Open Source / Low Cost NMS for Server Hardware / Application Monitoring
I apologize for not starting a new thread before, I didn't realize that the nanog mailing list created a thread-index rather than using the subject. Even though NANOG is primarily for network operators, I know that a number of members work in NOCs where there is also monitoring of servers/applications. I would appreciate it if anyone has suggestions about monitoring systems that would be applicable to our environment. We have a large number of custom applications on a large number of hosts including Windows 2003/2008, Linux x86/x86_64 and Solaris Sparc/x86_64. We are looking for a better way of monitoring our environment. We are looking for recommendations for opensource or low-cost. We would prefer solutions where the basic monitoring is ready out of the box. Native agents with custom scripting would be highly desired (rather than SNMP/DMI/WMI polling). Some of our requirements: . Native agents for Windows 2003/2008, Linux, Linux x86_64, Solaris Sparc and Solaris x86_64. Either binaries or source code. . Ability to send alerts via email, pager and/or snmp . Monitoring of OS properties like memory, disk, cpu, etc... . Ability to extend agents with scripting to allow monitoring of custom services . Plug-in architecture for third-party add-ons . Reliable Architecture . Reasonable user interface . Non-blocking polling . Active Project (New Releases on regular basis and have existed for a reasonable period) Based on our research and feedback from NANOG, we have put a preliminary list of product to evaluate: Hyperic http://www.hyperic.com/ OpenNMS http://www.opennms.org/wiki/Main_Page opsview http://www.opsview.org/ osimius http://www.osmius.net/en/ PandoraFMS http://pandorafms.org/ Zabbix http://www.zabbix.com/ Groundwork http://www.groundworkopensource.com/ Nagios http://www.nagios.org Zenoss http://zenoss.com OpManager http://www.manageengine.com Orion http://www.solarwinds.com/products/orion/ BigBrother http://bb4.com/ Argus http://argus.tcp4me.com/ Xymon http://www.xymon.com Spiceworks http://www.spiceworks.com/ ICINGA http://www.icinga.org ---- Matthew Huff | One Manhattanville Rd OTA Management LLC | Purchase, NY 10577 http://www.ox.com | Phone: 914-460-4039 aim: matthewbhuff | Fax: 914-460-4139
On Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:08:29 -0400 Matthew Huff <mhuff@ox.com> wrote:
I apologize for not starting a new thread before, I didn't realize that the nanog mailing list created a thread-index rather than using the subject.
It's not the nanog mailing list, it's your own email client (and ours) that keeps the threads intact. The mailing list simply forwards the headers you send it. -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net> | Democracy is three wolves http://www.druid.net/darcy/ | and a sheep voting on +1 416 425 1212 (DoD#0082) (eNTP) | what's for dinner.
Matthew Huff wrote:
Some of our requirements:
. Native agents for Windows 2003/2008, Linux, Linux x86_64, Solaris Sparc and Solaris x86_64. Either binaries or source code. . Ability to send alerts via email, pager and/or snmp . Monitoring of OS properties like memory, disk, cpu, etc... . Ability to extend agents with scripting to allow monitoring of custom services . Plug-in architecture for third-party add-ons . Reliable Architecture . Reasonable user interface . Non-blocking polling . Active Project (New Releases on regular basis and have existed for a reasonable period)
You probably have the list of the most commonly used. Each has good and bad points. A few of them I believe are limited on using agents and supporting external scripts. Several are considered Nagios on steroids, using a Nagios core wrappered in a bunch of other OSS. Several, like Zenoss are particular about the primarily monitoring system (though agents might run on any OS). Jack
It's neither open source, nor free, but I moved from Nagios/Groundwork to Solarwinds ipMonitor 9. Solarwinds recently cut the price down to under $1000 for unlimited monitors. Up until about a year ago, the unlimited license ran about $5K. So for a large nationwide environment like ours, our ROI was pretty decent, but if you are only watching a dozen or two systems with maybe ten monitors each, Nagios would be the best bet. On Wed, 2009-07-22 at 13:40 -0500, Jack Bates wrote:
Matthew Huff wrote:
Some of our requirements:
. Native agents for Windows 2003/2008, Linux, Linux x86_64, Solaris Sparc and Solaris x86_64. Either binaries or source code. . Ability to send alerts via email, pager and/or snmp . Monitoring of OS properties like memory, disk, cpu, etc... . Ability to extend agents with scripting to allow monitoring of custom services . Plug-in architecture for third-party add-ons . Reliable Architecture . Reasonable user interface . Non-blocking polling . Active Project (New Releases on regular basis and have existed for a reasonable period)
You probably have the list of the most commonly used. Each has good and bad points. A few of them I believe are limited on using agents and supporting external scripts. Several are considered Nagios on steroids, using a Nagios core wrappered in a bunch of other OSS. Several, like Zenoss are particular about the primarily monitoring system (though agents might run on any OS).
