Custom monitoring of linux server from GTM

1: The GTM is a bigip and runs on a *nix based OS. SSH is included. Some more information might help in determining the rest of the answers. Do you have LTMs in the environment? Ideally the LTMs would monitor the server ( or even run customer monitors ) and report the status upstream to the GTM(s). An external monitor in bigip is typically a created script run from the *nix side of the OS. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding. This can be a shell script, perl, compiled binary that works on the bigip operating system, etc... The process you want to check for, is it a web service or anything that has a port that can be queried by some means to gain an answer? If so, I'd highly recommend using that type of monitor versus logging into the system using ssh and checking for a process. Example: Instead of ssh'ing and checking for an ldap process on a server, use a built-in ldap query monitor from an LTM/GTM or use an LDAP query external monitor script that performs an ldap query to the server.