I am hosting marcelvenema.com at my own home. I am using a virtual machine on my research and development infrastructure.
This ‘infrastructure’ is a big word for 2 servers running an Intel i5 processor with 32GB RAM each, a server with a i7 processor and 32GB RAM and a small HTPC. All are connected to two Synology NAS systems. The home-build servers are all running a different hypervisor, Citrix XenServer, VMWare ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. Just because it is research and development, the change that something will break is more than average.
For that reason I monitor my websites with a free webservice: montastic.com. It monitors every 30 minutes if it can reach my websites. If not, I will receive an e-mail. And the best part, it is free. Do you have other cool tools ? Better suggestions ? Leave a reply in the comments.