Network Monitoring Tools

[aaltaf]

Hi Guys,

I was just wondering what sort of software tools you use for monitoring your network.

We currently use Spiceworks.

 

I apologise for spelling network incorrectly.

[plexer]

RM Neon looks interesting.

 

Ben

[timtom]

Hmm I'm also interested in this.

 

For a while we've been using SolarWinds NPM for monitoring Switches and Servers. It's good but a bit clunky and prone to error, not to mention a yearly cost.

 

I've been trialing New Relic which is online based and the free model seems quite good. I'm keen on it, especially with being online which means if my entire network goes down (including the monitoring and e-mail servers!) I still get an alert as it goes to my personal E-mail address. Their sales are a bit pushy to get you onto the paid for product which is fair enough.

 

I'm also looking at HP's ProCurve manager for managing the switches. version 3 lets you have 50 licenses free or version 4 gives you 25 free.

 

We use Lansweeper for tracking desktop hardware but I'm considering putting SpiceWorks back on to combine monitoring and hardware info. Unfortunately everytime I try out Spiceworks they never seem to have fixed the inherent slow-ness of the inventory.

 

 

edit: just to add we've also in the past tried Microsoft's SCOM which had some great benefits with the Management packs - so you got application-aware specific for everything Windows and there were custom packs for e.g HP hardware and so on. You get alerts for much more detailed information such as if a disc needs a defrag, if a domain controller has a BPA specific issues and so on. Unfortunately in the end there was simply way too much there, there isn't a good way to view information, creating custom reports require doing the work in back-end SQL reporting tools which is madness when I just wanted a report of top-ten lowest-disc space. I wouldn't really recommend unless you have a full-time person to manage it.

Edited March 3, 2014 by timtom

[seawolf]

I've tested and used quite a lot monitoring tools over the past 6-7 years. Here are my conclusions:

 

1. PRTG - this is a fantastic and relatively low-cost monitor with a lot of flexibility, is easy to setup, and customisable. Our current monitor of choice.

 

2. Splunk - this tool goes way beyond just searching logs now. There are an abundance of apps and configurations that can provide world class security monitoring and threat detection, and provide more insight into your network than you could ever imagine (including your AD infrastructure). Expensive, but the pricing has just (yesterday improved a fair bit). We use Splunk to capture all of the logs from our switches and firewall and will be setting up the AD monitoring soon. Again, expensive, but man is it good.

 

3. Nagios - a very powerful and nearly infinitely extendable monitoring tool, but it takes a lot of effort to get it all setup to provide the information you need, and once it is setup you need someone to maintain it and make changes to it or it will fall into disrepair. If you go this route, I would recommend getting Nagios XI to ease the pain on this front. It's worth the small cost.

 

4. OpManager - a very good if somewhat expensive monitoring tool for larger environments. The vSphere monitoring is exceptional and it is possibly the easiest to setup monitor I have used in regards to effort vs. results. This, and integration with other Manage Engine products are its strong points. It's weaknesses are the limited ability to customise or extend OpManager, and lack of integration with 3rd party tools.

 

5. Op5 - A very nice alternative to Nagios based on the Nagios code base. It used to be fairly expensive, but I think the price has come down. Worth a look.

 

6. UpTime - It's been many years since I've used it, but this tool was better than all of the "enterprise" monitoring tools from the big vendors, and a fraction of the cost. Easy to setup too. Expensive compared to PRTG or Nagios XI, and even OpManager, but wow was it good!

 

7. The Dude - a good, free network monitor.

 

8. Spiceworks - Effective, and if free is a must definitely worth a look. The weaknesses I found were the speed and the fact that it is far more than just a network monitor, and so wasn't as good at the as systems focused on just doing that. We already had a great help desk, and inventory systems so these features were no use to us. The ads also were a downside.

Edited March 3, 2014 by seawolf

[aaltaf]

I have found spiceworks to be great for the helpdesk and the inventory aspect. the adverts dont really bother me as they are always IT related. Our network is small so speed is not really much of an issue.

