Suggestions for software to monitor computers & net devs

A sales person stopped by this morning to try to sell a service that monitors all the workstations, servers, and network devices on the network. This was done via WMI and SNMP.

The sales rep either didn't know or didn't want to tell me what the software they used was.

I was just curious if any of you have any recommendations for software that has similar functionality.

TIA.

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Comments

astorrs

First question, what's your budget and for how many devices?

Ahriakin

The 2 I've used:

Nagios (OSSIM has it built in, just mentioning it since you said you had a look before).
- Steeper learning curve, Linux based, more versatile, easy to customize for multiple devices, WMI support may be coming to the NSClient++ client (Windows agent) but it already has the usual CPU/Mem/HDD monitors and the ability to report on Windows Perfmon counters which means pretty much anything you want.

Hyperic
- Easier to setup, gives decent metrics out of the box, free version requires a great deal of work to customize details/alerts on multiple devices. Linux or Windows server components. No WMI.

For a small office I'd probably use Hyperic if I needed something up and running reasonably quickly and it will probably do everything you need. But if it's a longer term project where you may want to define multiple monitors/alerts on many devices then try Nagios.

hypnotoad

Ones I've tried and recommend:

Cacti -- Free, has VM Appliances available and ISOs does SNMP (not sure about WMI, but doubt it).
GFI Network Monitor -- does ping checks, runs WMI scripts, checks disk space, etc. Not free.
Paessler Router Traffic Grapher -- my favorite. runs on windows. easy to use. graphs SNMP values. affordable.

dynamik

Network devices: twenty desktops, four services, two switches, a router/firewall, and a partridge in a pear tree

Not sure on the budget. I could probably get a few grand if I could justify it.

Thanks for the responses everyone.

astorrs

Okay then I would go with Ahriakin's suggestion of Hyperic and see if it meets your need.

RTmarc

What are you monitoring for? Health or connectivity?

SolarWinds can monitor anything on the network that will communicate via SNMP but it won't give you much specifics in relation to the health of servers or workstations.

We use a combination of SolarWinds and MOM 2005. SolarWinds watches our firewalls, routers, and switches whilst MOM looks after the servers (and workstations if needed).

astorrs

You could also look at System Center Essentials 2007, although it would run you between $2000 and $3000 depending on if you have an existing SQL server you can reuse. This might be an easier sale to management as it would include software deployment, etc.

You can download an evaluation VHD image from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=27342759-e9d6-4073-918c-e9dff77d0206&displaylang=en

TechStriker

My personal recomendation is Zenoss, you get a single product to monitor your entire IT infrastructure, It is free open source software, you can download it as VM and test it, you can monitor:

* Networks - Routers, Switches, Firewalls, Access Points
* Servers - Microsoft Windows, Linux, Unix, HP, NetApp, Dell
* Virtualization - VMware, Xen
* Applications - Processes, Ports, Web Apps, Web Services, Databases, Middleware, Commercial Apps

Zenoss Core & Enterprise

Core is free Enterprise is not, it is Linux based very potent, we use the core to monitor over 10 Server Linux and Windows and over 80 Cisco swithces. It took me half a day to configure it and it is up and running and working like charm.

shednik

nl wrote:

Ones I've tried and recommend:

Cacti -- Free, has VM Appliances available and ISOs does SNMP (not sure about WMI, but doubt it).
GFI Network Monitor -- does ping checks, runs WMI scripts, checks disk space, etc. Not free.
Paessler Router Traffic Grapher -- my favorite. runs on windows. easy to use. graphs SNMP values. affordable.

royal

RTmarc wrote:

What are you monitoring for? Health or connectivity?

SolarWinds can monitor anything on the network that will communicate via SNMP but it won't give you much specifics in relation to the health of servers or workstations.

We use a combination of SolarWinds and MOM 2005. SolarWinds watches our firewalls, routers, and switches whilst MOM looks after the servers (and workstations if needed).

Was going to post exactly this. So... +1.

dynamik

Thanks again everyone. It looks like I have a few things to play around with

marco71

MRTG/RRDtool/Cacti, Nagios, Big Brother/Big Sister (no joke!), N-View, net-snmp, ...

Kasor

Nobody use HP Openview NNM or Cisocwork?