[tor-bugs] #32679 [Internal Services/Tor Sysadmin Team]: Create VM to run monitoring software for anti-censorship team

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#32679: Create VM to run monitoring software for anti-censorship team
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     Reporter:  phw                                  |      Owner:  tpa
         Type:  task                                 |     Status:  new
     Priority:  Medium                               |  Milestone:
    Component:  Internal Services/Tor Sysadmin Team  |    Version:
     Severity:  Normal                               |   Keywords:
Actual Points:                                       |  Parent ID:
       Points:                                       |   Reviewer:
      Sponsor:                                       |
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 So far, the anti-censorship team's infrastructure is monitored by a sysmon
 instance that gman999 generously runs for us. Every five minutes, sysmon
 establishes TCP connections to a number of machines and if any of these
 checks fails twice, we get an email alert.

 The problem is that we cannot directly edit its configuration file, so we
 email gman999 whenever it needs an update. I would like to avoid this
 friction. Besides, sysmon is very simple and cannot handle, say, HTTP
 redirects.

 I think it would be best for the anti-censorship team to run its own
 monitoring service, on a dedicated VM. We can then add monitoring targets
 ourselves and don't need to block on others.

 I have been experimenting with a service called [https://mmonit.com/monit/
 monit]. It's free software and lightweight, yet flexible enough to fulfill
 our needs. I think it would be helpful to run monit on a dedicated VM.
 Does this make sense?

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32679>
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