What are the differences between these monitoring tools?

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uberguru

Member
Jun 7, 2013
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Hi guys,

I am trying to categorize the monitoring tools i am testing out
I have noticed there are just so many monitoring tools out there and am confused how to categorize or even know which tools are competitors to each one another, and what exactly the core differences them are.

For example, we know Nagios, Zabbix, Zenoss, Munin, Cacti, MRTG, Smokeping et cetera
Can someone please explain the differences between these monitoring tools and which are like similar and competitors to the other?

Thanks.
 

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
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The answer would make a good research project and a good book! Whatever you find, please do post it.

I'll say this: While Nagios has seriously major mindshare, it's a raw and incomplete tool on its own. Integrate it with three or four add-on open source tools, and assign a few talented engineers to write glue code and scripts, and you have a real monitoring system, but if you don't have that level of resources to apply then a different tool - even one that costs money - will be cheaper and less of a headache in the long run. In other words: If you are hunting for a monitoring tool, don't just install Nagios because you've heard of if. You might end up deploying Nagios anyway, but do so after looking around first.

If you want to see how easy and useful a basic network and application monitoring system for a small network can be, take a look at New Relic Pro or Enterprise (not the crippled free version). Then, once you have fallen in love, calculate the cost for 50 nodes and go back to the drawing board.
 
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Chuckleb

Moderator
Mar 5, 2013
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Let's add in the online services too, monitor.us.

We have used most of your list, we use zabbix enterprise-wide, nagios locally foot certain projects, and played with the others. As dba says, everything needs a lot of work no matter what. Simple example is monitoring a few dozen LSI cards for drive failures. Dozens of scripts and I am still not really happy with any, partially due to how you query. Takes a lot of work to get it "right".
 
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Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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I use pretty basic New Relic monitoring for some of the servers. Nice since it shows you application performance.
 

Melissa

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Jan 15, 2014
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In total they are the same offering a range of monitoring options. The difference is very slight and not so obvious for the first time. Nagios is free and open-source which makes it different, but all other tools are same ones.I use Anturis, cloud-based monitoring tool which has the same functions like Cacti, but it is much cheaper.