Program for monitoring network changes. The best free system resource monitors. Local network monitoring program

The previous article compiled a list of 80 monitoring tools Linux systems. It also made sense to make a selection of tools for the Windows system. The following is a list that serves as a starting point only, there is no ranking.

1.Task Manager

Well-known dispatcher Windows tasks- utility for displaying a list running processes and the resources they consume. But do you know how to use its full potential? As a rule, it is used to monitor the state of the processor and memory, but you can go much further. This app is pre-made for everyone operating systems ah Microsoft.

2. Resource Monitor

A great tool to estimate CPU usage, random access memory, network and disks in Windows. It allows you to quickly obtain all the necessary information about the status of critical servers.

3.Performance Monitor

The main tool for managing performance counters in Windows. Performance Monitor, in earlier Windows versions known to us as System Monitor. The utility has several display modes, displays performance counters in real time, and saves data to log files for later study.

4.Reliability Monitor

Reliability Monitor - System stability monitor, allows you to monitor any changes in computer performance, you can find the stability monitor in Windows 7, in Windows 8: Control Panel > System and Security > Action Center. Using Reliability Monitor, you can keep track of changes and failures on your computer, the data will be displayed in a convenient graphical form, which will allow you to track which application and when caused an error or froze, track the occurrence of blue screen death of Windows, the reason for its appearance (another Windows update or installing a program).

5.Microsoft SysInternals

SysInternals is a complete set of programs for administering and monitoring computers running Windows OS. You can download them for yourself for free on the Microsoft website. Sysinternals utility programs help manage, troubleshoot, and diagnose applications and operating systems. Windows systems.

6. SCOM (part of Microsoft System Center)

System Center is a complete set of tools for managing IT infrastructure, with which you can manage, deploy, monitor, configure software Microsoft software(Windows, IIS, SQLServer, Exchange, and so on). Unfortunately, MSC is not free. SCOM is used for proactive monitoring of key IT infrastructure objects.

Monitoring Windows servers using the Nagios family

7. Nagios

Nagios has been the most popular infrastructure monitoring tool for several years (for Linux and Windows). If you are considering Nagios for Windows, then install and configure the agent on Windows server. NSClient++ monitors the system in real time and provides outputs from a remote monitoring server and more.

8. Cacti

Typically used in conjunction with Nagios, it provides the user with a convenient web interface to the RRDTool utility, designed to work with Round Robin Databases, which are used to store information about changes in one or more quantities over a certain period of time. Statistics on network devices are presented in the form of a tree, the structure of which is specified by the user; you can plot channel usage, HDD partition usage, display resource latency, etc.

9. Shinken

Flexible, scalable monitoring system with open source code, based on the Nagios core written in Python. It is 5 times faster than Nagios. Shinken is compatible with Nagios, you can use its plugins and configurations without making adjustments or additional configuration.

10. Icinga

Another popular one open system monitoring, which checks hosts and services and reports their status to the administrator. As a fork of Nagios, Icinga is compatible with it and they have a lot in common.

11. OpsView

OpsView was originally free. Now, unfortunately, users of this monitoring system have to shell out money.

Op5 is another open source monitoring system. Plotting, storing and collecting data.

Alternatives to Nagios

13. Zabbix

Open software for monitoring and tracking the status of various services computer network, servers and network equipment, is used to obtain data about CPU load, network usage, disk space and the like.

14. Munin

A good monitoring system that collects data from several servers simultaneously and displays everything in the form of graphs, with which you can track all past events on the server.

15.Zenoss

Written in Python using the Zope application server, data is stored in MySQL. With Zenoss you can
monitor network services, system resources, device performance, the Zenoss kernel analyzes the environment. This makes it possible to quickly deal with big amount specific devices.

16. Observium

A monitoring and surveillance system for network devices and servers, although the list of supported devices is huge and is not limited to network devices; the device must support SNMP.

17. Centreon

A comprehensive monitoring system allows you to monitor the entire infrastructure and applications containing system information. Free alternative to Nagios.

18. Ganglia

Ganglia is a scalable distributed monitoring system used in high-performance computing systems such as clusters and grids. Monitors statistics and computation history in real time for each of the monitored nodes.

19. Pandora FMS

Monitoring system, good productivity and scalability, one monitoring server can monitor the work of several thousand hosts.

20. NetXMS

Open Source Monitoring Software computer systems and networks.

21.OpenNMS

OpenNMS monitoring platform. Unlike Nagios, it supports SNMP, WMI and JMX.

