ANALYZE

Pros and Cons of Server Monitor Log Analysis

The Server Monitor is a small application that sits on the server and counts who is requesting what from the server. The Server Monitor stores the information in a log file - commonly known as a "server log file." The log file is a standard text file with one line of text for each action.

This log file can be analyzed using a number of dedicated applications. One of the most well known producers of such applications is Web Trends.

If you are running your own servers or have a professional hosting solution, you should be able to get access to the raw server monitor log files. In this case you can run your own reports using a log file analyzer. However, for bigger websites, log files can become very large and take up mega bytes of data every day.

Some service providers run server monitor log analysis off a central server and will provide you with access to online reports. They generally include good standard reports, but you will not be able to perform your own filtering.

Advantages:

• Standard format
  Server monitor logs are in a (almost) standard format - most servers at least write in a format that all analysis and reporting programs can read and understand. This, and the fact that there are many reporting tools available, makes it a very flexible solution. Using the same log files, you can easily switch from one reporting package to another.
  
  
• Cheap to get started (for a small website)
  For a small website with a reasonable amount of daily log data this can be a cheap way to get started with traffic analysis.
  
  
• Impressive reporting
  Even in the small and inexpensive reporting tools, you will find an impressive selection of printable reports with graphs, tables, and explanations.

Disadvantages:

• Huge log files on large websites
  If you run a website with millions of page views a month you will end up with extremely large log files - several mega bytes of data a day. All that data has to be transferred, converted, filtered, data mined and processed for reporting which will require a lot of bandwidth and computer power to perform.
  
  
• One more program is one more problem
  The server monitor application is one more program that has to run on the server. The more programs you run, the higher the risk of a crash. If you use trackers or network package sniffing you can turn off the server monitor application and save up to 20% of the resources on the server and limit the risk of the application crashing.
  
  
• Not real time reporting
  Due to the huge amount of flat text file data that needs to be executed, real time reporting or even close-to real time reporting is often not an option. Usually you will have to accept reports aggregated every 24 hours or less.
  
  
• Not all visitor actions are available to the Server Monitor
  Some actions, like the "stop request" (when a visitor hits the browsers STOP button before the web page has loaded), are not recorded in the server monitor log.

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