1. Nagios XI

Nagios XI is basically the Enterprise Addition of Nagios-Core, therefore it has more features and is easier to use mainly thanks to its Configurations Wizards that allow you to configure pretty much anything from a web-interface. It also contains some features that are not included in Nagios-Core, such as User-Specific Interface Customization, Performance Graphs, Failsafe Snapshots and Database Backend.

Its main advantage over Nagios-Core is its Configurations Wizards that make the learning curve much shallower, to the extent that end-users can even manage their own monitoring configurations if required. The only downside to Nagios XI is its price, $2,495 USD for the unlimited package, however it is an extremely well-made product and if you want Nagios to be easier to use its one of the best solutions.

If you want to try Nagios XI you can download a 60 day trial from here or try and online demo.

2. Fully Automated Nagios

Fully Automated Nagios (FAN<.Span>) is a Linux distribution based on CentOS and has Nagios already installed, all you need to do is follow FAN‘s simple setup procedures to get Nagios installed on a new computer. The nice thing about FAN (other than its simple setup) is that the most used Nagios Tools are also installed as standards, this means you get Nagios plug-ins, Centreon, NagVis, NDOUtils, NRPE and NaReTo already installed at no extra cost.

Oh and did I mention its free and you can download it from here

3. Virtual Appliances or Virtual Machines

Virtual appliances is a virtual computer that runs on your current computer it allows you to test new systems without having to change any settings on your current system. You can download a Nagios virtual application from here then all you’ll need to do is run it on VMWare and you’ll have a fully featured Nagios server setup with no configuration at all (you can even do this with windows).

This is a great way to test Nagios and see if you want to go to the effort and install a full Nagios system. However Virtual Appliances are not designed for long term use and are much better for training and evaluation purposes due to the overheads required when running Virtual Machines.

4. Hardware Solutions

Hardware Solutions simply take all the effort and hassle out of setting up a Nagios system. Basically you a rack mounted server with Nagios already installed and configures, all you need to do is plug it in.

Sadly there is a downside to this, its expensive, but got simplest setup and configuration it wins hands down. There are a few companies out there that will sell you pre-build Nagios servers, however by far the best is Azeti a German developer and manufacturer of high-performance server appliances. Azeti products range from highly-efficient security appliances to infrastructure monitoring that are all Nagios-based and extremely easy to use.

5. Use packages built on top of Nagios

There are many network management solutions out there that are built on top of Nagios such as Groundwork & op5 Network Monitor. These programs are great because they usually bring cost effective commercial level support to Nagios and normally include nice and easy install & configure wizards. There are loads of these programs and most of them try to add to the already great feature list of Nagios. The downside is that most of these products do charge, but they are usually vary complete solutions if you want a simpler solution to Nagios-core may be worth investing in.

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Each instance is basically a virtual machine running on amazons infrastructure, and each instance is allocated its own address allowing you to connect to it. Because each instance runs independently you can connect to as many as you want simultaneously.

So how do you go about launching another instance, well first you need to get an instance up and running, a good tutorial for this can be found here (or for windows). Once your new instance is up and running you’ll get a new public DNS  address for that instance.  You can find this address in the AWS Management Console, it is also worth remembering this address is unique.

Now to start another instance all you need to do is click the Launch Instance (there is no need to disconnect from your already running instance) on the management console and follow the same steps you used to start your first instance. This new instance will be completely independent of the first, it is much like adding a new serever to a rack. Once the instance its running you’ll be able to find its unique Public DNS address and connect to it independently of any other instance.

Now to Add or Edit your tags click the “Add/Edit Tags” button:

Now add the tags you want, the key is the colour and value is the actual value for the instance. If you make a new key called name, every instance will have this, its the value that changes per instance. For example if you have separate Apache, SQL and Storage server’s you would make a key called name and name each one accordingly, this will help distinguish the serves when using the Management Console.

