As many of you have already heard via our mass email FastServers.Net has developed a new tool to assist you in bandwidth monitoring on your server. This very simple tool allows you to enter a threshold and be notified when your dedicated server hits this threshold. I wanted to take a few minutes to discuss some behind the scenes challenges that took place during the development and how this tool can help you save money.

The Bandwidth Alert System is a tool FastServers.Net has been working on for quite some time. FastServers.Net currently utilizes a very robust RTG (Real Time Graph) based bandwidth monitoring system for all dedicated servers on our network. This system monitors your switch port and records the overall incoming and outgoing bandwidth associated with your server.

Prior to the availability of the Bandwidth Alert System bandwidth stats have been available via pentagon.fastservers.net. The downfall of this is that you were required to login on a regular basis and responsible for monitoring your bandwidth, making adjustments with upgrades, and keeping a close eye on your overall usage.

The RTG application is mySQL based and a very useful tool for both global bandwidth monitoring as well as individual server based monitoring. Information that is monitored is then stored in a mySQL database for future data crunching and analysis. We maintain RTG stats for up to 6 months and with historical data being kept for such a long time the current system requires a large allocation of hardware and resources. The final challenge we have been faced with is a multi-data center deployment of RTG with the centralization of reporting taking place via pentagon.fastservers.net. The overall amount of planning, programming, and modifications to maintain this system has been quite the task.

When the idea of the Bandwidth Alert System was presented to our System Administrators they identified the need for benchmarking and analyzing large amounts of data, alerts, and providing a system that could produce the type of email alerts we needed to be proactive. Once the hardware needs were identified our system engineers and programmers went to work to develop the base application. After the base application was developed a number of stress tests took place to validate this tool could handle the data crunching and reporting we needed. The end result is a very powerful system that has been deployed using the right hardware, the right code, and the right type of scalability to meet our growing needs.

The Bandwidth Alert System will allow both high bandwidth based applications to get pro-active notifications as they exceed their threshold. For those customers that don’t utilize massive amounts of bandwidth the tool is equally useful. By analyzing your current usage you can set a threshold that would seem abnormal and it becomes a security tool. The first sign of servers being exploited are abnormal bandwidth utilization.

Our team is available to answer any questions you have about this new tool and assist with our recommendation, bandwidth analysis, and overall expertise. Don’t hesitate to get in contact with a support engineer and work with them to implement this new tool on your managed dedicated server today!