I've been going through all the monitoring questions, and even the small wiki that one member already started, but I can't seem to be able to grasp the whole concept of monitoring a remote host.
Here is my scenario:
I am a VERY new Sysadmin (lost my previous Electronic Engineering job, need food, no other option), and I am in charge of 1 server. Now, this server is a dedicated box located inside a data center. Basically this server is running a VoIP application, and a small web server with a few pages, but still, most of the traffic is VoIP SIP traffic.
What I want to do is install a monitoring service, that will allow me to continuously monitor the current state of the server, and if something goes wrong, to notify me via email and even maybe SMS.
The VoIP software is running as a service, so checking if the service is running would be a plus.
So basically, what I want to check is if the server is running, that the server is running smoothly (CPU load, memory usage, HDD space, online, voip service running).
The thing is, I am not in the same network as the server, I work from an office not related to the data center and I use remote desktop to get in the server and configure it, but I want to be able to be notified when something went wrong, specially during the weekend.
I woud really appreciate any help you can give me.