22. HypericHQ

A component of the VMware vRealize Operations suite, it is used to monitor OS, middleware and applications in physical, virtual and cloud environments. Displays availability, performance, usage, events, logs, and changes at every level of the virtualization stack (from the vSphere hypervisor to guest OSes).

23. Bosun

Open source monitoring and alert system from StackExchange. Bosun has a well-thought-out data design, as well as a powerful language for processing it.

24. Sensu

Sensu is an open source alert system similar to Nagios. There is a simple dashboard, you can see a list of clients, checks and triggered alerts. The framework provides the mechanisms needed to collect and accumulate server operation statistics. Each server runs a Sensu agent (client) that uses a set of scripts to check the functionality of services, their status and collect any other information.

25. CollectM

CollectM collects statistics about system resource usage every 10 seconds. It can collect statistics for several hosts and send it to the server, the information is displayed using graphs.

28. Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool

34. Total Network Monitor

This is a program for continuous monitoring of work local network individual computers, network and system services. Total Network Monitor generates a report and notifies you about errors that have occurred. You can check any aspect of the operation of a service, server or file system: FTP, POP/SMTP, HTTP, IMAP, Registry, Event Log, Service State and others.

35. PRTG

38.Idera

Supports multiple operating systems and virtualization technologies. There are many free tools that you can use to monitor your system.

39. PowerAdmin

PowerAdmin is a commercial monitoring solution.

40. ELM Enterprise Manager

ELM Enterprise Manager - complete monitoring from “what happened” to “what is happening” in real time. Monitoring tools in ELM include - Event Collector, Performance Monitor, Service Monitor, Process Monitor, File Monitor, PING Monitor.

41.EventsEntry

42. Veeam ONE

An effective solution for monitoring, reporting and scheduling resources in VMware, Hyper-V and Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure, monitors the health of your IT infrastructure and diagnoses problems before they interfere with user experience.

43. CA Unified Infrastructure Management (formerly CA Nimsoft Monitor, Unicenter)

Monitors the performance and availability of Windows server resources.

44. HP Operations Manager

This infrastructure monitoring software performs proactive root cause analysis, reducing recovery time and reducing operations management costs. The solution is ideal for automated monitoring.

45.Dell OpenManage

OpenManage (now Dell Enterprise Systems Management) is an all-in-one monitoring product.

46. Halcyon Windows Server Manager

Management and monitoring of networks, applications and infrastructure.

Below is a list of (most popular) network monitoring tools

54.Ntop

55.NeDi

Nedi is an open source network monitoring tool.

54. The Dude

The Dude monitoring system, although free, is, according to experts, in no way inferior to commercial products; it monitors individual servers, networks and network services.

55.BandwidthD

Open source program.

56. NagVis

An extension for Nagios that allows you to create infrastructure maps and display their status. NagVis supports a large number of different widgets and icon sets.

57. Proc Net Monitor

A free monitoring application that allows you to track all active processes and, if necessary, quickly stop them to reduce the load on the processor.

58. PingPlotter

Used to diagnose IP networks, it allows you to determine where losses and delays of network packets occur.

Small but useful tools

The list wouldn't be complete without mentioning a few hardware monitoring options.

60. Glint Computer Activity Monitor

61.RealTemp

Temperature monitoring utility Intel processors, it does not require installation, monitors the current, minimum and maximum temperature values for each core and the start of throttling.

62. SpeedFan

A utility that allows you to control the temperature and fan speeds in the system, monitors sensor readings motherboard, video cards and hard drives.

63.OpenHardwareMonitor

Category ~ System utilities – Igor (Administrator)

System Resource Monitor

Programs for measuring resources, or as they are also called resource monitors, display specific information indicators of the state of the system. And if a little simpler, then, basically, this is data on processor load, the amount of RAM used and disk space used. Such utilities allow you to find out the reasons for the loss of system performance and find out the current load of your computer. They are quite popular among users who often work with technology.

Some of these programs are more focused on diversity of information, i.e. allow a much clearer understanding of the state of the system. And, most likely, they will be more suitable for administrators whose tasks are more complex than just finding out how much memory your programs are eating. Other programs are more focused on the attractiveness of the interface and the ability to integrate into the standard system interface, for example, in the form of widgets. As you probably guessed, these programs are more suitable for ordinary users who under no circumstances will need information about the number of threads and processes, except to broaden their horizons.

IN this review you will find both functional and styled programs.

Review of Free System Resource Monitors

Rainmeter program complete control of system resources

Quick Selection Guide (links to download free system resource monitors)

Rainmeter

		Stylization. A huge number of modules and skins to display. Incredibly flexible display settings.
		Configuration via INI files (this will be very difficult for regular users). Some modules may not work correctly.

