Anything better than Nagios??

MrValentine

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Ok So I need to monitor around 500+ devices (routers, server, polycoms) that are spread out between 15 techs all over TX. I'm looking for something that can email the specific tech when one of their devices goes down. I know that What's Up Gold can do it all but thats $10k+ and thats so expensive its not even a consideration. So I'm looking for a $1k or cheaper solution.

All my googleing has lead me to Nagios. Hows everyone opinions on it? My liniux knowlege is almost 0, so i guess this may be a good time to learn :(

Are there any other solution I should even consider??

Thanks for any help/sugestions
 
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I've been using Nagios for a couple months now and it servers all the purposes I need it to.
I think if you follow the documentation for the easy start it will guide you pretty well.

Though I'm sure it depends what you want it to monitor...if you want some advanced custom scripts running to check specific services on your devices/servers it might be difficult to setup for a beginner.

However should you want to just check some basic windows services like C:\ drive space, cpu load, memory usage uptime, you should be able to dive right in and go with the documentation provided. I would also suggest using a desktop version of Ubuntu, I'm sure there are a bunch of quickstart guides available for it.
 
Far more simple than even that. Just network (ping). Granted monitoring the servers my evolve into something more. (monitoring the SQL, and IIS services).

But for now i'm just looking for uptime for devices on the network.

I'll play with getting an Ubuntu virtual machine going over the weekend i guess.
 
Yeah in that case, as long as you follow the quickstart guides in the documentation you should be solid. If you run into any road bumps lemme know I am more than happy to help a little :)
 
Simple things like Ping and such are fine with Nagios. You can even download a VM app of it and start from there.

However, when it comes to "real" device monitoring, you should at least have some linux knowledge when configuring SNMP discovery, etc.

The company I work for is currently an MSP and we've tested a number of different RMM/Network Monitoring tools.

We've tried HoundDog (GFIMAX), Kaseya, N-Able and MSP Center.

We ended up going with MSP Center by Adventnet (ZOHO) because it was the least expensive and STILL had all the features that we were looking for. We've been using the system for a few months and it was money well spent.

You also need to take into consideration how you are going to monitor these devices. Are they all accessible via VPN? If not, you will most likely have to install a probe or something similar at each client site.

If you have the time and the patience for Nagios, by all means go for it!
 
Zenoss, Zenoss, Zenoss. I can't say it enough so I'l say it again. Zenoss. So much better than nagios for monitoring and reporting. Easy to setup. I know a good sized hosting company here in my state that is migrating everything from their internal stuff, networking equipment, edge routing and even customer stuff away from Nagios to Zenoss.

Check it out
 
I use another piece of software, probably the best out there, however it's quite expensive $4,500 buy in and you need two quite high caliber servers, plus a $450 a month charge... and probably way overkill for just ping.


For $1k you are pretty much stuck with Nagios or Zenoss, especially if you just care for ping functions.... it should be easy to setup.
 
Zenoss seem's to be a nice solution.

It's easy to setup to someone with some linux knowledge. If you don't have any experience with linux zenoss is available as a vmware appliance.
 
I use another piece of software, probably the best out there, however it's quite expensive $4,500 buy in and you need two quite high caliber servers, plus a $450 a month charge... and probably way overkill for just ping.


For $1k you are pretty much stuck with Nagios or Zenoss, especially if you just care for ping functions.... it should be easy to setup.

Out of curiosity, what software are you running?
 
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