10. Folding@Home

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project that runs throughout the world to make one of the most powerfully processing networks in the world. The project is running large scale simulations on Protein Folds to try and cure diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers. So how can your server’s help, well I bet your server CPU’s hardly ever runs at a high load, otherwise you would be setting up faster processes and more servers, but it does seem wasteful having all spare CPU power just in case you get a surge in users. Well folding@home is clever it will never let your load average go much above 1.0 and if you start experiencing a surge in users folding@home will automatically throttle its CPU use, meaning your users will not be effected. So this is a great way to improve the work simply by installing a service on your server. A great tutoiral explaining how to setup a Folding@Home server can be found here.

9. Email Server

Email servers are servers that manage emails and allow you to have complete control on how the are received, sent and distributed to users. I know there are allot of free email providers out there, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc, but it looks much more professional to use your actual domain name for your emails. The most common email server is Postfix witch is probably the most full featured open-source email server you can install. It also useful to have your own email server because it allows you to manage and email account storage space and how large emails can be sent, its annoying being told you can only send emails up to 20MB, what if I want to send a large RAW file to someone, I’ll need my own email server. Its also useful to have a Postfix server installed because it means your website can provide email functionality for things like contact form or surveys. A great tutorial for installing and configuring a postfix server can be found at http://flurdy.com…. and https://help.ubuntu.com…..

8. IRC Server

Ahh the good old IRC server, these things have been letting people chat to each other since 1988. In there most basic form they are chat room servers, pretty much every chat room you’ve used on a web page is connecting to an IRC. They definitely have a place in computing history as they were used to report on the 1991 Soviet coup d’état attempt and Gulf War during media blackouts.  But they have become much more then simple chat rooms, they allow for: File Transfer, Encryption, Proxy, Colour, Channels, Users, and even chat bots. Sadly the IRC char room has been replaced by things like MSN and Facebook messenger. They are great to install on web servers because they allow you to include chat rooms into your websites, or just to play with something that’s been such and important past of computing history. A good tutorial to get a IRC server setup can be found here.

7. VPN Server

VPN stands for Virtual Private network, what it does is makes a secure connection over a public network(the Internet) and tunnels all your traffic through the connection. Its like plugging your computer into your private network from any ware over a secure connection. They are good for many things, first if you want to use your network resources (email server, file server, etc) securely over the Internet and if you just want to hide your network traffic then use a VPN. A great tutorial for setting up a VPN server on ubuntu can be found at here.

6. Nagios Server

Nagios is the Industry Standard Network Monitoring Engine. It is a server that monitors your hosts and services and will inform you if something goes wrong and when it is fixed again. It can monitor network services, host resources and even network probes such as temperature and moisture. It is extremely customizable and even allows you to run your own scripts on events, great for load balancing servers. A good tutorial for installing Nagios can be found here.

5. Remote Control Torrents (Seedbox)

A Torrent server or Seedbox is a server for downloading and uploading digital files. A common use for seed boxes is seeding torrents, it’s much more efficient to setup a Seedbox as it’s likely to have access to higher upload speeds. They are also good for general downloading, its easier to have a server running 24/7 then it is running your PC or Laptop all day. The ability to remote control seed boxes is a great advantage, it enables you to add and monitor downloads from anywhere, especially useful if someone recommends you something to watch at work. A tutorial for setting up a seedbox can be found here.

4. Internet Music Jukebox

A web based media jukebox enables you to play and organise your music from any computer connected to the Internet. It can stream to different multimedia devices at multiple bandwidths, so you can listen to you music at home in high quality, listen to your home library from work, or even listen to your music using your Smart Phone on the train. A great Jukebox is Jinzora witch is a web based media server and management system written in php and is great at streaming music and video, a great tutorial for setting this up can be found here.

3. Secure Your Web Browser Traffic

There lots of good reasons to secure your Web Traffic, the most common when your using a public wireless but still want to have the security of your home network. You can do this with SSH witch is a network protocol that allows data to be exchanged using a secure channel between two networked devices. SSH uses Public-Key encryption, thus enabling it to provide confidentiality and integrity of data over an insecure network like the Internet or a Public Wireless.  Not only can this hide your traffic from other wireless users it can also hide your web traffic form your system administrators. A good tutorial on how to do this with a Linux server and PuTTY can be found here.