Spotlight on Windows

		Professional. Attractive. Multifunctional. Remote monitoring.
		Full screen mode only. Fonts cannot be changed. Fixed maximum values. Registration required. The license must be renewed every year.

Sysmetrix

		Stylization. Wide variety of indicators. Easy setup.
		Only one template for all indicators, cannot be divided into separate widgets. Displays only the total processor load.

TinyResMeter

		Fast. Effective. Very small size.
		Poor setting. Old GUI.

StatBar

		Takes up little space on the screen. Setting up indicators. A number of additional controls (Winamp and others).
		You can't change the font, which makes the program inconvenient for high-resolution screens.

The mantra of the real estate world is Location, Location, Location. For the world system administration this sacred text should sound like this: Visibility, Visibility and again Visibility. If you don't know exactly what your network and servers are doing every second of the day, you're like a pilot flying blind. A disaster inevitably awaits you. Luckily for you, there are many available on the market now. good programs, both commercial and open source, capable of setting up your network monitoring.

Because good and free is always more tempting than good and expensive, here's a list of open source software that proves its worth every day on networks of all sizes. From device discovery, monitoring network equipment and servers, to identifying network trends, graphically representing monitoring results, and even creating backup copies configurations of switches and routers - these seven free utilities, most likely, will be able to pleasantly surprise you.

Cacti

First there was MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) - a program for organizing a network monitoring service and measuring data over time. Back in the 1990s, its author, Tobias Oetiker, saw fit to write a simple graphing tool using a ring database originally used to display router throughput on a local network. So MRTG gave birth to RRDTool, a set of utilities for working with RRD (Round-robin Database, ring database), allowing you to store, process and graphically display dynamic information such as network traffic, processor load, temperature, and so on. RRDTool is now used in a huge number of open source tools. Cacti is the current flagship open source network graphics software and takes MRTG principles to a whole new level.

From disk usage to fan speed in the power supply, if the indicator can be monitored,Cacti will be able to display it and make this data easily accessible.

Cacti is free program, part of the LAMP suite of server software that provides standardized software platform for creating graphs based on almost any statistical data. If any device or service returns numeric data, then it can most likely be integrated into Cacti. There are templates for monitoring a wide range of equipment - from Linux and Windows servers to Cisco routers and switches - basically anything that communicates using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). There are also collections of third-party templates that further expand the already huge list of Cacti-compatible hardware and software.

Although the standard method for collecting Cacti data is SNMP, Perl or PHP scripts can also be used for this. The software system framework skillfully separates data collection and data collection into discrete instances. graphic display, making it easy to reprocess and reorganize existing data for different visual representations. In addition, you can select specific time frames and individual parts of the charts simply by clicking on them and dragging.

So, for example, you can quickly look at data from several past years to understand whether the current behavior of network equipment or a server is anomalous, or whether similar indicators occur regularly. And using Network Weathermap, a PHP plugin for Cacti, you can easily create real-time maps of your network, showing the congestion of communication channels between network devices, implemented using graphs that appear when you hover your mouse over the image of a network channel. Many organizations using Cacti display these maps 24/7 on wall-mounted 42-inch LCD monitors, allowing IT teams to instantly monitor network congestion and link health information.

In summary, Cacti is a powerful toolkit for graphically displaying and trending network performance that can be used to monitor virtually any monitored metric represented in a graph. This decision also supports virtually limitless customization options, which can make it overly complex for certain applications.

Nagios

Nagios is an accomplished software system to monitor a network that has been under active development for many years. Written in C, it does almost everything that system and network administrators would need from a monitoring application package. The web interface of this program is fast and intuitive, while its server part is extremely reliable.

Nagios can be a challenge for beginners, but the fairly complex configuration is also an advantage of this tool, as it can be adapted to almost any monitoring task.

Like Cacti, Nagios has a very active community behind it, so various plugins exist for a huge range of hardware and software. From simple ping checks to integration with complex software solutions, such as, for example, WebInject, a free software toolkit written in Perl for testing web applications and web services. Nagios allows you to constantly monitor the status of servers, services, network links and everything else that understands the IP network layer protocol. For example, you can monitor the use of disk space on the server, RAM and CPU load, the use of the FLEXlm license, the air temperature at the server outlet, delays in the WAN and Internet channel, and much more.

Obviously, any server and network monitoring system will not be complete without notifications. Nagios has everything in order: the software platform offers a customizable notification mechanism for e-mail, via SMS and instant messages most popular Internet instant messengers, as well as an escalation scheme that can be used to make intelligent decisions about who, how and under what circumstances should be notified, what if correct setting will help you provide many hours of restful sleep. And the web interface can be used to temporarily pause receiving notifications or confirm a problem has occurred, as well as for administrators to make notes.

