What is PuTTY
PuTTY is a terminal widely used to remotely access servers. It supports a wide range of network protocols, including SSH (Secure Shell), Telnet, and serial connections. PuTTY's simplicity and reliability have made it a popular selection among system administrators, developers and network engineers.
Key Uses of PuTTY for Server Health Checks
- Remote Access to Servers
- Running Diagnostic Commands
- Checking Service Status
- Reviewing System Logs
- Running Custom Health Checks
1. Remote Access to Servers
The main purpose of using PuTTY is to provide a remote connection to the servers. Through SSH, we can securely log in to the servers from anywhere and perform required admin tasks. This remote access is crucial for monitoring and managing the server's health without physical access.
2. Running Diagnostic Commands
Once we get the connection to the server through PuTTY, we can perform some diagnostic commands to assess server performance:
For CPU and Memory Usage we can use the commands like top or htop to monitor real-time CPU and memory usage and to check available disk space with df-h to ensure there's sufficient space for operations.
For CPU and Memory Usage we can use the commands like top or htop to monitor real-time CPU and memory usage and to check available disk space with df-h to ensure there's sufficient space for operations.
For Memory Status, we can use free -m to view memory usage and ensure that the server isn't running low on RAM.
System Uptime and Load: The uptime command provides information on how long the server has been running and its current load average.
System Uptime and Load: The uptime command provides information on how long the server has been running and its current load average.
3. Checking Service Status
PuTTY allows you to check the status of critical services on your server. Commands such as systemctl status or service status can be used to verify that services like web servers, databases, and others are running as expected. This will help in identifying any issues with service availability.
4. Reviewing System Logs
Identifying errors or unexpected constraints that may affect server health is very important, PuTTY enables to use of commands like tail -f/var/log/syslog or cat /var/log/messages to view and analyze logs.
5. Running Custom Health Checks
We can perform and execute custom scripts or commands specific to the server's role. Whether it is monitoring application performance or verifying security vulnerabilities, PuTTY offers the flexibility to execute these types of tasks efficiently.
