Real Time LAN Monitor

D'Agger

Hi all,

I've been on the lookout for a piece of software for our company to use to monitor the uptime of critical servers such as our exchange server, DCs, File Servers etc.

I have experience with Orion NPM so I wouldn't mind looking to that, however I do think that it's somewhat overpriced, maybe even too powerful for what we need right now - given how many nodes you can monitor using NPM.

Essentially what I'm looking for is a monitoring tool that will show a graph on ping statistics, timeouts, packet loss etc. I'd like to be able to display this info on a site or dashboard so that I could keep the tab open on my browser to check, and eventually, display it on a TV in our Comms room - you should be able to look up and notice if there's a performance drop on a particular server.

Additionally - and this is the major stumbling block. I'd like to setup alerting when packet loss passes a certain percentage or when a node doesn't respond to ping after a certain amount of time. I know I can do this with Solarwinds NPM, however observium doesn't seem to have alerting despite it seeming to have config available for it.

I've used Axence Nettools which seems perfect for what I want - collects stats & graphs them but it's a local software that I don't think I can install on a server & display on a webpage for an IT team to view.

Nagios seems to be the way forward, however there seems to be a large amount of configuration time involved with it. I setup a quick VM with Observium installed however I don't think this is suitable based on the alerting issues with it.

If anybody has experience with setting up a monitoring solution that might help I'm all ears!

Cuddlesworth

PRTG?

D'Agger

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

PRTG?

Any experience with it Cuddlesworth?

Seems to be the same price as Solarwinds NPM. I'd prefer a free solution and from what I've seen - Observiums free version is looking to add alerting so I may look to slowly build with this seeing as I have it running and the next major release could give me all I'm looking for.

However, if there's a simple monitor that would allow monitoring & alerting then I'd test for definite.

We use Lansweeper for asset management which is very good just in case anybody sees this and is looking to have a conversation on different solutions.

drumswan

Nagios

D'Agger

drumswan wrote: »

Nagios

Any particular reason why you'd recommend it - any pros or cons you may have come across?

Cuddlesworth

D'Agger wrote: »

Any experience with it Cuddlesworth?

Seems to be the same price as Solarwinds NPM. I'd prefer a free solution and from what I've seen - Observiums free version is looking to add alerting so I may look to slowly build with this seeing as I have it running and the next major release could give me all I'm looking for.

However, if there's a simple monitor that would allow monitoring & alerting then I'd test for definite.

We use Lansweeper for asset management which is very good just in case anybody sees this and is looking to have a conversation on different solutions.

Only secondary experience, its primarily a SMNP trap, so it has the potential to be more then a simple ping tool. But its inherently customizable in its options.

D'Agger

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Only secondary experience, its primarily a SMNP trap, so it has the potential to be more then a simple ping tool. But its inherently customizable in its options.

Cool cheers.

I think if I'm going to pay - it'd be Solarwinds NPM I'd go with based on my experience in setting it up etc.

I might look to setup a Nagios box on the same ESX server as Observium and see if I can get it quickly thrown together with alerting etc. - I'm just conscious of implementing something that requires time for configuration & implementation - we don't have the time or manpower to give this alot of time - so to that end something like NPM would help as it's very easy to setup.

demanufactured

We use Opsview to monitor out network. Its a newer version of nagios....and the core version is free

Ziycon

Nagios