In addition, the mapping feature shows all monitored devices in a logical, color-coded representation of where they are on the network, allowing problems to be shown as they occur.

The downside to Nagios is the configuration, as it is best done through the command line, making it much more difficult for newbies to learn. Although people familiar with standard files Linux/Unix configurations, you should not experience any special problems.

The capabilities of Nagios are enormous, but the effort to use some of them may not always be worth the effort. But don't let the complexity intimidate you: the early warning benefits this tool provides for so many aspects of the network can't be overstated.

Icinga

Icinga began as a fork of the Nagios monitoring system, but has recently been rewritten into a standalone solution known as Icinga 2. this moment Both versions of the program are in active development and are available for use, while Icinga 1.x is compatible with a large number of plugins and Nagios configuration. Icinga 2 was designed to be less clunky, more performance oriented, and easier to use. It offers a modular architecture and multi-threaded design that neither Nagios nor Icinga 1 offers.

Icinga offers a complete monitoring and alerting software platform that is designed to be as open and extensible asNagios, but with some differences in the web interface.

Like Nagios, Icinga can be used to monitor anything that speaks IP, as deep as you can using SNMP, as well as custom plugins and add-ons.

There are several variations of the web interface for Icinga, but the main difference between this one is software solution Nagios monitoring is a configuration that can be done through the web interface rather than through configuration files. For those who prefer to manage their configuration externally command line, this functionality will be a real gift.

Icinga integrates with a variety of monitoring and graphing software packages such as PNP4Nagios, inGraph and Graphite, providing robust visualization of your network. In addition, Icinga has advanced reporting capabilities.

NeDi

If you've ever had to Telnet into switches and search by MAC address to find devices on your network, or you just want to be able to determine the physical location of certain equipment (or perhaps even more where it was previously located is important), then you might be interested in taking a look at NeDi.

NeDi constantly scans the network infrastructure and catalogs devices, tracking everything it discovers.

NeDi is free LAMP-related software that regularly scans the MAC addresses and ARP tables on the switches on your network, cataloging each detected device in a local database. This project is not as well known as some others, but it can be a very useful tool when working with corporate networks where devices are constantly changing and moving.

You can run a search through the NeDi web interface to identify a switch, switch port, access point, or any other device by MAC address, IP address, or DNS name. NeDi collects all the information it can from every network device it encounters, pulling from them serial numbers, firmware and software versions, current timings, module configurations, etc. You can even use NeDi to mark the MAC addresses of devices that have been lost or stolen. If they reappear online, NeDi will notify you.

Discovery is run by a cron process at specified intervals. The configuration is simple, with only one configuration file, which allows you to significantly increase the number of settings, including the ability to skip devices based on regular expressions or specified network boundaries. NeDi typically uses the Cisco Discovery Protocol or Link Layer Discovery Protocol to discover new switches and routers and then connects to them to collect their information. Once the initial configuration is established, device discovery will occur quite quickly.

NeDi can integrate with Cacti to a certain level, so it is possible to link device discovery to the corresponding Cacti graphs.

Ntop

The Ntop project—now better known as Ntopng to the “new generation”—has come a long way over the past decade. But call it what you want - Ntop or Ntopng - the result is a top-notch network traffic monitoring tool paired with a fast and simple web interface. It is written in C and is completely self-contained. You start one process configured to a specific network interface, and that's all it needs.

Ntop is a web-based packet analysis tool that shows real-time data about network traffic. Information about the data flow through the host and the connection to the host is also available in real time.

Ntop provides easy-to-digest graphs and tables showing current and historical network traffic, including the protocol, source, destination, and history of specific transactions, as well as the hosts on both ends. Additionally, you'll find an impressive array of real-time network utilization graphs, charts, and maps, as well as a modular architecture for a huge number of add-ons, such as adding NetFlow and sFlow monitors. Here you can even find Nbox, a hardware monitor that is built into Ntop.

In addition, Ntop includes an API for the Lua scripting programming language, which can be used to support extensions. Ntop can also store host data in RRD files to enable continuous data collection.

One of the most useful uses of Ntopng is to control traffic at a specific location. For example, when some network channels are highlighted in red on your network map, but you don’t know why, you can use Ntopng to get a minute-by-minute report on the problematic network segment and immediately find out which hosts are responsible for the problem.

The benefits of such network visibility are difficult to overestimate, and it is very easy to obtain. Essentially, you can run Ntopng on any interface that has been configured at the switch level to monitor a different port or VLAN. That's all.

