First thought is that I wish vdash had a non-interactive mode, just analyzing the logs and spitting out findings. (@happybeing)
Second, I have not been successful accessing the RPC interface from the cli, to query node status directly.
Third, I think that the nodes should probably report node health metrics without necessarily needed another app.
To keep people motivated to run nodes, it needs to be clear if they are even contributing to the network, at least, and longer term, if the node gets rewarded properly for the resources it is taking.
Final point: As soon as someone runs a node on a “spare” resource, it reduces the spare resources left, which certainly is a cost to the owner of those resources. Spare resources have value even if they remain unused. This changes only if a node can get out of the way when the spare resource becomes needed for something else. Currently, that requires constant monitoring, and in the future the node would need to sense that it is causing trouble, which would require sensing disk utilization, CPU utilization, router latency, bandwidth, router CPU, and quickly moderating activity, bandwidth shaping, or just shutting down.