Server Monitoring Tools

wagnerbm

Hey all--

Does anyone have any suggestions on a great server monitoring tool? Something that will monitor, memory, processor, apps, services? Besides Task Manager.

I have tried solarwinds app monitor and liked it but wondered if there was anything better? :P

Technowiz

For how many servers?

wagnerbm

Less than 40. Could just need it for 6.

BeaverC32

Do you need real-time only or do you require trend analysis/the ability to view stats from the past?

What operating systems do you need to monitor?

wagnerbm

Windows 2003, and yes we want realtime and to have the ability to look back at the old statistics

BeaverC32

For Windows machines we use NetIQ Analysis Center. The way we have it configured now has about a 4-hour delay, so it is used primarily for post-incident analysis and capacity planning. We also set monitors so that if certain thresholds are exceeded alerts are generated at which point we generally use perfmon to see what is occurring real time.

Technowiz

I like and use Nagios. It is versatile and free but you would need a linux box to run it on.

http://www.nagios.org

BeaverC32

Technowiz wrote:

I like and use Nagios. It is versatile and free but you would need a linux box to run it on.

http://www.nagios.org

I'm assuming the agents only run on linux/Unix as well??

Technowiz

BeaverC32 wrote:

Technowiz wrote:

I like and use Nagios. It is versatile and free but you would need a linux box to run it on.

http://www.nagios.org

I'm assuming the agents only run on linux/Unix as well??

Nope. You can monitor just about anything with Nagios. It is more of a monitoring framework than a monitoring application for specific devices or services. I use a client for my windows boxes called NSClient++. Very lightweight and pretty easy to set up. Allows me to monitor cpu, memory, drive space, uptime, etc... If a server pegs out beyond a certain threshold that I have set for the amount of time I set it will email me an alert. The documentation is very good and you can have it set up and monitoring in about half an hour using the quickstart guide for a simple monitoring set up. Or you can buy a book on Nagios and build a very complex monitoring system with escalation levels, scripts that run on certain alerts, SMS alerting, etc.

I also like the metrics it has built in. I can go to a particular server and see if and when it went down in the past month, 6 months, year or whatever as well as when it came back up and what the uptime percentage is. Same thing with alerts. After implementing this I found a problem where a WAN link was dropping for just a couple minutes every hour. The users on the other end had reported problems but we were never able to find anything because it was so intermittent. This monitoring tool helped me see what was happening.

bertieb

Nagios is cool, we've got it monitoring everything from Linux, Windows, Network devices etc and have even got HP SIM polling into it to flag hardware events. Lovely.

I've also spent the past week playing with graphing statistics using Cacti on a few VM's and thats very good too, even manged to have it being able to pull information from any Windows Perfmon counter available.

There really are some great (and free) tools out there.

tiersten

Nagios is very nice but be prepared to spend a long time just getting the initial configuration in. Once you've got it monitoring the basics then you can start adding in extra things.

bjaxx

tiersten wrote:

Nagios is very nice but be prepared to spend a long time just getting the initial configuration in. Once you've got it monitoring the basics then you can start adding in extra things.

spotlight from quest does some nice things.


http://www.quest.com/spotlight-on-windows/

arwes

If you want an easy to set up Nagios, look at Opsview.

http://www.opsview.org/

I'm running it on an old Optiplex that we replaced. Works great!

sexion8

wagnerbm wrote:

Hey all--

Does anyone have any suggestions on a great server monitoring tool? Something that will monitor, memory, processor, apps, services? Besides Task Manager.

I have tried solarwinds app monitor and liked it but wondered if there was anything better? :P

These are my two choices, am currently use them to monitor in excess of 150 devices ranging from routers to servers to switches to PBX's.

Zenoss and Raritan Command Center NoC. ZenOSS is open source and Raritan will allow you to use a free version for up to 25 devices. Both are well suited to monitor your infrastructure no matter what operating system you're running. ZenOSS can do it via WMI or SNMP. Raritan, the same. For the most part Raritan would be the way to go provided you want to get the most for your monitoring. Its capable of applying updates, monitoring services, doing minor security assessments.

http://www.zenoss.com/
http://www.commandcenter-noc.com/

I've used both extensively after dealing with Big Brother and Nagios for so long and have never looked back. Nagios is great, but it a standalone monitoring system and can do solely a fraction of what ZenOSS or CC-Noc. You're best bet is to look at the opinions provided here and try them out. I know factually ZenOSS is being used at some heavy duty places and their support is pretty sharp both on the Enterprise (pay for play) level as well as the forums. Their pricing scheme per machine is a no brainer and extremely cost effective should you need to justify this with senior management if you wanted the enterprise version. Personally, I've saved enough hours throughout the time I've used both to justify purchasing both of them.

marco71

forum search does not hurt :P

paintb4707

I'm currently using the free version of PRTG

http://www.paessler.com/prtg7

Unfortunately the free version only allows 10 sensors, so you would have to purchase the full version.

RTmarc

Microsoft SCOM

solvedata

wagnerbm wrote: »

Hey all--

Does anyone have any suggestions on a great server monitoring tool? Something that will monitor, memory, processor, apps, services? Besides Task Manager.

I have tried solarwinds app monitor and liked it but wondered if there was anything better? :P

eG Enterprise does a great job for us - servers, networks, applications and virtualization -
End To End Monitoring | Enterprise Network Monitoring | Enterprise Server Monitoring