The success of a business depends on the proper functioning of all of its critical systems, thus constant monitoring is a must. Without the right tools, keeping tabs on your IT infrastructure’s configuration in different places could be a source of significant strain. You can’t skip out on the monitoring gear, no matter how big or tiny your setup is. Uptime monitoring is critical even if you just have a personal website. Numerous tools, i.e., monitoring software, both open-source and proprietary, can help you keep an eye on your system and get you notified of any problems. With so many options available, it could be challenging to find one that is reasonably priced.
10 Best Open Source Monitoring Software for IT Infrastructure
There is good news, though: a powerful open-source monitoring software is at your disposal. We appreciate the upkeep done by the open-source community. Let’s have a look at the top open source monitoring software for IT infrastructure, and you may pick the one that meets your needs.
1. Nagios
Since its inception in 1999, Nagios has been the de facto standard when it comes to providing monitoring solutions for networks of all sizes. It can keep tabs on just about anything, including network protocols, OSs, system metrics, apps, services, web servers, webpages, and even middleware. It uses the Core 4 monitoring engine, which provides excellent performance with minimal impact on server resources.
Plugins make it possible to incorporate virtually any type of third-party software, and there is probably already a plugin for it. Nagios is used to keep tabs on a wide variety of middleware, including WebLogic, WebSphere, JBoss, Tomcat, Apache, URL, and Nginx.
Features
- Same view of all the IT systems being monitored
- Through its event handlers, failed programs can be automatically restarted
- Multiple user access
- Customers can only see infrastructure elements that are physically close to them thanks to this feature
- Over a million regular users make up this community
- Structure that can be expanded
In need of some Nagios installation assistance? Give this Fiverr offer some thought.
2. Zabbix
Zabbix is a great product for large organisations to use to keep tabs on their servers, networks, apps, and databases. Thousands of companies throughout the world use Zabbix, including big names like DELL, Salesforce, ICANN, Orange, and many more. Zabbix relies on a client-server architecture, with the monitoring agent being on the server (client) being monitored. For example, FTP, SSH, HTTP, DNS, etc. can function without the agent.
You can set it up on a wide variety of platforms, including Linux, AIX, Windows, Solaris, MacOS X, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. It has SNMP support and better reporting options.
Features
- JMX allows for direct application server monitoring in Java
- In order for VMWare, vCenter, and vSpehere to function, monitoring virtual machines is essential
- There is defense at the front to prevent forceful attacks
- Ruby, Python, Perl, PHP, Java, and shell scripts, among others, can be used to provide process automation
- Supports various different tools for managing computer systems, including Puppet, cfengine, Chef, and bcfg2
If you’re looking to learn how to deploy Zabbix in a large organization, this online course is a great resource. While installing Zabbix can take some time, you can quickly obtain it on Kamatera if you need it for a proof-of-concept or to test the software.
3. Checkmk
Monitor your servers, networks, cloud assets, databases, containers, and IoT devices using Checkmk’s scalable monitoring solution. Two different implementations are available. Raw Edition is 100% open-source monitoring software, allowing for free, unlimited, and almost endless tracking. As one might guess, there is more content available in the Enterprise Edition.
Features
- Easy and quick: Just roll out the whole shebang at once, and you’ll be good to go.
- Lowest possible market operational effort achieved through extensive automated monitoring and minimal human configuration.
There are more than 1,900 official integrations available “out of the box” for adaptable tracking. Checkmk agents, vendor APIs, SNMP, or whatever technique you like can be used to keep tabs on the system’s status, performance, and activity logs. It has distributed monitoring capabilities that is fully scalable, making it a good fit for monitoring large environments.
4. Prometheus and Grafana
These are two outstanding free software packages that should be included in this list. Prometheus is used to collect metrics from servers, operating systems, and applications, and Grafana is used to visualize the collected data.
Linux, Windows, databases, routers, messaging systems, storage, APIs, web applications, Kubernetes, and many other platforms all have Prometheus exporters that may collect metrics and send them to the monitoring service.
5. Cacti
Cacti can be downloaded for free and used to monitor your network performance on either Linux or Windows. By connecting to RRDTool, we can generate pivotal graphs for our network data. It uses Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and presents data about networks as understandable graphs. Cacti calls for a MySQL, Apache, or IIS server that supports PHP.
Features
- Each graph can have an arbitrary number of defined graph elements if the CDEF or Cacti data sources are used.
- Protection and management depending on individual users.
- Specialized methods for gathering information.
- Graphs with automatic padding support.
- There is support for RRD(Round-Robin Database) files that contain many data sources, and these files can be placed anywhere on the local file system.
6. OpenNMS
OpenNMS facilitates the creation of scalable network monitoring solutions applicable to any information technology setting. It is possible to collect system metrics using a wide variety of protocols and formats, including JMX, WMI, SNMP, NRPE, XML HTTP, JDBC, XML, JSON, and many others.
