Monitis was kind enough to give me a free account to review their service. They offer various kinds of server monitoring services, for instance:

1. WEBSITES: uptime and user experience
2. SERVERS: proactive failure prevention
3. DESKTOPS: includes assets monitoring
4. APPLICATIONS: email, VoIP, databases, online applications, transactions
5. NETWORKS: switches, routers, VPN, firewall, DNS, VoIP
6. CLOUD: Public and private

When you login to Monitis the first thing you see is a setup wizard, which is a good thing because without it I think most people would give up (the interface is no user friendly).

I setup a few sites which was relatively easy (though again they could use a lot of help in the UX department — this was obviously designed by programmers) and was watching them get pinged from 6 different locations every 3 minutes. Nice.

The main thing I don’t like about Monitis is the interface. It’s obviously based on extJS and it is small and clunky. It reminds me of an old Windows computer.

I also could not figure out how to stop daily email reports. It seems like that should be easy, but even though I thought I found the place to do it, it never changed. I emailed my contact about this but they did not reply.

The cost is $10/mo (or 20% off that if you buy a year in advance), and for IT professionals this service is probably worth it. I’ve always used free tools but they do not check as often nor do they have anywhere near as many features. You just need to have a tolerance for poorly-designed interfaces — but let’s face it, if you need this service, you probably do.

I attended a cloud conference this week in Cupertino, CA at the HP Executive Briefing Center that outlines all of HP’s cloud offerings. I found it very helpful; HP as a number of excellent cloud solutions for the enterprise. Unfortunately they did not seem to have offerings for small businesses that looked as easy as the solutions I recommend here, but for medium-sized to enterprise-level I would definitely recommend you look into their offerings.

I was very impressed how HP attempts to educate potential customers instead of selling them. Of course education is part of the selling process, but they seemed to do so without giving a hard sell. For instance, there are not product numbers all over their diagrams showing people how HP can help with those solutions. Of course when the client asks they are happy to explain, but they sell these services from an education angle which I think is the right way to do it.

HP does not seem to have many cloud services that compare to Amazon S3 or cloud hosting providers in that you cannot go to their website and get a tour, see the prices, and sign up. I think that is a mistake as that will scare off almost any small business (though I don’t think that is their target right now).

Here are some of the presentations on Slideshare:

• HP Cloud Assure
• Effectively Managing Cloud Solutions in 5 Steps
• LoadRunner in the Cloud
• HP Cloud Services Enablement
• HP Cloud Services
• Fast Track Your Private Cloud Transformation
• HP Solutions for a Fast Track World

There were a number of other bloggers who attended the event, and you’ll want to check out their blogs:

• Allessandro Perilli
• Anthony Park
• Chris Evans
• Geva Perry
• Michael Knuckey
• Phillip Jaenke

The speakers were:

Rebooting a server sucks, because it usually means downtime. That’s why it’s exciting that Cloud Linux and Ksplice are launching the first “Rebootless Linux Distribution for Hosting Service Providers.”

Major Linux distributions ask their users to install a kernel update roughly once each month, which requires a reboot. Until a system can be updated, it can be vulnerable to security flaws. By allowing users to install kernel updates without downtime, Uptrack slashes the cost of system administration and bolsters security. In real-world tests, Uptrack dramatically increases the actual rate of compliance with security updates.

Read more in their press release.

Good news for you Windows lovers. CloudKick, one of Rackspace’s cloud solutions, now supports Windows. There will be a webinar on Tues, Sep 21st for those who want more information.

VPS.NET now has a helpful feature if you accidently delete your vps. Before, it was gone when you deleted and there was no undo. But now, they’ve create a restore feature where you can undelete your vps.

Which option should you choose? This article found on TechJournal South takes a look at three different deployment models and their benefits:

A Consonus customer, a large information services developer and provider, spent years considering various cloud computing models and their permutations. The customer first examined three of the four cloud computing deployment models — private, community, public, and hybrid — then evaluated four different management options: in-house, hosted, managed, and managed/hosted.

What cloud computing model and management option did they choose? Well, let’s first look at the benefits and challenges of the three cloud models they considered.

Charles Homes takes a look a brief look a few methods to help increase profitability with cloud hosting over at Portals and KM:

The union of cloud computing and hosting technology has produced wonders for the business community. The main progeny of this marriage has been a dynamic, scalable system that allows business to allocated informational resources with an efficiency hitherto only dreamed of. The hosting packages paid for by your business can be modified as needed as website traffic grows, with no need of strict hosting plans or even laid-out rules. Flexibility like this saves businesses money because they only have to pay for the services they use while simultaneously avoiding server down-time, one of the banes of the information technology industry.

According to this article, Rackspace has finally broken the one-hundred thousand customer mark. Congratulations to them and their continued success in the cloud hosting industry.

Rackspace Hosting ended the first quarter with 99,446 customers, meaning the company has by now easily cleared the 100,000 customer mark. More than 80 percent of those customers are using Rackspace’s cloud computing services, a clear sign of the evolution of the company’s business beyond its roots in managed hosting.

Roger Strukhoff talks about the recent Cloud Expo in New York  in this article over at in.sys-con.com:

A year ago, most IT execs were looking into the “what” of Cloud Computing, as Cloud Expo speaker Dr. Hal Stern of Oracle noted. “But this year, people are here to talk about ‘how.’” as he said during his session in New York. (Hal was so integral to Sun Microsystems for so long, it’s odd to write or see the phrase “Dr. Hal Stern of Oracle.” It’s sort of like saying “Wayne Gretzky of the Los Angeles Kings,” although we’re not sure how hockey-fan Hal feels about being compared to The Great One.)

Cloud Expo in New York did have that “how” feel through and through, in a way that Santa Clara did not. The last-minute rush in Santa Clara reflected an extreme interest in Cloud; everyone showed up at once to see what all the hubbub was about. In New York, they showed up to see how to squeeze performance out of Cloud Computing, how to become more efficient with it, and how to make it secure.

This article over at pcworld.com takes a look at bringing your business into the cloud.

The Internet has changed the way people do nearly everything–from consuming media to performing research to maintaining relationships to communicating.

Its effect on business has been similarly wide ranging. And today, for mission-critical data, Internet-based computing–aka cloud computing–is introducing major changes to the way work is done.

Whether you’re ready to move your business operations to the cloud full time or just want to dip a toe in the water vapor, cloud integration offers significant benefits.