Monitoring Overview
Christian Külker
version 0.1.5
2021-05-19
An overview regarding monitoring solutions, the foundation of system administration
Table Of Contents

Introduction

Free Open Source Software has a long tradition in providing system monitoring software. And this domain is still a stronghold for traditional programming languages of system administrators, shell and Perl.

This overview distinguish basically two different kind of Monitoring software: All purpose server monitoring and special device monitoring. Of course the boarders are blurred. While MRTG started as a special network device monitoring tool where the focus is to know what happened in the past. For example how much traffic has been seen last month. This is marked as ‘Usage’. The other solutions, like the Nagios orientated ones, focus more on the question if a certain server is up or not and if the data of certain devices are in expected ranges or not. This is marked as ‘Mon.’.

Overview

Software Language/Dependency Query Deb Kind License URL
CACTI PHP5 Mysql Perl Apache yes GPL 🡺
CENTREON
CHECK_MK 🡺
GANGLIA C, Perl, PHP, Python yes 🡺
ICINGA Perl Nag. yes Mon. GPLv2/3 🡺 🡺
ICINGA2 C++, web: PHP Nag. yes Mon. 🡺 🡺
MANTIS
MRTG Perl SNMP yes Usage 🡺
MUNIN Perl httpd yes Usage 🡺
NAV GPLv3 🡺
NETSAINT
NAGIOS3 Perl Nag. yes Mon. 🡺
OBSERVIUM PHP SNMP no Observium 🡺
OPSVIEW
OP5/NINJA
OP5/MONITOR
SHINKEN Phython Nag. yes Mon. AGPL v3 🡺
THRUK
ZABBIX C PHP yes GPLv2 🡺 
Nag.  - Nagios query type, including nrpe
Usage - Tool display usage as target, no warnings
Mon.  - Tool monitors, give warnings

Other

Web Interfaces

Software Application URL
Thruk Naemon Icinga Shinken Nagios 🡺

Source

Software Repository
chekMK github
icinga2 github
icinga2-web github
icinga2-puppet github
nagios4-nagioscore github
Shinken github

Conference

Software URL
icinga icingaconf

History

Version Date Notes
0.1.5 2021-05-19 Formatting for Quick-Guide
0.1.4 2020-02-14 comparison links
0.1.3 2016-07-02 +NETSAINT to overview
0.1.2 2016-07-01 +MANTIS to overview
0.1.1 2016-06-29 Improve overview
0.1.0 2016-06-22 Initial version with overview