Best Tools and Software for Server Monitoring in 2022
The use of cloud technology has made it much easier to set up and manage numerous servers for business and application needs. When it comes to load balancing and disaster recovery, businesses like to have a large number of servers. Tools for server monitoring have grown to be quite crucial in light of these changes. Although there are many various kinds of server management tools, each one addresses a certain area of server monitoring.
This article explores various tools and software available for server monitoring, including Nagios, Zabbix, SolarWinds, PRTG Network Monitor, Prometheus, and Datadog. Learn how these tools can provide real-time monitoring of server health and performance, and help administrators take proactive measures to ensure smooth server operation and minimize downtime.
Best Monitoring Tools
Sematext
Sematext is a cloud-based monitoring and log management platform that provides real-time insight into the health and performance of IT infrastructure and applications. It offers a suite of integrated tools and services, including monitoring, logging, tracing, and alerting, that help organizations optimize their operations and improve their customer experience. With Sematext, users can track key metrics, detect anomalies, troubleshoot issues, and optimize system performance, all from a single, user-friendly dashboard. Additionally, Sematext supports a range of popular technologies and frameworks, such as Kubernetes, Docker, Elasticsearch, and Kafka, making it a flexible and scalable solution for modern IT environments.
Using completely customized monitoring and alarms, Sematext enables users to pinpoint the source of infrastructure problems, troubleshoot and debug more quickly, and guarantee top performance throughout the entire stack.
The lightweight agent, who can be installed on bare metal, VMs, and Docker, allows users to map and monitor their whole infrastructure in real-time. This enables you to fully utilize the dozens of cloud-ready connectors that give you a clear picture of what’s going on behind the scenes. Although Sematext does not come for free, the cost is fairly fair. We advise examining the 14-day free trial (no credit card required).
Nagios XI
Nagios XI is a commercial monitoring software that provides comprehensive monitoring of IT infrastructure, networks, and applications. It offers a user-friendly interface that allows administrators to monitor the health and performance of servers, switches, routers, and other devices in real-time. Nagios XI supports a wide range of monitoring options, such as CPU usage, memory usage, disk usage, and network traffic, and provides advanced reporting and alerting features. Additionally, Nagios XI supports integration with other systems and tools, such as AWS, Docker, and VMware, making it a flexible and scalable solution for modern IT environments. With Nagios XI, users can optimize their operations, reduce downtime, and improve their overall IT performance.
The key advantage of Nagios is getting a centralized view of your server and network operations. Free monitoring software is offered by Nagios Core. Because of its sophisticated monitoring, reporting, and setup possibilities, Nagios XI is advised.
WhatsUp Gold
A trusted Windows server monitoring tool is WhatsUp Gold. WhatsUp Gold can provide comprehensive interactive maps of the whole networked infrastructure because of its powerful layer 2/3 discovery capabilities. In Windows, Java, and LAMP settings, it can monitor web servers, applications, virtual machines, and traffic flow.
In addition to the monitoring and administration features provided in the integrated mobile application, it offers real-time alerts via email and SMS. The integrated REST API’s advantages include the ability to automate several operations and combine monitoring data with other apps.
Particular monitoring options are offered by WhatsUp Gold for AWS, Azure, and SQL Server installations. These interact with native interfaces and gather information on availability, price, and many other parameters particular to the context.
Zabbix
A Linux server monitoring tool called Zabbix is open-source and free. It is a monitoring tool for businesses that makes it easy to keep an eye on servers, networks, cloud services, apps, and services. Its ability to be configured immediately from the web interface, as opposed to other systems like Nagios, which require managing text files, is one of its biggest features.
In its network management software, Zabbix offers a wide range of metrics, including CPU use, free disc space, CPU temperature, fan condition, and network status. Additionally, it offers pre-built templates for well-known servers like HP, IBM, Lenovo, and Dell as well as famous operating systems including Linux, Ubuntu, and Solaris. The ability to create intricate triggers and dependencies for data collecting and alerting further improves Zabbix’s monitoring capabilities.
Datadog
A centralized platform for monitoring your servers, applications, and stacks is called Datadog. Datadog, which Forrester Wave named a leader in intelligent application and server monitoring in 2019, boasts of a consolidated dashboard that combines numerous metrics.
