The edition of the ColdFusion server that my company has does not come with a server monitor. Due to some problems with our website which we think may have to do with server issues, we are looking into buying a ColdFusion Server Monitor.
What are the options out there? What are the pros and cons of the different options?
Any information is appreciated!
If you don't have access to the standard coldfusion administrator and the server monitor in there, then you are unlikely to be able to use FusionReactor or SeeFusion
What you might be able to use is CFtracker in standalone mode, as you should be able to drop this into a folder on your server and get access to it immediately. It should will give you a good idea of what is going on with memory usage, session and application data and so on.
If you do have access to install applications on your server, then its definitely worth looking at FusionReactor and SeeFusion free trials to see which will give you the information you need.
Also, don't forget that looking through the webserver, JRun and ColdFusion server instance logs will also provide valuable information on what is going on on your server and application.
I have used Fusion Reactor before with great success. Another option which may work for you is re-installing ColdFusion on the server or on another server (preferable if you can reproduce the problems in a testing environment) in "Trial" mode. If you install it that way and don't enter your license key, it will run for 30 days in full "Enterprise" mode which has access to the server monitor component.
This question may also be interesting to you.
I used FusionReactor for several years. It had good monitoring options for threading, resources, etc. as well as email alerts.
The only problem we had that it would not fix was a problem with database connections getting "stuck". However, it handled traffic overruns, long-running threads, and has good repots about longest running templates, etc.
Unfortunately, it's the only one I've used, so I can't give a comparison.
