anyone have a freeware server monitoring software that they are using to monitor a server running ignition? Id like to install it on a separate server, and have it monitor the ignition server and verify that it is still running and monitor some other services and send me an email alert if the ignition server goes down.
nagios!
http://www.nagios.org/
Very Powerful
Nagwin works well if you want to install it on a windows box btw.
Try Uptime Software. It has the best server monitoring app I’ve used so far; and yes it will monitor ignition! You could use Nagios if you are monitoring very few systems, I’m sure you won’t need all of its features anyway.
I’ll have to check that out, always interested in seeing how other software packages work.
My definition of very few is 560+ atm however 
PRTG network monitor 8, they have a free version with 10-20 free sensors. It is a great tool and their commercial version is very cheap.
SolarWinds has a free tool called WMI Monitor which can monitor any WMI application. SolarWinds also has an affordable server monitoring http://www.solarwinds.com/server-application-monitor.aspx tool which can monitor hardware health, operating systems, and any application with ~150 applications supported natively.