only one.
When adding a host to be monitored this way:
- 1.Choose Inside OS Monitoring with Agent.
- 2.If your host is not reachable through the public Internet, or if you don't want to perform service and uptime checks, leave the FQDN/IP Address field empty.
If your hosts are located inside a private intranet, and you cannot or you don't want to install the agent on each host, then installing Frontman is an option.
Frontman is our data-collector for intranets. It must be installed on a Windows or Linux host system in your network. This host will then perform all checks inside your intranet. You can use the same checks as for publically available hosts - uptime and availability of TCP services. If you want to monitor devices like printers, cameras, routers, or switches, this is the only option.
When adding a host to be monitored this way:
- 1.Choose Intranet Host behind a firewall, and select an instance of Frontman you have installed previously.
- 2.Enter the private IP-address or FQDN, which are only resolvable inside your intranet.
CloudRadar offers monitoring via SNMPv2 and SNMP3. Depending on the protocol you need to enter authentication details to you host.
To get the most realistic view of your infrastructure you should use a two-way-monitoring:
- 1.Perform service checks - either through the Internet, or with your own private instance of Frontman.
- 2.Monitor resource usage with the agent.
One can not replace the other. The first is crucial for alerting. If a service, for example, your email server is down, you should act immediately. The second is useful for preventing downtime and tracing the reasons for errors.
Last modified 2yr ago