Glossary
Server monitoring glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms teams without an SRE run into, and what Opservo does about each.
Health score
A single number that summarises how a server is doing across several areas, so you can see which server needs attention first.
In Opservo: The Opservo Health Standard rates each server 0–100 across Performance, Security, Storage, Reliability, Maintenance, Network and Configuration. It is deterministic, not AI, and every lost point names the rule, threshold, current value and fix. Read more
Monitoring agent
A small program installed on a server that collects metrics and state from the inside and sends them to a monitoring service.
In Opservo: One Go agent, installed with one command in about 30 seconds, no configuration. Read more
Read-only agent
An agent that can observe the server but cannot change it.
In Opservo: The Opservo agent is read-only by default. Remote actions and AI fixes are opt-in per server and audited, and a fleet update never turns them on. Read more
Outbound-only connection
The agent opens the connection to the monitoring service; nothing on the internet needs to connect in to the server, so no inbound port is opened.
In Opservo: The agent talks outbound over HTTPS with HMAC-signed requests; updates and remote commands are Ed25519-signed. Read more
Auto-discovery
Finding what runs on a server automatically instead of listing it by hand, so the inventory cannot go stale.
In Opservo: Discovers systemd, Docker, PM2, nginx/apache vhosts and SSL expiry, ports, processes, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis and Laravel, WordPress, Node, Django, FastAPI and PHP apps. Read more
Uptime check
A test run from outside your servers at a regular interval to confirm a website, API or port answers as expected.
In Opservo: HTTP, API, TCP, ping, DNS and domain checks with SSL expiry. Read more
Cron heartbeat
A ping a scheduled job sends each time it runs. If the ping does not arrive on time, the job has stopped or failed.
In Opservo: Cron heartbeats are part of uptime monitoring. Read more
SSL certificate expiry
The date after which browsers stop trusting a site's certificate and show visitors a warning.
In Opservo: Expiry is tracked both from discovered nginx/apache vhosts and from external checks. Read more
Disk-fill forecast
A projection of when a disk will be full at its current rate of growth, so you can act before it happens rather than after.
In Opservo: Opservo forecasts disk fills and error spikes. Read more
Log clustering
Grouping thousands of similar log lines into a few patterns, so a new or growing kind of error stands out.
In Opservo: Opservo clusters log lines into patterns; raw logs are never stored. Read more
Remediation
The action that fixes a problem, as opposed to the alert that reports it.
In Opservo: One-click fixes, or fixes approved by a policy you wrote. Opt-in per server and audited. Read more
On-call rotation
A schedule that decides who is responsible for answering alerts at any given time.
In Opservo: On-call rotations with SMS, WhatsApp and voice paging through your own Twilio account. Read more
Escalation policy
The rule for who gets paged next, and after how long, when the first person does not acknowledge an alert.
In Opservo: Part of on-call, alongside incident management. Read more
Status page
A public page that tells customers whether a service is working and what is being done about a problem.
In Opservo: Public status pages, on the Growth plan. Read more
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