Network Monitoring Software...What do you like?

[Asgorath]

I'm comparing:

What's up Gold
OpenNMS
Zenoss
Nagios
Cacti
CactiEZ
Solarwinds Orion

What do you guys like? Why? What are some of the quirks of the network monitoring software that you've used?

I want to have a one-look interface to all of my servers (~15). They are all running WIndows 2003, ESXi, and maybe some linux in the future (maybe). I want to see server health (disk space, fan failures, critical errors, etc), be able to monitor if services stop, and probably other stuff I haven't even thought of.

When we have problems I feel like we are purely reactive in solving them. I want to become proactive and keep the rack running smooth before anyone even sees any problems.

Thanks in advance for the help and advice!

 

[k1pp3r]

Solarwinds first,
Nagios second

 

[Captain Colonoscopy]

I've setup Nagios before and always liked it. It's free if you don't want support, all you need is a VM or pizza box to run it from.

 

[HoppyChris]

Nagios isn't bad, if you want loads of nifty graphs that look nice, check out Cacti, and especially CactiEZ, I've used it for network equipment, but it'll do the server stuff, too.

 

[Valnar]

Solarwinds first,
Nagios second

+1

Orion is my favorite monitoring app, for the level of detail it provides.