Network topology at the layer 2 level can be discovered with OpenNMS. It is built on top of an event-driven architecture and is compatible with the popular monitoring tool Grafana. OpenNMS allows you to view the report on an attractive dashboard and graph thanks to its built-in reporting capabilities. For the most part, OpenNMS has an excellent interface. And Docker can be used to set it up too.
Features
- Although it was designed with Linux in mind, it is compatible with Windows, Solaris, and Mac OS X.
- Continuous temperature monitoring of devices.
- The admin panel is fully configurable.
- Keeping an eye on the power grid.
- Support for IPv4 and IPv6.
- Whenever an event occurs, you can be alerted via your preferred method, be it email, SMS, XMPP, or something else. Create a geographical node map showing nodes and service interruptions using Open Street Map, Google Maps, or Mapquest.
7. Icinga
With the help of the Icinga monitoring framework, you can keep tabs on every system in your network, receive multiple types of alerts in the event of an alarm, and generate reports on service level agreements with ease. Icinga, which began as a fork of Nagios in 2009, was finally set free, leading to the development of the much-improved, highly-configurable, and pleasantly scalable Icinga 2.
Features
- Monitoring of network and host services and server components.
- Plugins for Icinga 2 are used for the monitoring.
- Support for event handlers and alerts.
- Help is available via many communication channels including email, text message, and voice call.
- There is compatibility with a wide range of hardware and software.
- Verification of services, in parallel.
- Both the Classic UI and the Icinga web interface are accessible to users.
- Created from preexisting report formats.
8. Netdata
Netdata provides unparalleled real-time health monitoring and performance troubleshooting for systems and applications. Over the past six years, Netdata’s GitHub community has played a crucial role in the company’s evolution and success.
With its cross-platform, fault-tolerant, and lightning-fast performance, Netdata is a must-have for any modern business. You can rapidly investigate infrastructure slowdowns and anomalies using hundreds of data, interactive visualisations, and insightful health warnings. Previously only available on servers, Netdata is now also available on virtual machines, containers, and Internet of Things/edge nodes. As the name implies, it’s open-source monitoring software and completely free.
Features
- Metrics with a high degree of granularity and a sampling rate of one second.
- Tracks and reports on thousands of metrics from hundreds of apps and services.
- Monitoring of every conceivable data source, including thousands of metrics per node.
- Meaningful and visually anomaly-detection-optimised presentation.
- Innovative machinery for identifying efficiency and availability problems.
- Easy setup with immediate results; requires no special equipment or personnel to operate.
- A custom database engine that “spills” historical data to disk for archival purposes while keeping up-to-date metrics in memory.
9. M/Monit
In order to keep tabs on what’s going on in Unix and Linux, the M/Monit application is installed. The need to manage several, similar infrastructure jobs is met by this program. It can be used on any POSIX-based system and requires between 10 and 15 MB of RAM, however this varies with the number of monitored hosts. All of the following DBMSs are compatible with it:
- At least MySQL 5.x
- PostgreSQL version 8.4 or later
- Database Management System Version 3.x for SQLite
As soon as a process dies, M/Monit can automatically start it up again. Thus, it can carry out self-maintenance and repair in the event of a patchy condition. Because of this, your system availability will be maximized.
Features
- The process of setting it up and getting it running is quick and easy.
- Calculates useful metrics from the hosts under observation, then displays the results in charts that may be understood at a glance.
- The UI is simple, uncluttered, and quick to respond. The interface could scale to fit the screen of the user’s chosen device.
- Control and keep tabs on all those skulking in the background.
- The availability of the application is improved because common error conditions are now resolved mechanically, without any human intervention.
- Keep an eye on anything running in the cloud, including servers, disks, files, and folders.
- Manage the service settings from afar.
- The RESTful API for M/HTTP Monit queries.
- It allows us to derive new values from old ones by analysing trends.
10. LibreNMS
When it comes to keeping tabs on your network, LibreNMS has you covered. Specifically, it is built on top of PHP, MySQL, and SNMP. For this reason, LibreMNS works with a wide variety of platforms and networking hardware. It can sort interfaces into groups according by their prefixes. Automatic network discovery is feasible with protocols like SNMP, CDP, ARP, FDP, OSPF, LLDP, and BGP.
Features
- This situation calls for a warning system that is both flexible and reliable. Email, IRC, Slack, etc. will all be used to send out instant notifications.
- LibreMNS can get, manage, and display any data sent to it thanks to its flexible API.
- This is an essential feature, along with the ability to generate bills for used network bandwidth.
- Vertical growth is possible initially, but can later transition to horizontal growth as the network matures.
- Integrating NfSen, collected, SmokePing, RANCID, and Oxedized is possible.
- MySQL, HTTP, LDAP, Radius, and Active Directory are only few of the supported authentication protocols.
The web interface is optimised for use on mobile devices and supports a wide variety of hardware configurations.
Conclusion
Free of charge monitoring software is available for usage in the above-mentioned locations. The best way to learn how they work is to download and try them out. Cloud-based application performance management (APM) may be implemented in addition to infrastructure monitoring.