Server monitoring tools enable users to recognize and resolve any kind of performance or application hosting issues with ease. This is done by constantly keeping track of the server’s performance along with using certain monitoring strategies. These strategies come in handy for monitoring system resources such as memory, CPU usage, I/O network, etc.
A server monitoring tool allows drawing comparisons between the monitored performance statistics and the performance benchmarks. Based on the results, various optimization techniques can be applied to the servers to improve their performance by minimizing the downtime as much as possible.
In this article, we will be discussing the top 15 server monitoring tools that you can use to solve various issues related to server monitoring.
15 Best Server Monitoring Tools
Here’s the list of the top-rated server monitoring tools to ensure your server runs smoothly without any issues:
1. Paessler PRTG
PRTG is a network monitoring tool for monitoring IT-related resources such as IP, bandwidth, server, network, and applications. This tool is compatible with small as well as enterprise-level applications.
It is an all-in-one tool that can monitor anything related to the server such as CPU load, RAM usage, hard disk capacity, virtual machines, and cloud environments. The server administrators can view the server environment, reports, and customizable dashboards altogether to perform the required analytics. Also, it comes with an in-built email and SMS alert system in case any critical situation arises in the server. It comes with a 20 days free trial that gives access to a limited set of features.
2. WhatsUp Gold
WhatsUp Gold server monitoring system is mainly used for systems powered by Windows OS. It has the capability of producing comprehensive interactive maps to understand the whole network infrastructure. It is used to monitor applications, traffic flow in the system, web servers, virtual machines, and LAMP environments.
It provides solutions for various server environments such as SQL, AWS, and Azure. WhatsUp Gold comes with a real-time monitoring and alert system that sends SMS or email alerts in case of any irregularities detected in the functioning of the server. The monitored data can be integrated with other applications to enable task automation.
3. Netwrix Auditor for Windows Server
Netwrix Auditor Windows Server is an ideal tool for detecting and fixing server performance issues with ease. It examines the system settings rapidly and can determine the latest configural changes along with their causes. The complete server timeline is visible in real-time. In case any suspicious activity is observed by the tool, a notification is sent to the user.
This is an enterprise-level monitoring tool that gives complete transparency to its users in terms of viewing the changes, configurations, and also provides access to the cloud data. With this tool, you can perform risk assessments, file analysis, user activity monitoring, understanding the threat patterns, and alert monitoring. You can opt for a 20 days free trial which will come with a reduced set of features.
4. Datadog
Datadog is a server monitoring tool that focuses on surveillance, analytics, and safety of various cloud applications. It uses automation to enhance application performance, log management, infrastructure surveillance and provide real-time tracking facilities.
It is a cloud-based tool that offers customizable views, metrics aggregations, a SaaS-based environment, automation tools for monitoring, and bug tracking facilities. However, it lacks automated device detection and requires users to set it up manually. It comes with a 14 days free trial with access to limited features.
5. Panopta
Panopta is a SaaS-based server monitoring tool that assists users to track server and network performance. It is suitable for public, private, and hybrid cloud environments. The incident handler available within the tool plays an important role in incident management and resolving performance issues.
This tool can perform regular automated checks on disk usage, application performance as well as load balancing. The dashboards depict the server monitoring reports in the form of histograms, color-coded heat maps, and topology charts. This tool has amazing integration capabilities with numerous third-party applications for the purpose of remote monitoring. It offers a 30 days free trial to users.
6. Atera
Atera is a consolidated server monitoring tool with many capabilities such as remote monitoring, service automation, patch management, remote access, reporting, billing, etc. This tool enables client access from a central location. Users can save a lot of their time by utilizing remote management and patch management features offered by Atera.
This in turn enables users to perform preventive maintenance with great ease. The major advantage of this tool is that it can integrate with several popular third-party applications such as Teamviewer and Splashtop. You can opt for its 30-days free trial to test out if the tool can meet your server monitoring requirements or not.
7. OpsView Monitor
OpsView Monitor is a comprehensive server monitoring tool that is used by IT technicians as well as service providers. The main highlights of this tool include a customizable dashboard, detailed reports, real-time alerts, graphs, and process maps that make it easy to monitor various web servers easily.
OpsView can be integrated with Elastic Stack for system monitoring and automation. It is able to detect customer issues beforehand and provide an SLA dashboard for providing effective customer support. It is a user-friendly tool with remarkable integration options.
