Server monitoring, without a doubt, is the most important task that any IT professional will perform in their day-to-day work. This process ensures that all production servers and applications are running at peak performance without any issues. With the best server monitoring tools, you can prepare automated reports, run scheduled scans, and get preemptive warnings related to server health degradation in your operating environment.
What are the best server monitoring software? The software utilizes multi-layered technologies, advanced algorithms, and protocols such as SNMP, WMI, ICMP, PerfMon, and more, depending on what the program will monitor and run in what environment.
How Can Server Monitoring Software Help?
Well, with a server monitor, you can check almost everything about your device, including CPU usage, RAM consumption, hard drive usage, device temperature, hardware health warnings, monitor user logins, suspicious activity on your server, virtual machine alerts, and more.
| Top 7 server monitoring utilities | About the tool |
|---|---|
| Nagios XI | Based on the free Nagios Core, it is a comprehensive infrastructure monitoring system with effective server monitoring capabilities. |
| SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor | The right tool for tracking the performance of critical server components and every application running on each server. |
| Zabbix | Free server monitoring tool that is highly compatible with all popular operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. |
| Progress WhatsUp Gold | A great Windows network performance monitor that scales easily to monitor servers and applications. |
| Paessler PRTG | Brings the ultimate server monitoring toolkit that can track overall performance issues, network and application performance. |
| Datadog Network Performance Monitoring | Cloud-based server monitoring system for on-site, removal, or hybrid network resources. |
| Icinga | Open source free server performance monitoring tools for your servers, applications, and networks. |
Here’s a collection of the best server monitoring software to help you keep an eye on your infrastructure and do more.
Top 7 Best Paid and Free Server Monitoring Software
Let’s discuss the features that all of these server monitoring software have to offer and their respective pros and cons.
Nagios XI
| Website: https:www.nagios.com/products/nagios-xi/ |
| Best for: Small, medium, and large businesses |
| Free Plan: Available |
| Pricing: From $1,995 for Standard and $3,495 for Enterprise |
Server Monitoring Software Download: Nagios offers top-notch network monitoring solutions, and Nagios XI and Nagios Core are among the best utilities available for this purpose. The Nagios Core is the lower-end version and is also cheaper. Nagios XI, on the other hand, is designed to meet enterprise-level needs with advanced reporting, including SLA reports, better performance charts, and more.
Features: Nagios XI
- Customizable dashboards with user-specific needs.
- Enjoy instant remote host access.
- Ability to monitor servers, network elements, applications, system metrics, and custom services.
- Smart alerting systems for email, mobile, RSS, customization, and more.
- Prepare automated reports for performance graphs, SLA reports, capacity planning, and more.
merit
- Distributed monitoring is supported.
- Network map.
- Powerful monitoring engine and updated web interface.
shortcoming
- More monitoring agents must be included.
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
| Website: https:www.solarwinds.com/server-application-monitor |
| Best for: Small, medium, and large businesses |
| Free Plan: Available |
| Pricing: From $1,622 |
What are the best server monitoring software? SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is one of the best options for our server monitoring system, with an amazing range of features and pricing models. The software helps system administrators manage and control critical services and applications running on Windows and Linux servers. You can rely on the tool to handle questions about hard drive management, memory utilization, and other key performance metrics that can be managed in real-time.
Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor
- Ability to monitor Hyper-Visor statistics, cloud, and other SaaS products.
- Automatic mapping and discovery of applications and dependencies.
- Out-of-the-box support for more than 200 applications for Windows and Linux.
- With over 800 custom user-generated monitoring templates.
- Granular monitoring of RAM, hard disk usage, processor usage, general hardware within the server, and more.
- Out-of-the-box cloud monitoring for Amazon ec2, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace.
merit
- Easy-to-use web-based dashboard.
- Pre-packaged and pre-built reports for quick setup.
- Supported operating systems: Windows, Linux, JAVA, Active Directory, Citrix, etc.
shortcoming
- Reduce reliance on proxies.
Zabbix
| Website: https:www.zabbix.com/ |
| Best for small businesses |
| Free Plan: – |
| Pricing: Open-source and free server monitoring software |
Collection of Best Server Monitoring Software: With the slogan “Monitor Everything”, Zabbix offers a plethora of solutions and services for any type of IT infrastructure. These include network monitoring, server monitoring, cloud monitoring, application and service monitoring. It offers decent notification and alert modules packaged in an easy-to-use interface.
Features: Zabbix
- Graphical user interface.
- Web-based server monitoring system.
- Multiple monitoring modules are included in a single package.
- Provides a large number of metrics such as CPU usage, free disk space, fan status, and more.
- Out-of-the-box templates for popular servers like HP, IBM, Dell, etc. with operating systems like Linux, Ubuntu, and Solaris.
merit
- Ability to configure directly from the web interface.
- Zabbix Agent helps with capacity planning and monitoring.
- Excellent reporting system with charts, slides, and more.
shortcoming
- Requires considerable knowledge of operating systems, databases, and PHP tuning.
