This question was answered by @amol:

If you have a separate server to run your check script on, something like this would do a simple Ping test to see if the server is alive:
Cron this script.

!/bin/bash

SERVERIP=IP_Address
NOTIFYEMAIL=test@example.com

ping -c 3 $SERVERIP > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -ne 0 ]
then
# Use your favorite mailer here:
mailx -s “Server $SERVERIP is down” -t “$NOTIFYEMAIL” < /dev/null
fi

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First off - thanks for sharing @amol - am curious about this, sooo:

*Question(s) *

• Am new to this. Is such a script completely safe? Does one need to harden the server or network in some way when croning something like this?

• Can frequent pinging affect server load / bandwidth and thus impact the server’s speed/performance negatively?

• Am not a code wiz - just a dude. How often does this script ping? (I know, sry - can’t even deduct from the code - duh!)

Anebody by chance feel like doing DigitalO writeup/setup tut for this using SSH or what the heck it’s called nowadays? Something set-by-step'ish for dummies like me - preferably something with real-life config example values… or perhaps someone can throw a link if similar has already been made available (?)

Don’t hope you mind the q’s/input. Appreciate it! :-)