The server-related monitoring services offered by Datadog also extend into the fields of source control and bug tracking. Numerous metrics are also made possible by it, including traffic by source and containers in cloud-native settings. Email, Slack, and a variety of other channels are available for notifications. Datadog users have been able to develop a thorough grasp of how applications and data flow operate across big environments by mapping dependencies and application architecture across teams.
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor
Your server infrastructure, applications, databases, and security are all monitored by SolarWinds. With the help of its systems management software, servers, virtualization, disc space, server configurations, and backups can all be monitored.
The key benefit is that SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor has more than 1,200 pre-defined templates for various server and cloud service types, making it possible to get started quickly. These templates are easily editable to fit practically any setup.
To avoid VM Sprawl and having between move to separate solutions, SolarWinds application monitoring boasts a comprehensive system for virtual servers across on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments. There are tools for data analysis including alerts and dashboards, capacity planning, and event monitoring.
Paessler PRTG
A server management program called Paessler Router Traffic Grapher makes use of SNMP, packet sniffing and Netflow. Both Linux and Windows server environments are supported by PRTG. For services, networks, clouds, databases, and applications, a variety of server monitoring software programs are accessible.
Web servers, database servers, mail servers, and virtual servers are all served by the PTRG server monitoring system. The strength of PTRG is cloud monitoring, which offers a centralized monitoring system for all IAAS, SAAS, and PAAS solutions like Amazon, Docker, and Azure.
To ensure inbound and outgoing traffic, PTRG keeps an eye on firewalls and IP addresses. Through the integrated online and mobile applications, it will provide regular updates on the state of the firewall and send out automatic notifications while continuously keeping an eye on the security of your network.
OpenNMS
Fully open-source OpenNMS is a server monitoring program released under the AGPLv3 license. It can monitor millions of devices from a single instance because it is scalable. Its architecture is adaptable and extendable, supporting the expansion of frameworks for service polling and performance data collection. The OpenNMS group supports OpenNMS both commercially and through a sizable community.
By standardizing certain messages and making them available via a potent REST API, OpenNMS unifies the monitoring of various server and environment types. Email, Slack, Jabber, Tweets, and the Java native notification strategy API are all ways to receive notifications. Additionally, OpenNMS offers ticketing connectors for RT, JIRA, OTRS, and numerous other systems.
Retrace
Retrace is extremely scalable and has extensive monitoring capabilities. Since it offers intelligent defaults based on your surroundings, it is advised for new teams with little expertise. With the help of this program, you may start monitoring servers and apps right away.
It keeps track of application metrics, error monitoring, log management, and performance. Based on various monitoring criteria and notification groups, Retrace sends relevant individuals SMS, email, and Slack alerts.
Retrace is able to deliver both comprehensive and detailed information on server health through custom dashboards. These dashboard widgets gather information on CPU, disc, network, and uptime usage. Both Windows and Linux servers are supported by Retrace.
Spiceworks Network Monitor
For server and network monitoring, Spiceworks is a free, streamlined server monitoring program. After configuring the application URL, the connectivity dashboard may be quickly set up on any server and monitoring can start right away.
Both on-premises and in the cloud, you will be able to get real-time data about sluggish network connections and overcrowded applications. You’ll be able to address problems before they become serious ones. The absence of a proper alerting system is one drawback. This will soon be resolved, according to Spiceworks, with the help of email alerts for server and application events. The monitoring program offers free phone and online chat support in addition to being completely integrated with the Spiceworks IT management cloud toolkit.
vRealize Hyperic
VMware’s vRealize Hyperic is an open-source server and network monitoring utility that offers monitoring solutions for a variety of operating systems, both in physical and virtual environments, middleware and apps.
Users can comprehend availability, usage, events, and modifications across every layer of your virtualized stack, from the vSphere hypervisor to guest OSs, with the aid of infrastructure and OS application monitoring solutions.
Thousands of indicators that are useful for tracking the performance of applications are collected by middleware monitors. Infrastructure, middleware, and applications are all monitored centrally by the vRealize Operations Manager program.
Icinga
Icinga has a straightforward set of objectives: to monitor availability, give users access to pertinent data, and issue alarms to keep users updated as soon as possible. Large settings, including data centers, can be monitored using the integrated monitoring engine.
