Day 2: Getting the most out of your trial

As this is the second day of your Server Density trial we would like to follow up with some additional tips to help you make the most out of it. Don’t forget, if you are unsure about anything please email us at hello@serverdensity.com or call on +1 (646) 419-4674.

This guide is also available as a downloadable PDF.

1. Sync your cloud providers

Are you using Amazon, Google or Rackspace? Good news. You can automatically import all your servers into Server Density.

2. Create webhooks for your alerts

Push alerts into other systems and set automatic actions for them.

3. Integrate with PagerDuty

Using PagerDuty? Then you’ll be pleased to know that PagerDuty can receive Server Density alerts.

4. Create users and permissions

When working with multiple teams you can assign different privileges to each.

5. Send notifications to Slack

Using Slack? You can send Server Density notifications straight to your channel.

1. Sync your cloud providers

Are you using Amazon, Google or Rackspace? Good news. You can automatically import all your servers into Server Density.

By adding your cloud provider credentials, we can automatically sync your list of instances and add them into Server Density ready to be monitored.

Each cloud instance gets its own unique agent key and you can then install the agent to return monitoring data.

By the way, we only count devices against your billing quota when the agent is installed. In other words, you can add and organise all your instances within Server Density even if they are not actually monitored. Good to know!

To do this, just click your name in the top right, select Preferences and click on Cloud.

After adding your credentials, we will then download a list of your EC2 Instances, Rackspace Cloud Servers and Google Compute Engine VM Instances. You will then be able to see the live state of these instances and (if your credentials allow) create, restart, shut down and terminate them as needed. Isn’t that cool?

For more details on this, check out our awesome support docs.

2. Create webhooks for your alerts

 Push alerts into other systems and set automatic actions for them.

1. Click your name in the top right and click on Preferences.
2. Click the Notifications tab then select Webhook from the dropdown. Give the webhook a name and enter a URL.
3. You can now select the webhook when choosing the recipients for an alert.

3. Integrate with PagerDuty

 Do you use PagerDuty to manage your on-call schedules, alerting, escalations and tracking incidents?

If you do, then you’ll be pleased to know that PagerDuty can receive Server Density alerts. You can add multiple services and even separate critical from non-critical alerts. Here is how to do this:

1. In PagerDuty, click Services followed by Add New Service

2. Enter a name for the service, choose your escalation policy then select the Server Density Service Type and Click Add Service. Make a note of the API key under the Integration Settings heading.

3. In your Server Density account click your name on the top right, select Preferences, head over to the notifications tab and select PagerDuty. Enter a name for your PagerDuty service and copy in the API key you previously made a note of.

4. When adding an alert you can then select the PagerDuty service as an alert recipient

4. Create users and permissions

 When working with multiple teams you can assign different privileges to each.

You may want, for example, to give developers access to staging or give your Ops team access to production servers.

You can set up permissions using tags. Start by creating a new tag from the Tags menu on the left. Enter the name for the new tag on the top right box, pick a color and press the + button.

Let’s now tag a device:

1. Click the Tags section from the left hand menu.
2. Click the Settings cog next to the tag.
3. Click View to navigate to the management view for that tag.

From here you can pick devices, services, and users to tag.

Another way to tag users is via the User preferences. Click your name on the top bar then select the Users tab. You can then add tags to a user by clicking the tag icon next to their name.

For example, to give “user1” access only to “device1”:

1. Create a new tag named “tag1”
2. Tag “device1” with “tag1”
3. Tag “user1” with “tag1”
4. Set “user1” to be a limited user, and not an admin user

For more information on Server Density user types, check out our docs.

5. Send notifications to Slack

 Using Slack? Thought so. You can send Server Density notifications straight to your channel.

1. Click your name on the top right, choose Notifications, and select Slack from the dropdown list.
2. Enter your API token and specify the Slack channel you want the notifications to go.

That’s it, you’re done. From now on, when you add or edit your alerts, Slack notifications will appear in the list of notifications available.

Keep exploring. 

Well done! You should now be up and running with Server Density. There is plenty more to explore of course. So check out our documentation for additional guides, tricks and troubleshooting.

If you need help with anything, we’d love to hear from you. Call us on +1 (646) 419-4674 or email us at hello@serverdensity.com.