2. Host A Blog

Host a Blog, Wiki, Forum or personal web page are all great ideas for a remote server. I know you use free hosting solutions to do this, like WordPress.com or Blogspot.com, but hosting your own site has many benefits like, speed, no advertising(unless you want to) control, etc. You could also setup a server at home to host your site, but unless you have a fast upload and a static IP on your broadband, your going to run into problems. If your setting up your first site I would recommend using WordPress as its easy to setup and use, for a good tutorial on this look here.

1. Install a LAMP Server.

LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP. Its basically a Web Server package that consists of Apache2, MySQL and PHP and is probably the most common setups on on web servers today, in fact nearly everything else on this list requires that you have a LAMP stack installed on your server to run. Even if you not planning on setting up some kind of web server its useful to install the LAMP stack, Ive lost count the amount of times Apache & MySQL have come in useful for tasks that are completely unrelated to Web Servers , and that’s why I’ve put LAMP at the top of my list because regardless of what your doing with your server you should install it, it may come in handy one day.

Thanks for reading.

10 – Cowsay & fortune

Not really a game but it is fun to do when your need something to take your mind off work for a few seconds. Cowsay will simply echo what you tell it in a speech bubble coming from an ASCII cow. I know it sounds childish but try it, it will make your laugh. Fortune is a tool that echoes “words of wisdom”, this is great when you need some inspiration, and combining it with Cowsay can have some great results.

run:

fortune | cowsaw

Install (Ubuntu):

 sudo apt-get install cowsay fortune

9 – Arithmetic

This is a simple quiz game that asks you nice simple maths question, not the most fun game on the list but it does keep your mind working while you’re taking a break.

Run:

arithmetic

Install (Ubuntu):

Sudo apt-get install bsdgames

8 – Backgammon

This is a nice command line, multi-player, Backgammon game. Its got nice simple instructions for people that have never played backgammon and for people that have never used the command line version before. You can play agenised the computer or agenised a friend.

Run:

 backgammon

Install (Ubuntu):

Sudo apt-get install bsdgames

7 – Worm

This is a growing worm game, much like the one you probably played on your old mobile. It’s a good game and it will keep you entertained for 10 minutes while you’re fixing your “writers block”

Comands:
Arrow keys to move
Ctrl-c to exit

Run:

Worm

Install (Ubuntu):

Sudo apt-get install bsdgames

6 – Tetris

Yes it’s even found its way to the command line, this great little game has kept me entertained on many a Friday afternoon.

Commands:
J: left
L: Right
K: Rotate
Space: Drop

Run:

tetris-bsd

Install(Ubuntu):

Sudo apt-get install bsdgames

5 – Monopoly

Yup it can even be found in a command line version, sadly there is no board just text. It’s not bad though most people know how a monopoly board looks so you should be ok. The other downside is that you can’t play agenised a computer, but still good for lunch breaks.

Commands:
Roll: to roll
M: mortgage property
?: for more commands

Run:

monop

Install(Ubuntu):

Sudo apt-get install bsdgames

4 – ATC

This is a great little game where you have to direct aeroplanes to their destination. It takes a while to get used to the controls and they are a little cryptic, so I recommend reading the man page, but it’s worth it as it’s a real fun way of passing 5 minutes.

Commands:

man atc

Run:

atc

Install(Ubuntu):

Sudo apt-get install bsdgames

3 – Greed

This is probably the most addicting game on this list, the object is to eat as many of the numbers as you can. If you land on a 5 then you will move 5 places in that direction.

Commands:
Arrow Keys: Move
?: Help

Run:

greed

Install(Ubuntu):

sudo apt-get install greed

2 – Ninvaders

Commands
Arrow Keys: Move
Space: Shoot

Run:

 ninvaders

Install(Ubuntu):

sudo apt-get install ninvaders

1 – MUD

MUD or Multi-User Dungeon are probably my favourite command line games. They are basically a mix of the old text based adventure games and modern MMO. I Have listed that category of MUD as my favourite Command Line Game as there are so many great MUD’s, if your interested in playing on of these go to mudconnect.com to find one that appeals to you.  Also the great thing about MUD’s is you dont need to install any softwere becuase they use telent and nearly all operating system have a telnet client built in.

run:

telnet www.ateraan.com 4002

Dedicated Server:
That’s start with the traditional way to outsource your servers, Dedicated Servers. This is when you buy a server in a data center somewhere and pay for it monthly, generally between $50 and $100 per month for a basic server. When you buy one of these there is generally a setup time as someone needs to go into the data center and install/setup your server.

