I found a useful script in PHP that can be used for checking uptime of a server. It can be useful for checking when the servers have a such a significant load that pages can’t be displayed. The benefit or running it locally is that I can configure the script to perform failover functionality if necessary. Online uptime services are good too, but most of them aren’t free. Maybe I should force the server to show a failwhale when the site gets too busy… j/k 😀
Here’s the link to the script.
http://www.programmingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=34999