Show HN: Proby - Task monitoring made simple (opens in new tab)

We were occasionally running into issues where our scheduled tasks would not start when expected. There were many reasons for this (environment changes, lock files not being cleaned up properly, etc). So, we created a simple application to monitor our scheduled tasks, and notify us if they didn't start or finish when expected. Now we're notified immediately (via email or SMS) when a scheduled task isn't kicked off when it is supposed to.

The app also keeps track of the run times for past task executions, which has been useful in tracking down unexpected changes in task run times.

Proby is currently in closed beta, meaning we're letting people in slowly. It is currently running on a VPS with a few other services. We want to see if there is an interest in the app before purchasing better/additional hardware.

Use of the app is currently free. At some point, when it is out of beta, we may begin charging a small fee for the service (although I'd imagine we'd have a free plan of some sort). But, all of that is still up in the air.

What do you think?

The idea of sending my cronjobs to someone else to do this creeps me about (perhaps irrationally), but either way, thanks for the reminder I need to do this myself :)

  X X X ok ok ok X ok

This way provides a real at-a-glance way to see one or more broken tasks.

But it seems to me that if Doug really meant what he said below, he would have got up, walked down the hallway and given John a real pat on the back ;)