How can you monitor the overall status and health of your network?
So you’ve just finished rolling out 500 new desktops using disk imaging, and you’re keeping them updated using WSUS. How are you going to monitor the overall status and health of your network?
There is a wealth of excellent network monitoring software available, both commercial and open source. One problem with many of them is that they are really geared towards the very large network. Monitoring 1000 servers, 300 switches, 100 routers and 15 firewalls on 3 continents is very different from monitoring 10 servers, 2 switches, 1 router and 1 firewall in a single office. Commercial monitoring software is probably going to be prohibitively expensive for a small network.
JFFNMS (Just For Fun Network Management System) is an excellent open source network monitoring package you can run on any spare Windows or Linux server. Don’t let the name fool you, it is a full-featured piece of software which includes autodiscovery, fully configurable alerts, performance graphing, reporting and network mapping.
Installation and configuration is pretty typical for an open source project (meaning a bit more complex than a typical Windows installer package) but I’m sure any experienced administrator can handle it. You will also need to install and configure SNMP on any machine you want to monitor. (Full disclosure and shameless plug: I wrote the new version of the Windows installation instructions.)
After installation, the rest of the configuration is done from a remote browser interface. You add your individual machines and interfaces to the monitoring system and set what parameter changes you want to be notified about. You can monitor pretty much any part of the system that can be queried by SNMP, such as free disk space, network utilization, processor usage, reachability, or if a specific application is running. You can then be alerted when a specific threshold is met or event occurs. You can create pretty graphs to better show trends and create reports of system uptime and availability.
Even in a small network a good NMS allows the administrator to keep on top of the network and be alerted to any potential problems before they result in downtime. It’s much better to receive an email telling you the mail server is running out of disk space than to start getting angry calls from users complaining the mail server is down.
Try a working demo.
Download JFFNMS.
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about 4 years ago
As y’all know I love the VMWare Virtual Appliances.
I’ve been using this one since July and it is great, and pretty simple, but can be very complex at the same time if you really want some granular knowledge of everything and have the time to dig into all the stuff about it.
Anyway, without further ado, I give you the Zenoss monitoring virtual appliance.
about 4 years ago
First of all im the only schmuck using old school retail tools. Looks like i got two new toys to try out when im back in the office Tuesday.
@PD what is your affiliation with the project?
@SlothMan How much easier is Zenoss? does trade functionality for ease of use?
about 4 years ago
Karl – My only affiliation with the project is the new Windows installation instructions.
I heard about the product and did a test install. I had A LOT of problems getting it running and after searching the forums found that there were several errors and outdated information in the install doc. I asked the author if I could rewrite the doc and he was happy to have me do it.
I don’t understand why he hasn’t removed the old ones since they are known to be incorrect.
about 4 years ago
Zenoss is a nice product too. In general NMS will trade power for complexity. I think finding the sweet spot for you depends on the size of your network and what level of detail you need. There is a LOT of open source monitoring software available so it’s easy to test them out.
about 3 years ago
I use SpiceWorks (http://www.spiceworks.com) “>http://www.spiceworks.com) at work (well in the interest of full disclosure I also use Nagios in concert with spiceworks).
This software is so good it's almost a crime that it's free (I – scratch that – my work does donate though). I just can't recommend it enough, and as a bonus they are about to release v3 with even more features!
about 3 years ago
I use SpiceWorks (http://www.spiceworks.com) “>http://www.spiceworks.com) at work (well in the interest of full disclosure I also use Nagios in concert with spiceworks).
This software is so good it's almost a crime that it's free (I – scratch that – my work does donate though). I just can't recommend it enough, and as a bonus they are about to release v3 with even more features!
about 3 years ago
I'm using Nagios too.
With the Centeon web interface. Both open source and free.
I've added a GSM modem and an unix app called Kannel to automatically send SMS to my mobile phone when there's some problems on my network. Verrrrry useful !
about 3 years ago
How hard was it to set up that gsm modem? Is that a feature of the software or can I use something like that on my servers natively?
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about 3 years ago
I would love to hear more about what and how you guys are using Nagios and SpiceWorks. Please be as detailed as you can our inquiring readers NEED to know! Also if you want to do an in-depth walk through or introduction feel free to send me something to tips at askTheAdmin.com.
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about 3 years ago
Ok, well I use Nagios to monitor things like system status and service status, and then we are using SpiceWorks to monitor for things like low disk space, and low toner in our printers. I'm sure with some fiddling I could use Nagios to monitor the toner levels (not real sure about monitoring disk space on Win32 systems with it though), however SpiceWorks monitors all that good stuff without having to configure the alerts (those are some of the native alerts already configured).
My predecessor set up Nagios initially, and it works well for monitoring uptime and service availability, however I like things I don't have to monkey with too much. Anything I want Nagios to monitor I have to specifically define in the config file, and may have to write SNMP traps for.
SpiceWorks on the other hand will automatically detect any device I connect to the network, and has default monitoring for several things (low disk space, certain event log errors, software install events, low toner in printers, etc.) so I pretty much don't have to do anything and the new assets are already being protected.
I guess technically I could remove Nagios and just use SpiceWorks, however I also use Nagios to monitor several external networks (and services) for friends and don't know that SpiceWorks would be a good replacement for THAT.
Our main "Awesome!" feature of SpiceWorks is the integrated Helpdesk, followed closely by the thorough reporting capabilities (if you've ever been asked how many machines in the network have the .NET framework 1.1 installed, you'll appreciate the concept of just being able to run a quick report – which you can then save as a .pdf, or .csv, or well you get the drift).
Since the product is free, and is truly painless to set up I totally recommend that everyone pull it down and install it (just on a workstation works fine) so that they can see just how awesome this software is.
I may write a full on review of it from install to complete use, but I am kinda jammed up at the moment for time at work, and if I am going to do that I want to make it worthwhile, so I'll let you know when I've had time to do it (it will likely be a week or two before I have that kind of time, but it is definitely something I would like to do to give back to a site that I really enjoy and find useful).
about 3 years ago
Thanks Joe! I will be looking forward to it. Give me a shout at karl at asktheadmin dot com if I an be of any assistance in preparing the article.
about 3 years ago
Will do.
about 2 years ago
I know this is an old article, but I am hoping that this might still get an answer. I am running a very small home network (2 laptops, a desktop, and a wireless printer). On occasion, like this evening, something is hitting the network hard, and the pictures The Warden was trying to print got bogged down. And then, my iTunes downloads got stopped later, but not at the same time. So, what is a user to do? I don’t have a proper server, and I don’t fully understand the magic of network monitoring tools, so how do I track the problem? Any suggestions?