Zabbix

Zabbix is a full-blown network and system monitoring tool that integrates multiple functions into a single web console. It can be configured to monitor and collect data from the most different servers and network devices, providing maintenance and monitoring the performance of each object.

Zabbix allows you to monitor servers and networks using a wide range of tools, including monitoring virtualization hypervisors and web application stacks.

Basically, Zabbix works with software agents running on controlled systems. But this solution can also work without agents, using the SNMP protocol or other monitoring capabilities. Zabbix supports VMware and other virtualization hypervisors, providing detailed data on hypervisor performance and activity. Particular attention is also paid to monitoring Java application servers, web services and databases.

Hosts can be added manually or through an automatic discovery process. A wide range of default templates apply to the most common use cases such as Linux, FreeBSD and Windows servers; Widely used services such as SMTP and HTTP, as well as ICMP and IPMI for detailed monitoring of network hardware. In addition, custom checks written in Perl, Python or almost any other language can be integrated into Zabbix.

Zabbix allows you to customize your dashboards and web interface to focus on what matters most. important components networks. Notifications and issue escalations can be based on custom actions that are applied to hosts or groups of hosts. Actions can even be configured to trigger remote commands, so your script can run on a monitored host if certain event criteria are observed.

The program displays performance data such as network bandwidth and CPU load in graphs and aggregates it for custom display systems. In addition, Zabbix supports customizable maps, screens, and even slideshows that display the current status of monitored devices.

Zabbix can be difficult to implement initially, but judicious use of automatic discovery and various templates can alleviate some of the integration difficulties. In addition to being an installable package, Zabbix is available as a virtual appliance for several popular hypervisors.

Observium

Observium is a program for monitoring network equipment and servers, which has a huge list of supported devices that use the SNMP protocol. As LAMP software, Observium is relatively easy to install and configure, requiring the usual Apache installations, PHP and MySQL, database creation, Apache configurations and the like. It installs as its own server with a dedicated URL.

Observium combines system and network monitoring with performance trend analysis. It can be configured to track almost any metrics.

You can go into the GUI and start adding hosts and networks, as well as set auto-discovery ranges and SNMP data so Observium can explore the networks around it and collect data on each system it discovers. Observium can also detect network devices via CDP, LLDP or FDP protocols, and remote host agents can be deployed on Linux systems to assist in data collection.

All this collected information is available through an easy to use user interface, which provides advanced capabilities for displaying data statistically, as well as in charts and graphs. You can get anything from ping and SNMP response times to graphs of throughput, fragmentation, number of IP packets, etc. Depending on the device, this data may be available for every detected port.

As for servers, Observium can display status information for them central processor, RAM, data storage, swap, temperature, etc. from the event log. You can also enable data collection and graphical display of performance for various services, including Apache, MySQL, BIND, Memcached, Postfix and others.

Observium works great as virtual machine, so it can quickly become the main tool for obtaining information about the state of servers and networks. This is a great way to add automatic discovery and graphical representation to any size network.

Too often, IT administrators feel limited in what they can do. Regardless of whether we are dealing with custom software application or "unsupported" part hardware, many of us believe that if the monitoring system cannot immediately cope with it, then it is impossible to obtain the necessary data in this situation. This is, of course, not true. With a little effort, you can make almost anything more visible, accounted for, and controlled.

An example is a custom application with a database on the server side, for example, an online store. Your management wants to see beautiful graphs and diagrams, designed in one form or another. If you're already using, say, Cacti, you have several options to output the collected data in the required format. You can, for example, write a simple Perl or PHP script to run queries on the database and pass those calculations to Cacti, or you can make an SNMP call to the database server using a private MIB (Management Information Base). One way or another, the task can be completed, and done easily, if you have the necessary tools for this.

Most of the free network equipment monitoring utilities listed in this article shouldn't be difficult to access. They have packaged versions available for download for the most popular ones Linux distributions, unless they are initially included in it. In some cases they may be pre-configured as virtual server. Depending on the size of your infrastructure, these tools can take quite a bit of time to configure and configure, but once they're up and running, they'll be a solid foundation for you. At the very least, it's worth at least testing them.

No matter which of these above systems you use to keep an eye on your infrastructure and equipment, it will provide you with at least functionality one more system administrator. Although it can’t fix anything, it will monitor literally everything on your network around the clock, seven days a week. The time spent up front on installation and configuration will pay off in spades. Also, be sure to run a small set of standalone monitoring tools on another server to monitor the main monitoring tool. This is a case where it is always better to watch the observer.

Always in touch, Igor Panov.

Program for monitoring network changes. ﻿ The best free system resource monitors. Local network monitoring program