I have used Monit for years for basic server monitoring. It's a very tiny daemon with a single, simple config file. Basically I can tell it "when disk space exceeds X, or RAM exceeds Y, or CPU exceeds Z, or process identified by pidfile foo.pid isn't running, or I can't ping something, email me". No monitoring servers, no network polling, no SNMP, no monthly fees. Sounds like five lines of Monit config would have saved these guys. See the config file docs at http://mmonit.com/monit/documentation/monit.html .
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I have used Monit for years for basic server monitoring. It's a very tiny daemon with a single, simple config file. Basically I can tell it "when disk space exceeds X, or RAM exceeds Y, or CPU exceeds Z, or process identified by pidfile foo.pid isn't running, or I can't ping something, email me". No monitoring servers, no network polling, no SNMP, no monthly fees. Sounds like five lines of Monit config would have saved these guys. See the config file docs at http://mmonit.com/monit/documentation/monit.html .