Systems/Network Monitoring

HuwWJ · Post by **HuwWJ** » 2009/07/13 11:38:49

Hi,

I've just started work as a sys admin in a local college and thought I might ask some of you experienced guys for some advice. :)

The college is based on five different sites with slightly flakey 2Mbit links connecting them. I'm looking for some open source network/systems monitoring software which will give me and the other tech people a 'live' view of network/systems health. Any recommendations? At the moment I'm looking at Cacti - but I'm open to recommendations from sysadmins with more experience.

TIA

Huw

pjwelsh · Post by **pjwelsh** » 2009/07/13 13:30:15

Cacti is a good choice and well used. For a HUGE list of options, check out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_network_monitoring_systems

BUT... cacti is really not "live", it's polled...

TheZub · Post by **TheZub** » 2009/07/31 12:13:06

Hey

I'm very impressed with my Nagios setup... I'm network administrator for 35 public schools, giving me about 350 switches plus 400 radio ports for our wireless network, plus the server admins is also using it to monitor their servers...

But Nagios in it self is not that easy to configure and setup, so we are in the process of converting over to Opsview... An opensource monitoring system, based on Nagios.

I would recommend either Opsview or Nagios if you don't mind doing configuration in text files on the monitoring server.

Kind regards
Jacob

bigbearomaha · Post by **bigbearomaha** » 2009/08/04 13:36:41

I believe I would second the Nagios choice. it has been around quite awhile, is well documented and well supported. There are plenty of people with experience using it and it has one of the best recommendation levels I have seen for that type of software. MRTG is sometimes mentioned in the same breath, but personally, I lean to Nagios.

Big Bear

HuwWJ · Post by **HuwWJ** » 2009/08/04 15:07:20

Thanks guys. Plenty of stuff for me to consider!! :)

CentOS