5 minute read
Choose the Best Network Monitoring Tool for Your Needs
by Hiba Dweib
Explore three network monitoring tools – Nagios, Zabbix and Zenoss - and evaluate their pros and cons in order to make an informed decision about which one to use.
Adeveloper or a network manager needs to manage application servers and could get confused about which monitoring tool to use. In this article, let’s look at the pros and cons of some of the most popular network monitoring tools.
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One can’t escape monitoring when it comes to managing servers. Something really reliable is needed; otherwise, things won’t work the way they should. There are many monitoring tools out there, like some that use other administrators, and some that use text-based monitoring tools like Cricket; but these do not qualify as they are quite unreliable with respect to SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) .
So, from experience, I’ve shortlisted the best monitoring tools to just three—Nagios, Zabbix and Zenoss. Let's explore their pros and cons, which could help you decide on which is the best one for you. Let's get started.
Nagios
This network monitoring tool was first released in March 1999, and is maintained by Ethan Galstad and other developers. Having proved its strength over so many years, it remains one of the best in the category. Originally designed to work on Linux, today it supports many UNIX variants.
The pros
It is open source. Has a large community of developers to make it better, continuously. Adding new features is easy with plug-ins being available. If you don't find one you need, writing one for yourself with your own language tool is hardly a problem (shell scripts, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, C++ and more). It has a great optional Web interface for viewing current network status, notifications, log files, etc.
It monitors host resources comprising most network operating systems, including Microsoft Windows. The NagVis plugin comes with an interactive editor.
The cons
Text configuration isn't a good idea. You must stick to the
Web interface. However, there too, some views aren't very logical. Third party or, rather, unofficial releases of the available plug-ins are poorly programmed and are without proper documentation. You must either use official releases or program plug-ins of your own. Nagios Remote Plugin Executor (NRPE) can do checks on remote servers, but causes a lot of load on the server. It provides alerts for each notification. But if you want to test on all 30 languages supported by your server, your inbox will be flooded with alerts.
Zabbix
Developed by Zabbix SIA and written in C, PHP and Java, Zabbix is an enterprise-class open source network monitoring tool created by Alexei Vladishev.
If you are on Linux, or more specifically, a Debian-based distro, Zabbix will prove to be awesome. However, it needs tweaking in certain aspects to work well anywhere.
The pros
It offers high performance with high capacity, and is capable of monitoring thousands of devices. Great Web interface with JMX, as well as Web monitoring with secure user authentication and flexible permissions. It sends useful notification messages such as ‘Low Disk
Space on /var on server2’ along with SMS alerts—features that are highly configurable. Real-time charts. Collected data is stored in databases (MySQL,
PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, IBM DB2). Client software for Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX,
FreeBSD, OpenBSD and various versions of Windows such as XP, Vista 7, Server 2008 and more. Paid support and paid custom programming available, along with great documentation and downloadable PDFs with screenshots.
The cons
It takes a little more time to understand its concepts compared to other tools. The feature-rich Web interface may seem to be complex and confusing for casual users. The map editor may seem to be virtually unusable.
Though it improves with use, it still lacks some basic features like adding values to the folder. Zabbix is painful when you need to monitor things.
Templates are pretty useless here, particularly when
displaying pretty similar aspects, and are not as clear as they should be. Can only return one value per item. While Nagios returns
OK/WARNING/ALERT and a text string, Zabbix doesn’t.
It has different items. Difficult to debug.
Zenoss
Developed and maintained by Zenoss Inc, according to Wikipedia, “Zenoss is a free and open source application, server, and network management platform based on the Zope application server.” Its development started in 2002, and since then it has grown to become one of the leading network monitoring tools.
The pros
Like all other network monitoring tools, Zenoss has a Web interface too. But what Zenoss offers is quite different—a beautiful interface, which is much easier to understand and quite interactive. Integration of Google Maps to show your servers worldwide. Works well with great reliability on SNMP, SSH and
WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation). Offers time-series performance monitoring of devices and event management tools to annotate alerts. Has extended Microsoft Windows monitoring via WMI. Supports the Nagios plug-in format.
The cons
Limited features available in the open source version. Full version needs to be paid for. Though the Web interface is amazing, it's quite slow compared to others, probably because Zope is bloated. You cannot figure out what's working. You can, however, add monitors and checks later to find out. Awkward configurability.
Though Nagios, Zabbix and Zenoss have some negative aspects, it’s the users who must decide what best fits their needs. Zabbix does suit Linux extremely well, but ultimately, you should go for what fulfils your needs better.
References
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org [2] http://dennisarslan.nl
By: Yatharth A Khatri
The author is a FOSS lover and enjoys working on all types of FOSS projects. He is currently doing research on cloud computing and recent trends in programming. He is the founder of the project Brick the Code, which is meant to teach programming to kids in an easy and interactive way. You can reach him easily regarding FOSS issues at yatharth@ brickthecode.org
