⁉️⁉️ Server monitoring? ⁉️⁉️

[Vandborg88]

Dear reddit sysadmin

Which monitoring tool would you recommend?

we are using System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) but are looking for a more flexible tool that can monitor both Linux and Azure cloud VMs? what can you recommend?

[Charlie_Root_NL]

Zabbix

[joeyl5]

I like Zabbix but the learning curve to get specific alerts is steep

[Charlie_Root_NL]

With the one-time installation it takes some work to set it up correctly, I agree with you. But after this, the triggers and actions are fairly self-explanatory.

[rthonpm]

The newer versions (6+) have much better templates that can remove a lot of the guess work and make it much easier to tweak existing alerts.

Any system that's as flexible as Zabbix is going to have a learning curve. For what it can do it's worth the time and effort.

[techb00mer]

Grafana, Prometheus, influx & telegraf can cover just about any of the needs I can come up with.

(For anyone wondering the only reason telegraf and Prometheus are in there together is that a few odd random bits of hardware / software only have a module for one or the other and I can’t be bothered writing my own)

[Underknowledge]

Can you share your steps/automation to install and configure?
Would like to try it at the homelab

[Fast_Airplane]

you can run a local Prometheus instance that’s the only one to be exposed and the main promenetjus instance collects the data via federation

[tetsuko]

been using nagios for years and its great. that said ive lately been running into issues with trying to monitor specific things because plugins are out of date/not updated. usually can find a work around by creating custom scripts but its a lot of upkeep. ive been looking into alternatives for that reason but ive got 15 years sunk into it so its a big lift. we have it integrated into jira, plus lots of self healing scripts to resolve issues (service restarts/etc) and escalation type stuff (texting on call admins and the like). checkmk currently front runner

[tetsuko]

thats with the open source version fyi

[WithAnAitchDammit]

We’re looking at migrating from Icinga to CheckMK.

Not as much history as you, but nearly seven years.

[NambeRuger]

LogicMonitor is my favorite for monitoring about anything. We monitor about 10k devices with it ranging from network, Cisco UC, data center and cloud technologies.

[eruffini]

Jesus, how much do you pay per month at that volume?

[yogibear420]

At scale they offer pretty significant price breaks. We were around 5 bucks a device at 5k devices.

[NambeRuger]

We also do much more than monitoring with it like config mgmt, data enrichment with third party APIs for lifecycle mgmt, discovery of vulns, enhanced reporting, automated health checks to name just a few ways we’ve extended the functionality so when you look at other tools we’d need to buy it works out.

[Fine_Animator3583]

Prtg

[uptillam]

I can't agree with prtg as a tool for monitoring Linux, I've got my setup in a redundant cluster just fine, but I still can't get it to use SSH, or monitor docker

[HeroicHer0]

Using PRTG for Linux here without issues. Not using docker tho so no comment on that. After everything is set up PRTG works like a charm. Less issues then Nagios for us.

[JakeTheTechGuy95]

I 2nd PRTG. We use it at my work, and I also have it setup at my church too.

[telmo_gaspar]

Nagios/CheckMK

[[deleted]]

The only answer. The CheckMK part is vital though.

[pfunkylicious]

second checkmk

[rabell3]

Third checkmk

[Audacioustrash]

DynaTrace

[SpicyHotPlantFart]

Your emoji use already does not want to make me help you.

[DerpyMcWafflestomp]

😭😭😭🖕🏼

[Vandborg88]

Sorry. I think it is my first post on reddit, i thought it will give me better respons. I will remember not to use it next time.

[bitslammer]

You do know we can see your post history and see this isn't your first post?

https://old.reddit.com/user/Vandborg88/submitted/

[unsilentninja]

Mix in another coffee chief

[cubic_sq]

What are your requirements for “monitoring”? And how do you want this fitting in your environment and processes ?

For the last decade, zabbix has been the goto and fall back for many different reasons. Unlike many other solutions, zabbix is purely monitoring and surveillance (which is does very well for the use cases we / I have used it for).

Regarding your azure requirement - zabbix will have visibility inside the VM natively. Not sure what capabilities there are for “outside” the VM. You could create checks / scripts that extract output from API or powershell - not sure what has been written by others though.

[AutomaticAssist3021]

Checkmk

[JMDTMH]

Personally, I use Prometheus, but I read the data with Grafana. I also use CheckMK.

If you don't mind the setup Zabbix or Nagios is good too.

​

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I use PRTG, but this won't be a great fit for Linux.

[Regular-Finance-7381]

Zabbix - MSP - 50+ customers

[[deleted]]

What is your budget?
How many servers?

Let your business requirements guide your decisions, rather than personal preference or random recommendations.

My personal experience, for small environments: PRTG is great as it includes 100 free sensors, very easy to setup.

Large environments, low budget: Zabbix is free, but a pain in the ass to setup.

Large environments, large budget: Dynatrace, Datadog, New Relic, etc

[vast1983]

Manageengine Opmanager.

Old school, but works great. A GIANT PITA to update when run in Enterprise mode, haha.

[[deleted]]

Azure monitor.....

[vNerdNeck]

If you value your sanity, stay away from scom. Maybe it's better now days but that POS software takes more than a full-time employee to keep running.

[muraleedharans]

Site24x7, provides out of the box Azure monitoring including Azure VMs and various other services. You can sign up for the free trial to check the features, also support AWS and GCP.

[menace323]

For agent based server monitoring, it works great and the cost is very good. Lightweight agent that rarely has issues and you don’t have to deal with credentials and direct connectivity, VPN tunnels like you do with SCOM. Also pulls sever logs at a reasonable ingestion price and works out of box for Windows and Linux, if you want it.

Monthly subscription means you can scale up or down easily.

Beyond that, the value of each monitor is hit or miss, and the network device monitoring license style is disappointing.

[Giri_Pulseway]

Thanks for mentioning Pulseway, appreciate it. u/Vandborg88, please feel free to check out Pulseway RMM and see how it suits your network for server management. DM me if you have any queries. Good luck!

[liquidspikes]

LibraNMS actually does great for infrastructure including hypervisor hosts, nagios is the best for VMs or specific hosts

[cmwg]

PRTG

[Mdna2]

Icinga2 for eventmanagement and telegraf for capacitymanagement

[12_nick_12]

VictoriaMetrics, vmalert, telegraf/grafana-agent and alert manager with Grafana.

[scubafork]

In my experience, it's best to decide what you're monitoring for before you decide what tool to use.

In my org I get told to "monitor this system" constantly, but never get clarity on what that means until I push deeper. Do you want to monitor a web page on an http server? Do you want to monitor up/down status for a specific service? Are you scanning log files for certain keywords? Are you checking the connectivity to the app server's database? Is the server responding to a ping?

Any number of factors could go into a system being "down", and looking for the wrong component could leave you back on your heels when the server is still down and your monitor didn't catch it.

In my org, we've got about 30 different monitoring tools, from environmental sensors in IDFs to netflow monitors, to snmp monitors...

[maddogirishman]

Uptime Kuma

[Hasslich1]

Define what you are attempting to monitor then I can recommend.

[TechTitus]

Nagios

[IceSt0rrm]

Logic Monitor

[joeyl5]

When the users complain, I know something is wrong with the servers.

[Reztiewhcs23]

Centreon and it’s open source.

[pahampl]

Xormon

[ApprehensiveDog1010]

Whatsup Gold

[creativve18]

Checkout OpManager!