Sample Code For Remote Process/Application Monitoring?

I am looking for a bit of inspiration here, a client has requested me to build a simple remote process monitoring application with capability for smtp notification, when monitored processes go down or come back on-line. Can anyone point me in the direction of some sample code to get me started. I have briefly looked at .net remoting as a potential development path, from my understanding of how this works, the remoting architecture would require both a client and remote server component, (though I am not a 100% sure on this one), however if this is the case, then it will not fit the bill, as one of the fundamental requirements is that no additional software can be deployed on the servers which are to be monitored