Jack
-- "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." Niels Bohr -- Ray Sanders Linux Administrator Village Voice Media Office: 602-744-6547 Cell: 602-300-4344
On Jul 22, 2009, at 2:10 PM, Ray Sanders wrote:
So for a large nationwide environment like ours, our ROI was pretty decent, but if you are only watching a dozen or two systems with maybe ten monitors each, Nagios would be the best bet.
I would disagree; nagios is not limited to small systems... We're currently monitoring about 8500 services on 2834 routers with nagios quite successfully and have been doing so for nearly a decade now -- we started with Netsaint. With custom scripts receiving data from our inventory management system, Nagios config generation for 99% of the hosts is completely automated with only a handful of special cases that are hand-modified as needed. Our investment, both in initial/ ongoing man-hours, hardware, etc is minimal so our ROI is decent too ;) -- Marc
I would disagree; nagios is not limited to small systems... We're currently monitoring about 8500 services on 2834 routers with nagios quite successfully and have been doing so for nearly a decade now -- we started with Netsaint. With custom scripts receiving data from our inventory management system, Nagios config generation for 99% of the hosts is completely automated with only a handful of special cases that are hand-modified as needed. Our investment, both in initial/ongoing man-hours, hardware, etc is minimal so our ROI is decent too ;)
-- Marc
+1 / what he said I auto generate my nagios configs from an in house asset management system as well. It works great. Monitoring over 1k devices. We built a custom reporting system around nagios as well.
+1 / what he said I used it at the DNC worked like a charm! Winn Johnston Linux Systems Administrator 703 380 8666 ________________________________________ From: Charles Wyble [charles@thewybles.com] Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 1:33 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Open Source / Low Cost NMS for Server Hardware / Application Monitoring
I would disagree; nagios is not limited to small systems... We're currently monitoring about 8500 services on 2834 routers with nagios quite successfully and have been doing so for nearly a decade now -- we started with Netsaint. With custom scripts receiving data from our inventory management system, Nagios config generation for 99% of the hosts is completely automated with only a handful of special cases that are hand-modified as needed. Our investment, both in initial/ongoing man-hours, hardware, etc is minimal so our ROI is decent too ;)
-- Marc
+1 / what he said I auto generate my nagios configs from an in house asset management system as well. It works great. Monitoring over 1k devices. We built a custom reporting system around nagios as well. ______________________________________________________________________ This inbound email was scanned by MessageLabs _____________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ This email was scanned by MessageLabs _____________________________________________________________________
We've been using Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold for many years. Their recent improvements to the product have been mainly system monitoring stuff. The product has grown in capabilities hugely since version 4 when we started with them (they are on version 12 now), and with that improvement in capabilities, the price has gone up a bit. It's still a whole lot less than most other options, however. There isn't too much in the way of agents, but we've integrated a ton of proprietary systems with WhatsUp Gold via it's SQL database back-end. They also have fully scriptable monitoring as a standard feature now. Anyways, thought I'd put in my two cents... - Erik -----Original Message----- From: Matthew Huff [mailto:mhuff@ox.