SIGUCCS 2017

What would users think if we failed to see the (servers’) down? Would users stand up and walk out on us? Let users use their devices and we’ll show them our work. And we’ll try not to stop users’ business. Oh I get by with a little help from my Bots, Mm I’m gonna high with a little help from my Bots.
ICT infrastructure managers of universities are always monitoring many servers and server rooms in their campus. Monitoring a server or a server room seems easy work from people who never have been working at an ICT administration department. However, we know, it is hard work. If we failed to find out trouble of the server or server room, and we could not cope with the trouble, users complain about it because they can’t do their business. It could also cause a serious trouble such as a fire in a building.
No one is perfect. So there are chances that an ICT infrastructure manager failed to find out trouble of the server or the server room. So managers are using various ways to reduce to fail to find out trouble.
As a way of monitoring servers or server rooms, we show a way of employing bots instead of employing people to monitor servers or server rooms.
A bot is a remote controlled computer or a remote controlled program. A bot is usually malicious program which is an element of a botnet. A botnet is used for doing malicious things such as spreading spam mails or doing DDoS Attacks. We have made bots and we are using bots for doing beneficial things such as monitoring a server instead of doing malicious things. Some bots of them are Raspberry PIs with the bot software. Some others of them are android smart phones with sensors and the bot software. These bots are controlled by commands and programs in Wiki pages of web servers. Managers can control bots in a LAN, which is protected from the outside by NAT routers, from the outside of the LAN, by writing commands and programs in Wiki pages of web servers which is located at the outside of the LAN or which can be accessed from the outside of the LAN.
When a server was connected to a campus LAN, which cannot be accessed from the Internet directly, it is impossible to monitor the server from the outside of the campus directly. However, the manager would like to monitor the server from outside of the campus when he is outside of the campus such as when he is in his home at night or when he is doing business trip. A bot can help the manager to monitor the server in such cases. A server room is usually isolated from outside and there is no one in the server room. A bot also can help manager to monitor the server room. There may be a server which is maintained by a third party company and the manager cannot install monitoring software into the server. A bot can help the manager to monitor the server in such cases.
We are monitoring a web server in our campus using a bot. This bot is tweeting whether the server is running or not periodically on the twitter. We are also monitoring a server room in our campus using another bot. This bot shows managers transition of the room temperature and transition of the room brightness. These bots are doing a good job.