Article: An EduGeek Roundup of Free Network Monitoring Tools

[Dos_Box]

You can view the page at http://www.edugeek.net/content.php?r=332-An-EduGeek-Roundup-of-Free-Network-Monitoring-Tools

[pete]

....at the risk of the comments thread turning into a "Oi, what about......?"

 

You missed out OSSIM: (Snort, Ntop, OpenVAS, P0f, Pads, Arpwatch, OSSEC, Osiris, Nagios and OCS rolled into one).

 

OSSIM, the Open Source SIEM

OSSIM, the Open Source SIEM

 

Which, if you're thinking of an all-in-one setup, is pretty handy because it handles intrusion detection and auditing too.

Edited October 11, 2012 by pete

[mattx]

Spooky........ I was just re-configuring The Dude on an old laptop.....

[Dos_Box]

....at the risk of the comments thread turning into a "Oi, what about......?"

 

You missed out OSSIM: (Snort, Ntop, OpenVAS, P0f, Pads, Arpwatch, OSSEC, Osiris, Nagios and OCS rolled into one).

 

OSSIM, the Open Source SIEM

OSSIM, the Open Source SIEM

 

Which, if you're thinking of an all-in-one setup, is pretty handy because it handles intrusion detection and auditing too.

 

I'm sure you will be the first of many to suggest tools I have missed out, but OSSIM is promoted primarily as a security tool rather than a monitoring tool. I shall keep it in mind though as a network security tools article could be interesting.

[glennda]

For Free tools Zabbix is brilliant. For paid software's I have used GFI Max and more recently N-Able's NCentral but this is more geared towards MSP's market.

[pete]

I'm sure you will be the first of many to suggest tools I have missed out, but OSSIM is promoted primarily as a security tool rather than a monitoring tool. I shall keep it in mind though as a network security tools article could be interesting.

 

If you want a review of Ossec, we've been using it for a few years now.

[DMcCoy]

Bonus points for any that can report status back to a server via http proxy....

[glennda]

Bonus points for any that can report status back to a server via http proxy....

 

N-central can I presume Zabbix can as I believe it uses the linux system proxy but don't use it anymore.

 

EDIT: N-Central isnt free

[Jamo]

For completeness have you had a look at cacti?

 

For long term network monitoring and base-lining I don't think it can be beat! Its also much kinder on resources than the larger solutions like spiceworks which really hammer the server its running on!

[matt40k]

Do not run the monitor solution on your virtual platform. How will it be able to alert you to a problem with the virtual infrastructure if it's running on it!

[localzuk]

One thing I'd say - if you want to use Nagios, take a look at NConf. Web based setup for it, makes life very easy!

[browolf]

....at the risk of the comments thread turning into a "Oi, what about......?"

 

You missed out

 

I also vote

Cacti - Cacti® - The Complete RRDTool-based Graphing Solution

kind of like nagios but a 1000 times easier.

[soapyfish]

I am torn between MRTG and Cacti for monitoring network traffic per port on my switches. I prefer to use Nagios3 for everything else, when combined with NRPE. so I can monitor internal systems processes on windows servers as well as external services. I get alerts when things are down and warnings in advance of failure for most things. I am also able to monitor printers and get advance warnings of low toner and drum problems so I can ensure that I have parts in stock. Nagios is abit tricky to configure but its easily worth it. I have used the historical record it provides to illustrate to SLT that there is a need to replace hardware. There is also alot of free plugins for nagios. I especially like the "Check_Procurve_loop" plugin so that I can quickly and easily locate network loops when the students decide to swap network cables around... The other bit of software not mentioned so far is "Smokeping" which gives really nice latency graphs between the server and any other device. I use this to monitor the quality of the schools internet connection as well as the performance of the internal LAN.

[oalcock]

I apologise in advance if this is very thick of me, but I am struggling to find the download link??? Can anybody assist? Thanks.

[oalcock]

I apologise in advance if this is very thick of me, but I am struggling to find the download link??? Can anybody assist? Thanks.

This was very thick of me, just read the title of this feed again and realised this isn't anything specific, I can see download links in other fellow edugeeker's comments.

[Steve21]

I apologise in advance if this is very thick of me, but I am struggling to find the download link??? Can anybody assist? Thanks.

 

For which one?

 

Steve

[Fazza]

I just installed The Dude the other day on what is now our System Monitoring PC and within a few minutes I was monitoring our 50+ servers! Very quick and easy to install and setup with no messing about.

[junaid]

Unauthorised advertising. Edited January 15, 2013 by Dos_Box

[DanJackson]

THE DUDE! All the way for me.

[LytchettNM]

The DUDE is awesome for free, Very configurable with a little time to work out how, 10 out of 10.