[JPElectron]

+1 for PRTG, so long as your equipment supports SNMP, or at the least PING, you can monitor it with PRTG.

[mdench]

We have Homepage of Zabbix :: An Enterprise-Class Open Source Distributed Monitoring Solution running here and we use it to monitor all of our switching / core switching, internet, web domains, servers (cpu load, disk space, network interfaces, host info, service / process status), infrastructure (PDU strips, A/C, gen set) and CCTV totals about 200 devices in total.

[Arthur]

Observium is another.

[Jamo]

Surprised noone has mentioned cacti yet. Simple and most importantly fast. I despise some of the other products for just being too 'fancy' giving silly animations or detail on pages which just takes too long to load. I have always liked cacti due to its speed and simplicity

 

Also can now monitor websites (albeit with the mURLin plugin)

 

(Yes a shameless plug! )

[dany2010]

The problem I've found with open source things like Zabbix is they aren't the most easy thing to setup.

 

Where they are made to run on Linux and made to monitor so many thing you seem to have to be a programmer to work out how to tell it to monitor something. I never got my head round the language in the time I had as there doesn't seem to be great documentation anywhere.

 

We use spiceworks mainly, AB tutor for the monitoring, the dude is good for network traffic between servers and basic checks that are built in.

[timtom]

Looking around starting from Observium mentioned by Arthur above Icinga looks good too - anyone used it?

 

Main problem is that most of these are Linux based and I know little except the basics. I'm beginning to think it's time to bite the bullet and go for a Linus monitoring VM (gulp)

Edited March 5, 2014 by timtom
icinga not incigna

[seawolf]

Looking around starting from Observium mentioned by Arthur above Icinga looks good too - anyone used it?

 

Main problem is that most of these are Linux based and I know little except the basics. I'm beginning to think it's time to bite the bullet and go for a Linus monitoring VM (gulp)

 

Try PRTG. It's runs on Windows and there is a free edition to do a test with a few devices. It's also very good and inexpensive as commercially supported network monitoring systems go.

[pete]

We use Observium for trending, fancy graphs, host discovery and automagic network maps via CDP and LLDP. It's really simple to setup, the only downside is hosts have to exist in DNS (either in a hosts file or on the DNS server). Creating a net.internal.FQDN namespace to hold infrastructure devices is pretty trivial though.

 

and I've just about finished migrating our Nagios install to Icinga for reasons of "the Web UI isn't manky". Observium can do a lot of what Icinga does, but the device support isn't as complete.

[timtom]

Try PRTG. It's runs on Windows and there is a free edition to do a test with a few devices. It's also very good and inexpensive as commercially supported network monitoring systems go.

 

Thanks, how many sensors do you have? With about 40 servers and 40 switches I can easily see hitting the 500 sensors if not more in which case it's a big investment for us!

 

Tom

[mpp87]

Thanks, how many sensors do you have? With about 40 servers and 40 switches I can easily see hitting the 500 sensors if not more in which case it's a big investment for us!

 

Tom

 

Hi

 

I'm using Pandora FMS and has no limitation, when adding servers or sensors in Free Version. Moreover, apart from network monitoring you can use local monitoring through its software agents. Test it!

[burgemaster]

There are lots of mentions of "network monitoring" , but I'm looking also for network "traffic monitoring" showing which switch or even which ports are the busiest or our potential bottleneck. Procurve manager showed this but too expensive. Do any of the above tick my boxes?

[seawolf]

Thanks, how many sensors do you have? With about 40 servers and 40 switches I can easily see hitting the 500 sensors if not more in which case it's a big investment for us!

 

Tom

 

You can estimate the number or sensors you'll need by calculating the number of switch ports need to be monitored, then adding three sensors for each switch for ping, CPU, and memory usage. Servers usually consume no more than 5-6, but could use up to 15 or so depending on how much you want to monitor.

 

We have a license for 2,500. Regarding the prices, the license is perpetual so it's a one time outlay, if you want to maintain ongoing support the cost is about 30% of the initial license cost. But, maintenance isn't necessary and you can catch it up in subsequent years if you wanted.

