Decent monitoring software

Hi all,

We currently monitor over 100 customer servers on a weekly basis and send a report to them at the end of the week. The basics of what we check;

- Backups successful
- RAID arrays status (No failed hard drives etc)
- Storage capacity
- Event Viewer
- UPS Status / Battery Health
- Windows Updates
- CPU / Memory usage

This is something we do manually and log onto each server and as we are monitoring more and more servers its getting a little too much. We have been looking round for a good monitoring software we can install that will report back to us as many of these things as possible but coming up short unless cost is extortionate.

Can anyone recommend a solution?

Cheers

Nagios should be able to do most if not all of this, it can be a bit of a beast to set up though.

You could also look into PRTG but that costs.

Surely this is just a simple vbscript/powershell job?

You should be passing the cost on to the customers and selling it as proactive monitoring not a manual report.

You're missing a trick here.

Used PRTG at my previous place of work, it integrates with Dell Openmanage Server Administrator and also HP's server monitoring software to great for monitoring hardware.

It can do everything that you ask and you can also create customer 'maps' or portal's so they can access and see the information for themselves.

I'm sure it can do some kind of backup checking but it will probably be in the form of checking a e-mail or log file of sorts.

I would highly recommend PRTG.

100 servers and no automation?

If you have the £ then PRTG, else Nagios/FAN if you have more time to learn than £.

Its a shame Nagios are now pushing there premium product so hard, the opensource release (and variants built on it) are now severely lacking and more and more people are moving away.

The good think with Nagios is if you can get an output from any sort of script then you can report on it.

Nagios, Icinga2, Zabbix, Check_MK, Zenoss, Groundwork, Opsview, PRTG, New Relic, Centreon, Solarwinds.... I could go on.

If your looking for cheap + Windows based, PRTG. If your looking for open source and Linux-based, Icinga 2. If your looking for more features (dashboards, scalability, etc) then Windows = Solarwinds, Linux = Zenoss or Opsview. If your looking for something cloud based, have a look at New Relic (for server monitoring), its free also.

We use solarwinds and PRTG in work.

ov_sjo said:

Surely this is just a simple vbscript/powershell job?

Click to expand...

I have done this , run various scripts to get server status, write it to a back end SQL database and have a front end ASP web site to see the data

Not the cleanest way, but does the job for me. If anyone interested I can send the various VB Scripts I have written

VBScripts are too slow and cumbersome

solarwinds gets my vote

anyone used mom?

We use LabTech for our clients, although we don't bother sending reports as most of the time they're pointless. We looked at Nagios but the configuration was ridiculous and it didn't do anything close to what LT does for the automation side of things (autodiscovery was our major reason for counting it out).

Any of the big players are going to need some major configuration time to get them the way you want. The amount of noise coming from LT into our ConnectWise queues was ridiculous, it took us a good long sit-down over several days to get it where we wanted it. You'll find either this issue, or the fact you've got to create every monitor individually (ie Nagios) which isn't what you want either. You don't want to have to create a new monitor each time a new bit of software is installed by a client on their desktop.

I use MaxFocus MAX RemoteManagement, used to be called GFI I think.

You can monitor as much or as little as you want, manages AV/Updates/Remote access, long list.

Nimsoft for disk space, critical events and service monitoring, and then integrated alerting for arrays etc. Most backup applications can generate their own email alerts too. Backup Exec, Veeam, Simpana etc etc. Even CrashPlan. The UPS system should also have a way of generating its own alerts that send to email? And then bundle it all into a common mailbox with filters?

Used IPMonitor in the past as well which is very good for visual alerting on stopped services and disk space etc, but has some limitations past that.

most of our clients use Solarwinds and to be honest is one of the best at collecting and analysing data. its also one of the worst for usability.

50/50 eh

Solarwinds here.

Solarwinds here too. Never seen anything else that comes close yet

Solarwinds, or IPHost monitor could be a cheaper option? Supports is brilliant with it also

We currently use Solarwinds Server & Application Performance Monitoring, and its a great product. But be prepared for getting inundated with sales calls from them!

Webzta said:

I use MaxFocus MAX RemoteManagement, used to be called GFI I think.

You can monitor as much or as little as you want, manages AV/Updates/Remote access, long list.

Click to expand...

When I last used it, it was very basic and also very expensive for what you got.

Thanks guys plenty of options for us to consider here, will get trying some.