I am wanting to find the BEST (relative) tools to accomplish a multitude of monitoring. I would prefer as few tools as possible. I want to keep expenses down to below a few grand. I need to monitor multiple different things.


Environment: High production with 24/7 uptime required.

Windows servers (mostly windows 2k3, 1/3 windows 2k)
i5 OS
Unix

Type of servers:
Compaq/HP Proliant servers (from older dl360's 5000's to month old HP's)
HP-UX
AS/400

What needs monitored: Almost everything and if possible metrics provided with it

Monitor uptime
Monitor downtime
Monitor Usage
Monitor event logs(I dont want to go through 30 servers worth of logs either I would prefer a tool that will auto check for specific things and then email me)
Montior Hardware (hard drive, power supply etc fails)
Monitor if a web page goes down
Monitor any services uptime/downtime
Monitor local applications/batch files
Monitor SQL server
Monitor if certain files are changed

Anything another server admin might find important to them


How to contact: Via email to my cell phone/pager/blackberry

Currently we have and own What's up Gold and some other apps but they don't allow for specific services or homemade services or a lot of the other things I want to get updates on.

I am looking for the expertise of others and hopefully this will turn into a growing thread to help anyone that gets into this field as well.

Thanks in advance