8. Cacti
Cacti is a free and open-source network monitoring tool that enables users to visualize the network performance graphs that are created on the basis of statistical data. It uses the SNMP protocol to collect the data, which is later split into discrete instances for restructuring the data into a meaningful visual representation.
The tool is used to create time-series graphs of different types of data such as bandwidth and CPU utilization. Cacti can also monitor network traffic with the help of a router or network switch.
9. Icinga
Icinga is another free and open-source network monitoring tool. Currently, there are two versions of this tool. The first one is Icinga 1.x, which is compatible with various Nagios configurations and plug-ins. Icinga 2 is the second version, which is more user-friendly and performance-oriented in nature with multi-threaded modular architecture.
Icinga can be integrated with various monitoring packages such as inGraph, PNP4Nagios, and Graphite for the purpose of reliable visualization. It is used to manage network resources, generate alerts to notify issues, and resolve them. This tool is based on REST API and provides security and authentication facilities.
10. Nagios XI
Nagios XI is an all-in-one network monitoring tool that comes with an intuitive and reliable user interface. It enables users to monitor servers, network channels, and services constantly. For instance, a user can continuously monitor the disk utilization, CPU utilization, RAM usage, and internet connection latency of a server.
It provides customized email and SMS notification facilities and users can decide who needs to be notified when a certain situation arises. Additionally, all the monitored devices on the network are displayed in the form of logical representation with different color coding techniques indicating different kinds of problems. This tool is recommended to use due to its advanced reporting, monitoring, and configuration features.
11. Ntop
Ntop is one of the best network monitoring tools that provide the network traffic details in real-time. It also represents host connections and dataflows in the form of graphs and tables. It has a modular architecture, and the tool supports a variety of add-ons and extensions.
This server monitoring tool can also keep records of the host data and store them permanently in RRD files. Moreover, it reports the problematic network segments and the hosts due to which a certain issue has occurred.
12. NeDi
NeDi is a free and open-source network monitoring tool that constantly monitors the network infrastructure and detects all the connected end-nodes. It is mainly used for managing enterprise-level networks. It constantly scans all the MAC addresses and ARP tables of network switches and stores each detected node in the database.
The tool is suitable for networks involving the dynamic movement of connected devices. This tool has many key features such as network topology visualization, locate and track computer devices, security audits, virtual machine management, and generation of IT reports.
13. Spiceworks Network Monitor
Spiceworks Network Monitor is a free server monitoring tool and is ideal for managing servers and networks. It can perform a complete scan of all the nodes in the server or cloud and even backup nodes. The tool is easy to implement while also being extremely flexible and scalable. Spiceworks Network Monitor keeps track of memory management, disk activity, and resource management.
With this tool, users can perform physical or virtual monitoring depending on the situation. However, there are a few disadvantages linked with this tool like it does not resolve the issues with the systems that are going down, though physically they are functioning properly after some downtime. The only option to revive them is to delete or re-add them back to the network.
14. Zabbix
Zabbix is an open-source network and system monitoring tool. It collects data from numerous components such as servers, networks, cloud services, and virtual machines. For monitoring server networks, it can utilize tools such as hypervisors and various application frameworks. It can run with agents in controlled systems as well as run without them using SNMP protocol.
The tool supports many hypervisors such as Hyper-V and VMware. It provides various metrics such as disk usage, CPU load, and network utilization. The monitoring configuration utilizes the XML-based templates. Zabbix is supported on Linux, Unix, macOS, Solaris, and Windows systems. Some of its key features include high performance, auto-discovery of servers, distributed monitoring, remote command execution, secure user authentication, and flexible user permissions.
15. Netdata
Netdata is a free and open-source server monitoring tool intended to collect real-time information about the server such as CPU utilization, memory management, disk activity, bandwidth, visited websites, etc. This collected information is then displayed in real-time charts as well as dashboards.
It uses real-time alert functions in case a certain discrepancy occurs in the live dashboard. It acts as a distributed tool that monitors the health and performance of web applications in real-time. It is a lightweight yet powerful tool to perform server monitoring. It is supported by various operating systems such as Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, etc.
Wrapping Up
To conclude, we can say that there are a wide variety of server monitoring tools available in the market. Depending on the functionalities and the features required for monitoring the server, you can make a wise selection from the above-listed server monitoring tools. Before going for the paid version of a server monitoring tool, it’s better to test out the tool by opting for its free trial, if available.
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