Cloud Computing:
The new kid on the block, this is the new way of outsourcing your servers and runs on virtualisation software. There is large datacentre running virtualisation servers and these servers can produce large amounts of “Virtual Servers”. For the user these virtual servers look like a dedicated server, however they could be running on a variety of different servers. So it’s just like having a dedicated server but you don’t know what hardware it’s running on.

So what’s best, well that’s start with cost per server/instance:

It looks like cloud computing is cheaper, but not by much and it does depend on how much data you store and transfer each month, however the nice thing about the Cloud, it has no cap, you just get charged for how much you use.

So how about performance, well to be honest I believe it about evens between the two, well sort of. There is no doubt you can by fast Dedicated Servers and Fast Cloud Compute instance, see my ec2 benchmark post, and the two are probably just as fast as each other for the cost. But as you’ll possibly know computers have a tendency to slow down over time, this is because they get ‘dirty’, full of useless programs, log files, temp files and so on. This is no different for servers, so if you have a dedicated server it’s going to slow down due to all the stuff that ends up on it.

Now you can say the same is true for a Cloud Compute instance too, but it shouldn’t be because it’s take no time at all to start up a new instance so cloud systems should be designed so they can be duplicated onto a new instance. So if you instance starts slowing down you just move it to a new one leaving behind the “dirty” instance. This leads to another, frankly brilliant, advantage of Cloud Computing, scalability. If you design your servers correctly you can run a cheap instance when there is low traffic, i.e. overnight, when you start experiencing a high load you power up a few faster (more expensive) instances and hay presto you’ve managed your load problem without having to pay out for large expensive server’s that sit there most of the day waiting for something to do.

Then there is reliability, this is probably the biggest area of debate in this area, most people seem to like the idea if you have a Dedicated Server in a datacentre and it fails someone will immediately run to it and fix it. Well I’m sure that’s what the datacentre sales team will tell you, but in reality it won’t be an instant fix, this is because someone’s actually got to fix the problem and this takes time. Now the cloud is a more complicated solution so it’s more likely to fall over rite, well yes your probably rite, however amazon boasts 99% up time, pretty much the same as you’ll get from any managed solutions. The difference with the Cloud is that its providers have many data centres located all over the world, so if you instance goes down, or even an entire datacentre goes down, you just start up a new instance somewhere else, the problem is solved in a matter of minutes.

Because of Cloud Computing’s scalability and reliability I believe it’s the better overall solution. Now I do like the idea of having my own physical servers in a datacentre I don’t think it’s the best solution and that’s why I’ll go with the cloud every time. But that just I if you’re still undecided read some of these excellent articles on the subject:

http://www.erikhoward.net/cloud-computing-vs-dedicated-server/
http://www.cloudhostingmag.com/2010/03/cloud-hosting-vs-dedicated-hosting/
http://www.brilliantthinking.net/2008/08/25/cloud-computing-vs-dedicated-servers/
http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/dedicated-hosting-vs-cloud-computing-infrastructure-which-should-you-choose-when-and-why/

So does it live up to expectations, well I’m going to run some LINPACK benchmarks on this new instance to see how fast it relay is, and compare it to the other amazon instances. So…

Well, I didn’t expect that, obviously I knew it was going to be much faster then the “m1.small” instance, but I didn’t think it would be much faster then “c1.xlarge” and it turns out the new cc1.4xlarge its nearly twice as fast. The nice thing about using LINPACK as a benchmark is we can directly compare it to the www.top500.org top 500 supercomputer list and the new “Cluster Compute Quadruple Extra Large” has around the same CPU as the “Thinking Machines Corporation CM-5/1024” which was one of the fastest supercomputers in the world in 1994.  Being able to cluster this kind of power over a 10Gigabit Ethernet connection gives us a  huge amount of CPU power, good luck finding something to do with it though. For more info on amazons new Cluster Compute instance go to http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/.