Zabbix is a feature-packed monitoring tool. Like Monit, it can also be configured to automatically respond to problems. Nagios supports monitoring of multiple hosts and can send out alerts via email, pager (if you still use this ancient technology) or SMS/text messaging.
Nagios can be complicated to install and configure, but its wealth of features are unmatched by any tool out in the market and is geared for the experienced IT network administrator. Nagios is “the industry standard in IT infrastructure monitoring,”–well, at least that’s what it says on their website. You can even visually select and zoom into regions on your graphs. Whereas Munin has fixed daily, weekly, monthly and yearly graphs (unless you write a custom extension), Cacti lets you view your data however you want to: last 2 hours, last 4 days, last 6 months, out of the box. What is makes Cacti different though–and where it stands out in relation to Munin–is that it allows you to resize your graphs and view data for an arbitrary range. CactiĬacti is similar to Munin in many ways. Being so easy to extend means that Munin is also a good choice for graphing things unrelated to server performance, such as the number of user signups or website popularity. With just a few lines of code, you can write a plugin to monitor almost anything. One of Munin’s greatest strengths is how simple it is to extend.
It comes with the ability to monitor core system resources, such as memory, disk space, CPU usage, server applications such as MySQL, Apache, and Squid. It can automatically produce daily/weekly/monthly/yearly performance graphs and reports of many important metrics. Munin monitors and graphs system performance metrics. This is a great tool to have set up when you’re working with a server cluster with that said, it may be overkill for single-machine set-ups. Ganglia, instead, presents an overview of the whole cluster. When you have a cluster of machines, it’s difficult to see how the whole cluster is doing all at once. There’s also an iPhone app available for M/Monit to help you conveniently check on your network without lugging around a laptop around. If you have more than one server that you need to monitor, then you can use M/Monit– an extended version of Monit that provides a simple way to monitor multiple machines. For example, if your database server crashes, Monit can automatically restart the service if this is the action that you want to take (hint: it usually is). Monit not only monitors your server, but also attempts to remedy problems by taking predefined actions for certain situations. You will see a variety of server applications here so that you might find the tool (or tools) for your needs. In this article, we review our top 10 server/network monitoring tools.
These tools are meant to aid you in avoiding being taken offline and evaluating if your resource needs has outgrown your infrastructure. There are open source and freeware server/network monitoring tools that will supervise your infrastructure for any issues that may arise. When you have a website or a network, it’s helpful to be aware of any issues as soon as they occur.