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How to Monitor Your Hetzner VPS or Dedicated Server with Vigilmon

#hetzner #monitoring #devops #linux

How to Monitor Your Hetzner VPS or Dedicated Server with Vigilmon

Hetzner is one of Europe's most popular cloud providers, beloved by developers for its exceptional price-to-performance ratio. A Hetzner CX21 VPS starts at around 3.49 EUR/month — making it a go-to choice for side projects, staging environments, and even production workloads. But Hetzner's affordable pricing means you get what you pay for in terms of managed monitoring — there is none. This guide shows you how to add production-grade uptime monitoring to any Hetzner server using Vigilmon.

Hetzner vs. AWS/GCP/Azure — The Monitoring Gap

Managed cloud providers like AWS and GCP include basic monitoring (CloudWatch, Cloud Monitoring) out of the box. With Hetzner, you get:

  • A bare VPS or dedicated server
  • Hetzner's own basic metrics (CPU, network) in their console
  • No application-level monitoring
  • No external uptime checks

This is fine — it means lower costs. But you need to add external monitoring yourself.

Step 1: What to Monitor on Your Hetzner Server

For a typical Hetzner server running a web application:

Component Monitor Type URL
Web application HTTP monitor https://yourdomain.com
Health check endpoint HTTP monitor https://yourdomain.com/health
Admin panel HTTP monitor https://yourdomain.com/admin
SSL certificate SSL monitor Auto-detected
Background jobs Cron/heartbeat Ping URL

Step 2: Set Up Vigilmon

  1. Sign up at vigilmon.online — free account, no credit card
  2. Click Add Monitor > HTTP Monitor
  3. Enter your Hetzner server's domain or IP: https://yourdomain.com
  4. Check interval: 1 minute
  5. Alert after: 2 consecutive failures
  6. Add your alert channel (email, Slack, or webhook)

Step 3: Add a Health Check Endpoint to Your Application

For nginx serving static files:

location /health {
    access_log off;
    return 200 'ok';
    add_header Content-Type text/plain;
}
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For a PHP application:

<?php
// health.php
header('Content-Type: application/json');
echo json_encode(['status' => 'ok']);
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For a Node.js/Express app behind nginx:

location /health {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000/health;
    proxy_read_timeout 5s;
    access_log off;
}
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Step 4: Configure nginx for HTTPS

Most Hetzner setups use Let's Encrypt with Certbot:

# Install Certbot
apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx

# Get certificate
certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com

# Auto-renewal (already set up by Certbot)
crontab -l | grep certbot
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Vigilmon's SSL certificate monitor will alert you 30 days before expiry — a useful backup in case Certbot's auto-renewal fails.

Step 5: Monitor Hetzner Server with Multiple Services

For a Hetzner server running multiple services:

# nginx.conf snippet
server {
    server_name api.yourdomain.com;
    location /health { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000/health; }
    location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000; }
}

server {
    server_name app.yourdomain.com;
    location /health { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:4000/health; }
    location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:4000; }
}

server {
    server_name admin.yourdomain.com;
    location /health { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5000/health; }
    location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5000; }
}
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Add separate Vigilmon monitors for each subdomain.

Step 6: Hetzner Floating IP Considerations

If you use Hetzner Floating IPs (for failover):

  • Monitor the domain (e.g., api.yourdomain.com), not the IP
  • DNS-based monitoring via Vigilmon ensures you catch both the floating IP reassignment and the application health

Step 7: Monitor Background Jobs on Hetzner

Many Hetzner setups run cron jobs for backups, data processing, or monitoring tasks. Use Vigilmon's heartbeat monitor:

# /etc/cron.d/myapp
*/5 * * * * www-data /usr/local/bin/process-queue.sh && curl -s https://vigilmon.online/ping/YOUR_MONITOR_ID > /dev/null 2>&1
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If the cron job fails to run (cron daemon dies, script exits with error), the ping never happens and Vigilmon alerts you.

Step 8: Hetzner Robot (Dedicated Servers)

For Hetzner Robot dedicated servers:

  • Hardware failures are rarer but possible
  • Hetzner provides its own server monitoring in the Robot panel
  • Add Vigilmon for application-level monitoring on top

Hetzner Storage Boxes

If you use Hetzner Storage Boxes for backups, verify your backup scripts run successfully:

#!/bin/bash
# backup.sh
rsync -av /var/app/data/ user@your-storage-box.backup.hetzner.com:/data/ \n  && curl -s https://vigilmon.online/ping/BACKUP_MONITOR_ID
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Typical Hetzner Monitoring Stack

Tool Purpose
Vigilmon External uptime monitoring, SSL checks, cron heartbeats
Hetzner Console Server-level CPU, memory, network graphs
nginx logs Request-level access and error logging
journald/syslog System-level events, service restarts
Netdata (optional) Real-time system metrics

Summary

Hetzner's low cost means you set up your own monitoring — but with Vigilmon, that setup takes under 5 minutes. You get 1-minute check intervals, SSL certificate monitoring, cron heartbeat monitoring, and instant alerts when anything goes wrong.

Start monitoring your Hetzner server free with Vigilmon.

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