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Tailscale for poorman's monitoring
As you maybe didnt know tailscale VPN can be used as a simple uptime monitor and latency tool. no need to install uptime monitoring tools for simple server uptime and network latency checks. Install tailscale on all your servers and tailscale will monitor uptime and latency too next to your tailscale connections.
I didnt like the hussle of installing agents and keeping a central monitoring server up. I use tailscale for this now.
$ tailscale status --header
IP Hostname Owner OS Status
-- -------- ----- -- ------
100.95.238.61 mynode1 dbadude@ windows offline, last seen 39d ago
100.95.239.13 mynode2 dbadude@ linux -
100.95.231.12 mynode3 dbadude@ linux -
100.95.233.11 mynode4 dbadude@ linux -
100.95.231.10 mynode5 dbadude@ linux -
And network pings to the tailscale global dc's;
$ tailscale netcheck
Report:
* Time: 2026-07-20T11:30:59.851432185Z
* UDP: true
* IPv4: yes, 1.2.3.4:5418
* IPv6: no, but OS has support
* MappingVariesByDestIP: false
* PortMapping:
* Nearest DERP: Amsterdam
* DERP latency:
- ams: 17ms (Amsterdam)
- par: 20.7ms (Paris)
- fra: 20.7ms (Frankfurt)
- lhr: 24.9ms (London)
- waw: 34.8ms (Warsaw)
- nue: 34.8ms (Nuremberg)
- mad: 40.7ms (Madrid)
- hel: 46.9ms (Helsinki)
- nyc: 96.9ms (New York City)
- iad: 96.9ms (Ashburn)
- tor: 104.3ms (Toronto)
- dbi: 110.4ms (Dubai)
- ord: 110.4ms (Chicago)
- mia: 119.3ms (Miami)
- den: 128.5ms (Denver)
- dfw: 136.5ms (Dallas)
- sea: 152.9ms (Seattle)
- lax: 152.9ms (Los Angeles)
- sfo: 154.9ms (San Francisco)
- blr: 157ms (Bengaluru)
- sin: 162.9ms (Singapore)
- nai: 177ms (Nairobi)
- hnl: 200.7ms (Honolulu)
- hkg: 205ms (Hong Kong)
- jnb: 209.1ms (Johannesburg)
- tok: 233ms (Tokyo)
- sao: 247.1ms (São Paulo)
- syd: (Sydney)
have fun with it.
Comments
i'm not comforable enough installing tailscale especially on low-ram servers. what i do instead is using ping exporter, open it's port and whitelist the prometheus IP only then i can visualize it somewhere else using grafana. or plug an MCP server to the prometheus (to make daily/weekly/monthly summary using llm agent)
Strong men not monitor anything.
Yeah, yolo system administration.
tailscale takes about 120mb memory