[seawolf]

There are lots of mentions of "network monitoring" , but I'm looking also for network "traffic monitoring" showing which switch or even which ports are the busiest or our potential bottleneck. Procurve manager showed this but too expensive. Do any of the above tick my boxes?

 

PRTG does that - http://www.paessler.com/prtg/screenshots

 

There is a Top 10 view that shows the top tens for things like uptime, CPU, bandwidth usage, src. That allows you to quickly spot bottlenecks and problems.

[burgemaster]

Thanks.

That looks perfect. But it looks like we would need unlimited sensors at price of 13.5k !!!

 

Looking for a freebie if possible

[seawolf]

Thanks.

That looks perfect. But it looks like we would need unlimited sensors at price of 13.5k !!!

 

Looking for a freebie if possible

 

Really, how many devices do you need to monitor? You aren't planning to monitor clients as well are you? As far as freebies go, you'd probably be limited to either Spiceworks or Nagios/Cacti. Spiceworks is easy, but slow and limited. Nagios/Cacti are powerful, but will take a lot of work to setup. Another option is Nagios XI, but it's not free.

 

The PRTG license is perpetual so unless you have a lot more time than money 13.5k might still work out to be a good investment (Labour vs. Capital)

[timtom]

The PRTG license is perpetual so unless you have a lot more time than money 13.5k might still work out to be a good investment (Labour vs. Capital)

 

Thanks Wolf, running the 30 day demo now and it certainly is perfect. I didn't realise it was perpetual licensing so that's a big plus. We should be able to get away with 1000 licenses. Do you know what the price difference is when upgrading e.g is it just the different or do they stick an extra charge on it?

 

I might fire up the evaluation VM they push out of icigna as well for a look but it's all very well spending 2 days getting it running it's teaching everyone else how to use it!

 

 

edit: nevermind answered my own question from their FAQ:

"If you need more sensors, you can upgrade to a license with more sensors by paying the list price difference."

Edited March 6, 2014 by timtom

[Dos_Box]

It may be time to draw the OP's attention to this: EduGeek.net - An EduGeek Roundup of Free Network Monitoring Tools

Please bear in mind it's getting on a bit now and all of the systems covered have had major updates since.

[mpp87]

As I recommended in last post, if you have problems limitation of sensors, the best free option for me is Pandora FMS.

Perhaps don't know it, because it is a Spanish software, but its free version works better than other paid versions. A part if you need any of its Enterprise features are really good prices. Today there is a free workshop explaining all of their features, and each week, make a thematic workshop to explain each of their functions.

If you visit their website you can see all this information. It was very useful to learn to use the tool

 

Greetings to all

[timtom]

As I recommended in last post, if you have problems limitation of sensors, the best free option for me is Pandora FMS.

Perhaps don't know it, because it is a Spanish software, but its free version works better than other paid versions. A part if you need any of its Enterprise features are really good prices. Today there is a free workshop explaining all of their features, and each week, make a thematic workshop to explain each of their functions.

If you visit their website you can see all this information. It was very useful to learn to use the tool

 

Greetings to all

 

Limited to 5 SNMP traps, no Hyper-V support, online demo doesn't work, their employee's shamelessly self-promote under throw-away forum accounts - no thanks!

[seawolf]

Thanks Wolf, running the 30 day demo now and it certainly is perfect. I didn't realise it was perpetual licensing so that's a big plus. We should be able to get away with 1000 licenses. Do you know what the price difference is when upgrading e.g is it just the different or do they stick an extra charge on it?

 

I might fire up the evaluation VM they push out of icigna as well for a look but it's all very well spending 2 days getting it running it's teaching everyone else how to use it!

 

 

edit: nevermind answered my own question from their FAQ:

"If you need more sensors, you can upgrade to a license with more sensors by paying the list price difference."

 

Yep, it's pretty close to perfect for us too. And yes, you only pay the difference. We upgraded from 1,000 sensors to 2,500 a couple of years ago. The annual support for 2,500 sensors is around $700 I think. Not bad at all.