Progress WhatsUp Gold
| Website: https:www.whatsupgold.com/ |
| Best for: Small, medium, and large businesses |
| Free Plan: Available |
| Pricing: A quote needs to be requested |
Server Monitoring Software Download: WhatsUp Gold is another great server monitoring program designed to manage and monitor servers on the Windows operating system. It is equipped with powerful Layer 2/3 discovery. The tool is effective enough for monitoring web servers, applications, virtual machines, and traffic across Windows, JAVA, and LAMP environments.
Features: Progress WhatsUp Gold
- Not only scan the network, but also understand the architecture of the network.
- De-duplicate devices from your network.
- Provides inventory reports on network assets, hardware, and warranty status.
- Continuously monitor your servers to identify potential issues and fix them immediately.
- Helps monitor performance, CPU usage, traffic load, temperature, and more.
merit
- Improved UI with enhanced visualization capabilities.
- Map-centric viewing.
- Hyper-V support is IPv6 compatible.
shortcoming
- There is no dedicated feature set. Device status can be monitored up/down.
Paessler PRTG
| Website: https:www.paessler.com/prtg |
| Best for: Small, medium, and large businesses |
| Free Plan: Available |
| Pricing: $1,750/$500 Sensor – PRTG 500 Edition, $3,200/$1000 Sensor – PRTG 1000 Edition, $6,500/$2500 Sensor – PRTG 2500 Edition, $11,500/$5,000 Sensor – PRTG 5000 Version 5000 PRTG500XL/$1/$1 Sensor |
Server Monitoring Software Download: PRTG is an all-in-one infrastructure monitoring software designed with sensor-based algorithms that scale on-demand to your organization’s needs. Thus, being one of the best server monitoring software for small, medium, and large businesses. With all three features for monitoring networks, servers, and applications, you can find all the right ones for your goals.
Feature: Paessler PRTG
- Multiple user interfaces for desktop applications. Customize accordingly.
- Real-time maps and dashboards.
- Distributed monitoring system to manage multiple networks in different locations.
- Provides advanced in-depth reports with statistics, charts, and more.
- Built-in alerting technology for push notifications, Slack messaging, email notifications, and more.
merit
- A 30-day free trial is available.
- The free version allows users to monitor up to 100 sensors for a lifetime.
- Mobile apps for Android and iOS are supported.
shortcoming
- There are no weekly custom reports for audit needs.
Datadog network performance monitoring
| Website: https:www.datadoghq.com/lpg/ |
| Best for: Small, medium, and large businesses |
| Free Plan: Available |
| Pricing: $15/host/month – Pro, $23/host/month – Enterprise |
What are the best server monitoring software? Named a 2019 Leader in Intelligent Application and Server Monitoring by The Forrester Wave. It has a centralized dashboard with multiple monitoring and control metrics. It provides several types of core server applications for web servers, operating systems, and database application servers.
Features: Datadog Network Performance Monitoring
- A robust set of integrations that make it easy to detect any type of server.
- Real-time performance monitoring tools.
- Get specifics from servers, databases, services, applications, and more.
- Provides drag-and-drop dashboards for easy analysis and comparison of different performance metrics and events.
merit
- It is highly praised by service providers for its simple cloud hosting model.
- Ability to aggregate metrics and events across the stack.
- Many automation, monitoring and instrumentation tools.
shortcoming
- Only a 14-day free trial is available.
Icinga
| Website: https:icinga.com/ |
| Best for small businesses |
| Free Plan: – |
| Pricing: Open-source and free server monitoring software |
Collection of Best Server Monitoring Software: Icinga is 100% free and open-source server monitoring software that runs on most popular Linux distributions, Ubuntu, Debian, and more. The tool provides a fast web interface that gives you access to all relevant data. Its integrated monitoring engine has powerful monitoring capabilities to monitor large environments, including data centers.
Feature: Icinga
- Rule-based configuration.
- Performance monitoring includes regional and cluster monitoring.
- Dedicated alert sending module with text notifications.
- It is a suitable option for users who prefer to manage their monitoring software without the command line.
merit
- Highly customizable dashboard.
- Modular architecture and multi-threaded design are available.
- Easy integration with multiple software packages for monitoring.
shortcoming
- There is no simple mechanism for adding new hosts and services.
Frequently Asked Questions:
What is Server Monitoring and Management?
Server monitoring is a specialized process that provides insight into the activities on a server, whether physical or virtual. You can use any of the best server monitoring software to ensure that all of your organization’s servers are working according to the expectations and requirements of your IT infrastructure.
Which is the best server monitoring tool?
Nagios XI is one of the best tools for managing and monitoring servers. Based on the free Nagios Core, it is a comprehensive infrastructure monitoring system with effective server monitoring capabilities.
Which is the best network monitoring tool in Linux?
Server monitoring software downloads: SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, Nagios Network Analyzer, Icinga 2 are some of the best options on the market right now.