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 1:08 PM To: 'nanog@nanog.org' Subject: Open Source / Low Cost NMS for Server Hardware / Application Monitoring I apologize for not starting a new thread before, I didn't realize that the nanog mailing list created a thread-index rather than using the subject. Even though NANOG is primarily for network operators, I know that a number of members work in NOCs where there is also monitoring of servers/applications. I would appreciate it if anyone has suggestions about monitoring systems that would be applicable to our environment. We have a large number of custom applications on a large number of hosts including Windows 2003/2008, Linux x86/x86_64 and Solaris Sparc/x86_64. We are looking for a better way of monitoring our environment. We are looking for recommendations for opensource or low-cost. We would prefer solutions where the basic monitoring is ready out of the box. Native agents with custom scripting would be highly desired (rather than SNMP/DMI/WMI polling). Some of our requirements: . Native agents for Windows 2003/2008, Linux, Linux x86_64, Solaris Sparc and Solaris x86_64. Either binaries or source code. . Ability to send alerts via email, pager and/or snmp . Monitoring of OS properties like memory, disk, cpu, etc... . Ability to extend agents with scripting to allow monitoring of custom services . Plug-in architecture for third-party add-ons . Reliable Architecture . Reasonable user interface . Non-blocking polling . Active Project (New Releases on regular basis and have existed for a reasonable period) Based on our research and feedback from NANOG, we have put a preliminary list of product to evaluate: Hyperic http://www.hyperic.com/ OpenNMS http://www.opennms.org/wiki/Main_Page opsview http://www.opsview.org/ osimius http://www.osmius.net/en/ PandoraFMS http://pandorafms.org/ Zabbix http://www.zabbix.com/ Groundwork http://www.groundworkopensource.com/ Nagios http://www.nagios.org Zenoss http://zenoss.com OpManager http://www.manageengine.com Orion http://www.solarwinds.com/products/orion/ BigBrother http://bb4.com/ Argus http://argus.tcp4me.com/ Xymon http://www.xymon.com Spiceworks http://www.spiceworks.com/ ICINGA http://www.icinga.org ---- Matthew Huff | One Manhattanville Rd OTA Management LLC | Purchase, NY 10577 http://www.ox.com | Phone: 914-460-4039 aim: matthewbhuff | Fax: 914-460-4139
May I also mention InterMapper from Dartware. Very low price solution. Doesn't do well with trending and graphing out of the box (use RRD to get data out of it), but I like the live maps, platform independence and ease of creating new probes. I try to use SNMP wherever possible, but it can take pass parameters to an external script and analyze it's output as well.
-----Original Message----- From: Matthew Huff [mailto:mhuff@ox.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 1:08 PM To: 'nanog@nanog.org' Subject: Open Source / Low Cost NMS for Server Hardware / Application Monitoring
I apologize for not starting a new thread before, I didn't realize that the nanog mailing list created a thread-index rather than using the subject.
Even though NANOG is primarily for network operators, I know that a number of members work in NOCs where there is also monitoring of servers/applications. I would appreciate it if anyone has suggestions about monitoring systems that would be applicable to our environment. We have a large number of custom applications on a large number of hosts including Windows 2003/2008, Linux x86/x86_64 and Solaris Sparc/x86_64. We are looking for a better way of monitoring our environment. We are looking for recommendations for opensource or low-cost. We would prefer solutions where the basic monitoring is ready out of the box. Native agents with custom scripting would be highly desired (rather than SNMP/DMI/WMI polling).
