How do you monitor a server with SMS alerts?

Monitoring that only emails does not work outside office hours. SMS does — but only if you keep the alerts strict.

The real problem is not technical

Most monitoring fails not because there are no notifications but because there are too many. Anyone woken three times a night for something that resolved itself switches it off within a week.

What is worth an SMS

Only what requires human intervention and cannot wait until tomorrow. Anything that recovers by itself or can wait until nine belongs in an email or a dashboard.

Practical rules

Alert on consequences, not causes: "site unreachable" rather than five separate messages about processes. Build in a delay so a ten-second glitch wakes nobody. And send a message when it is resolved too — otherwise somebody gets up for nothing.

Test it

An alert that has never fired is an assumption. Trigger it once deliberately.