You have access to all necessary data thanks to the quick online interface. By collecting and filtering different elements and merging them in unique dashboards, users will be able to create personalized views. This configuration enables you to respond quickly to any problems it identifies.
Email, SMS, and incorporated online and mobile applications are the main methods of notification. Icinga collects information about hosts, virtual servers, databases, and many other parameters and displays it on a clear dashboard. It is fully integrated with VMware environments.
Instrumental
Your server and applications are monitored by Instrumental, a simple and clear program. It offers monitoring functionality for numerous platforms, including AWS and Docker, numerous database types, and application stacks like Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails.
Instrumental interacts with numerous additional platforms, including Statiste, telegraf, and StatsD, in addition to the native methods for data collection that are accessible. You may manipulate, aggregate, and time-shift data using the built-in query language to create any type of visualization you need.
An interface for a dashboard that was specifically created allows you to look at overall data as well as go deeply into each server and application. Based on changes to measurements, Instrumental offers programmable notifications through email, SMS, and HTTP notification.
Tornimo
Tornimo offers limitless growth and real-time monitoring. It is a platform for monitoring applications that is compatible with Graphite and has a front end built using Grafana dashboards. Additionally, it offers support for quickly transitioning from numerous other suitable SaaS platforms or a customized Graphite deployment.
As your environment expands, Tornimo can handle up to a million metrics thanks to a proprietary database system. Regardless of the volume of data that needs to be monitored, clients rely on Tornimo because it consistently delivers a response. The fact that Tornimo does not average older data to reduce storage requirements gives it a substantial edge over many other monitoring solutions. It enables users to easily spot anomalies by leveraging earlier data.
ManageEngine OpManager
OpManager from ManageEngine is a reputable server monitoring program with powerful monitoring features for all varieties of network nodes, including servers, virtual machines (VMs), routers, and switches.
OpManager’s monitoring tools for servers have over 2,000 built-in server performance monitoring tools, and they support both physical and virtual servers with multi-level thresholds and immediate warnings. It offers scalable dashboards to quickly monitor your network.
OpManager enables system health monitoring and process monitoring through SNMP and WMI for various platforms, including VMware, Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer, as a server monitoring solution for Windows, Linux, Solaris and Unix.
Sciencelogic SL1
With the help of Sciencelogic’s server management tools, you can keep an eye on all of your network and server resources, including their configurations, performance, capacity, and utilization across a wide range of server manufacturers and technologies.
Cloud services like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and OpenStack are among the platforms that are supported. Additionally, Sciencelogic supports containers like Docker as well as hypervisors like VMware, Hyper-V, Xen, and KVM. It works with the Linux, Unix, and Windows operating systems.
The customized dashboards offered by Sciencelogic enable monitoring using pre-made or unique monitoring policies, including health checks and ticket queues linked to pre-defined events. It integrates with cloud services via cutting-edge API connectivity and offers precise data for monitoring.
Panopta
Server and network monitoring for on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid servers is made easier by Panopta. Through server agents and native cloud platform connectors, Panopta offers a uniform view across all of your server environments.
Setting up Panopta is simple and convenient because to its extensive library of pre-built metrics. For a clear, comprehensive perspective, you can configure these using reporting capabilities and dashboards that you can customize. By weeding out correct and useful information, it prevents alert fatigue and false positives.
Panopta provides CounterMeasures, a tool that allows users to set up pre-defined corrective actions to address reoccurring problems as they arise. The SaaS-delivered monitoring platform from Panopta enables businesses to monitor their entire infrastructure from a single location without the need for additional hardware or concern over the OS they use or licenses they have.
Monitis
Monitis is a streamlined monitoring tool for servers, applications, and more that requires no software installation and has an easy sign-up process. Data on uptime and response times, server health, and many other custom metrics are provided by a unified dashboard.
When any of the pre-defined triggers is engaged, instant alerts by email, SMS, Twitter, and phone are supported. Alerts are supported by Monitis even if your network is unavailable. Additionally, it offers an API for customers to import metrics and data into external programs for extra monitoring requirements. Monitis offers reporting that users can share along with monitoring capabilities. Both the integrated mobile applications and the online interface are available to users as ways to access these services.