Some of our requirements:
. Native agents for Windows 2003/2008, Linux, Linux x86_64, Solaris Sparc and Solaris x86_64. Either binaries or source code. . Ability to send alerts via email, pager and/or snmp . Monitoring of OS properties like memory, disk, cpu, etc... . Ability to extend agents with scripting to allow monitoring of custom services . Plug-in architecture for third-party add-ons . Reliable Architecture . Reasonable user interface . Non-blocking polling . Active Project (New Releases on regular basis and have existed for a reasonable period)
Based on our research and feedback from NANOG, we have put a preliminary list of product to evaluate:
Hyperic http://www.hyperic.com/ OpenNMS http://www.opennms.org/wiki/Main_Page opsview http://www.opsview.org/ osimius http://www.osmius.net/en/ PandoraFMS http://pandorafms.org/ Zabbix http://www.zabbix.com/ Groundwork http://www.groundworkopensource.com/ Nagios http://www.nagios.org Zenoss http://zenoss.com OpManager http://www.manageengine.com Orion http://www.solarwinds.com/products/orion/ BigBrother http://bb4.com/ Argus http://argus.tcp4me.com/ Xymon http://www.xymon.com Spiceworks http://www.spiceworks.com/ ICINGA http://www.icinga.org
---- Matthew Huff | One Manhattanville Rd OTA Management LLC | Purchase, NY 10577 http://www.ox.com | Phone: 914-460-4039 aim: matthewbhuff | Fax: 914-460-4139
On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 11:08 AM, Matthew Huff<mhuff@ox.com> wrote:
I apologize for not starting a new thread before, I didn't realize that the nanog mailing list created a thread-index rather than using the subject.
Even though NANOG is primarily for network operators, I know that a number of members work in NOCs where there is also monitoring of servers/applications. I would appreciate it if anyone has suggestions about monitoring systems that would be applicable to our environment. We have a large number of custom applications on a large number of hosts including Windows 2003/2008, Linux x86/x86_64 and Solaris Sparc/x86_64. We are looking for a better way of monitoring our environment. We are looking for recommendations for opensource or low-cost. We would prefer solutions where the basic monitoring is ready out of the box. Native agents with custom scripting would be highly desired (rather than SNMP/DMI/WMI polling).
Some of our requirements:
. Native agents for Windows 2003/2008, Linux, Linux x86_64, Solaris Sparc and Solaris x86_64. Either binaries or source code. . Ability to send alerts via email, pager and/or snmp . Monitoring of OS properties like memory, disk, cpu, etc... . Ability to extend agents with scripting to allow monitoring of custom services . Plug-in architecture for third-party add-ons . Reliable Architecture . Reasonable user interface . Non-blocking polling . Active Project (New Releases on regular basis and have existed for a reasonable period)
Based on our research and feedback from NANOG, we have put a preliminary list of product to evaluate:
Hyperic http://www.hyperic.com/ OpenNMS http://www.opennms.org/wiki/Main_Page opsview http://www.opsview.org/ osimius http://www.osmius.net/en/ PandoraFMS http://pandorafms.org/ Zabbix http://www.zabbix.com/ Groundwork http://www.groundworkopensource.com/ Nagios http://www.nagios.org Zenoss http://zenoss.com OpManager http://www.manageengine.com Orion http://www.solarwinds.com/products/orion/ BigBrother http://bb4.com/ Argus http://argus.tcp4me.com/ Xymon http://www.xymon.com Spiceworks http://www.spiceworks.com/ ICINGA http://www.icinga.org
---- Matthew Huff | One Manhattanville Rd OTA Management LLC | Purchase, NY 10577 http://www.ox.com | Phone: 914-460-4039 aim: matthewbhuff | Fax: 914-460-4139
I use Zabbix and Cacti primarily, but in the same situation - there has to be better stuff out there. You listed some that I wasn't familiar with, so I'll try those out. I did use Hyperic, while it has a lot of features, its bulky UI really detracts from its abilities. Wish Zabbix had some more community and developers, has many promising features, but needs SNMP and IPMI more tightly integrated. -- Brent Jones brent@servuhome.net
participants (10)
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Andrey Gordon -
Brent Jones -
Charles Wyble -
D'Arcy J.M. Cain -
Erik Amundson -
Jack Bates -
Marc Powell -
Matthew Huff -
Ray Sanders -
Winn Johnston