I have an app that runs on a networked server. (I'm using VB6)
I'd like to have a user (typically an Admin) using another machine on the network to be able to 'monitor' the remote app, or at least know that it's still running.
As well, there may be multiple copies of the app running on several servers and I'd like to 'monitor' all of them from one remote machine.
I'm considering 3 options and would like some advice on which may work better (and perhaps some code if anyone has done this already)
a) Push - have my Server app 'ping' another app on a specific remote machine by IP address.
b) Pull 1 - have the remote machine 'ping' the Server app by IP address.
c) Pull 2 - have the remote machine find the app by enumerating the running processes of the Server.
Anyone care to let me know which may be better and perhaps how to do it?
Do you have another suggestion?
Just my input, but you could put together a ping-like function as you said, and have it running on a special port, so it would only ping that port on the remote. No idea how to do it, though, sorry!
I'd do it with winsock, have the server app listen for connections, have the client connect and send a message, if the server responds, its online and running.
Check out these two projects I just made, client and server. The server listens for connections, if it gets a connect attempt, it accepts and waits for message, if the message is "PING" it replies with "PONG" then disconnects, and listens for another connection. The client connects to the IP and sends "PING" if connection is successful, if not it displays a message
This is not my area, and I have Apps running on our server and they just update a log file. The Admin checks the log to see and what the App is doing.
I just make it simple
This is not my area, and I have Apps running on our server and they just update a log file. The Admin checks the log to see and what the App is doing.
I just make it simple
If you need to know if the app is running on the server the most accurate is to ping it. It depends what the app is doing and if you need to know if its running with 100% accuracy or not.
I use Winsock for this too. A standard ICMP ping is not reliable enough. With Winsock you know for sure that the server is running. A simple ping/pong like 182 posted would work.
I also setup a remote admin feature in my server program so I can control it from my web browser. This is a bit more involved though and you need to able to parse HTTP/HTML responses.