Welcome to the System Status Dashboard (SSD)!

SSD is a status dashboard designed to provide an easy to understand view into an organization's infrastructure health status.  SSD is modeled after status dashboard services like Google's App Status and Amazon's Service Health Dashboard and displays a matrix of services, dates and their corresponding status in an easy to read calendar view.  Services can be web sites, APIs, internal IT systems, or anything else about which your users or customers require timely status information.  SSD allows system administrators to easily create and track incidents or schedule system maintenance and provides an excellent historical reference for SLA performance calculations.  SSD is an open source project that has been released under the Apache software foundation license and you are free to download, use  and customize it.

Don't have time to setup your own instance of StatusDashboard?  Head over to www.statusdashboard.com to check out their SaaS solution based on the System Status Dashboard project.  You can setup a free hosted dashboard in minutes.





Frequently Asked Questions about SSD:

  • What does SSD look like?
    • The screenshot above is the SSD homepage and provides the main view that your users or customers will use to determine global system status.

  • Who created SSD and why?
    • SSD was originally developed by Tom Alessi while working at BabyCenter, one of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies.  
    • BabyCenter is one of the largest parenting destinations on the Internet, with numerous websites in markets around the globe and serving almost one billion page views per month.
    • BabyCenter needed a common and easy to access location for its global workforce to go to receive status information on its sites and services. 
    • Additionally, a system was required that would provide a unified way for employees to report potential issues to the 24x7 operations staff (and also save a history of those reports).  
    • SSD was the solution.
  • What can SSD do?
    • Provide users with an easy to understand dashboard detailing the status of all mission critical systems and services.
    • Allow users to report potential issues in a standard fashion.
    • Maintain a historical record of incidents and resolutions.
    • Display a prominent global system alert to users.
    • Provide an escalation path for users to follow when issues are encountered with services.
    • Send automated emails to users with status updates on incidents and scheduled maintenances.

  • How can SSD be customized?
    • Display your organization's logo on every SSD page.
    • Hide or show the SSD navigation bar.
    • Turn on/off the ability of users to report incidents as well as their ability to upload screenshots of incidents.
    • Turn on/off SSD's ability to send email notifications.
    • Turn on/off the display of an escalation path.

  • Does SSD work on all browsers and platforms?
    • SSD was built using the Foundation responsive framework and renders well on mobile, tablet and desktop browsers.  
    • SSD has been tested with all modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari) on Windows, Macintosh, Android and IOS devices.
  
  • What technology is SSD built on?
    • SSD is written in Python utilizing the Django web framework.
    • Apache and MySQL provide the web and database services.
    • Other supporting software packages are listed in the prerequisites section of this site. 
    • Don't worry, there are VERY FEW requirements to get SSD up and running and everything is free.

  • What is the easiest way to get started with SSD?
    • If you are interested and want to jump right into installing your own instance of SSD to see if it works for you, check out the installation and customization guides. 
    • Using these guides, it should take no longer than 15-20 minutes to get SSD up and running.