How to use powershell to monitor multiple application pools on single server with email notification

This is more of an IIS item.  I recommend that you configure all the AppPools that you want to monitor, for Rapid-Fail Protection.

Reference Link:  http://www.iis.net/configreference/system.applicationhost/applicationpools/add/failure

1. What you want to do is configure the Rapid-Fail Protection as per your definition above.
2. In the "Shutdown Executable" option, add "powershell.exe"
3. In the "Shutdown Executable Parameters" option, add "C:\The-Local-Path-To-Your-Script\SendMail.ps1"

The powershell command to send an email is:

send-mailmessage -SmtpServer "YourSmtpRelayServer.here" -Priority High -To "your.email-address@domain.com" -From "IIS.AppPool-Failure@admin.domain.com" -Subject "Email Subject" -Body "Email Body"

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An example screen shot:


I would also enable all options for Recycling > "Generate Recycle Event Log entry."   This way you will also get an Application Event Log entry for any and all App Pool recycle/restarts.

It would also be advisable to do regular analysis of your http logs and the HttpError logs.

Dan

Hi Dan,
Thanks for feedback.  I have over hundreds of IIS servers in our environment and majority are not open up for SMTP relay which prevent us sending out email from server itself due to some security policy.

Thus, we have to think of alternative solutions which make use of powershell to pool the status of application pools from each servers instead and notify us on the failure.

Regards,
Kung Hui

What is the server open to? do the server aggregate their event logs to a single server that does have the ability to mailout? Is SNMP available on those servers such that evntwin/evntcmd can be used to establish a map between an event and an SNMPTRAP event?
This will be a trigger as soon as it occurs versus depending on your check cycle as well as the order of your checks.

Are the servers currently being monitored by zabbix, nagios, hp openview, sitescope, etc.?

Kung Hui,

Please let me know the email server you have? e.g., Microsoft Exchange server, Qmail, lotus Notes, etc.

SMTP relay is not blocked in many companies. But if you have your IIS servers and Email servers in LAN (Local Area Network) and if they are part of the same Active Directory domain, then you should be able to send email through one of your email servers.

In the worst case scenario, you may need to add your IIS server IPs in "SMTP connections allow list", if SMTP connections are also restricted.

Thanks,
Veera.

Hi All,
Thank you for attend to this question.  All our productions servers does not allow SMTP relay (or rather I would say those servers are not in SMTP relay allow list).  At such, I'm using one of the monitoring server which has been granted for SMTP relay to perform monitoring using powershell script.

My question here would be very straight forward - To monitor application state using powershell, instead of using other methods to achieve the same purpose.

Basically i will schedule a job to run at interval of 5mins to perform monitoring with the following logic:-
 1) Monitor multiple application pools status on list of IIS servers.
 2) If application pools failed or not started, attempt to start-up for 3 times (1 time also will do).
 3) If it failed for 3 (or 1) times, send email notification to administrator with failed application pool listed for further checking.
 4) The notification should only send one time, or else it may flood the mailbox (As the monitoring job is scheduled to run every 5mins).

Thanks all!

Here you go:

http://www.paessler.com/manuals/prtg/perfcounter_iis_application_pool_sensor

This will also give you trend analysis

Hi Greg,
URL given looks more like a product.  What i needed is just some powershell script to achieve the requirement.  Thanks.

it is a product.  that i used at my SaaS/webhosting company. it can monitor and manage your environment and execute powershell, vbscripts, etc to do whatever you want to heal your web applications.

what you are after is actually an enterprise infrastructure monitoring solution, something like what Whatsup does. see below.

http://www.whatsupgold.com/products/whatsup-gold-application-performance-monitor.aspx

basically, if it is for critical business, you can't expect running a single monitoring script in a loop to efficiently monitor your IIS. be aware that any task to do in the script must be executed in a sequence, which means it can't monitor while maintaining and vice versa. you may see significant performance decrease if you run too many this kind of scripts at the same time.

Self-closing case with no perfect solution received.