Episode 5 – Network Monitoring

We returned to record our fifth episode on Sunday May 15, 2016.

Interesting News and Events

Roundtable Discussion – Network Monitoring

  • Network Monitoring (is something up or down?)
  • Performance Monitoring (how is something performing?)
  • Application Monitoring (is an application functioning properly?)
  • Environmental Monitoring (how humid or hot is my data center?)
  • Electrical Monitoring (what’s the state of my PDUs, UPSs, generators?)
  • Why should we monitor
  • What should we monitor
  • How should we monitor: SNMP , Agent …
  • Categorys of Monitoring Tools : Alarming , Graphs, Trap receivers , Flow Analyzer,
  • Vendor specific tools
  • Overview of available tools at Wikipedia:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_network_monitoring_systems
  • Vendor Products: PRTG, SolarWinds, HP OpenView, CA Spectrum, Microsoft SCOM, Statseeker, WahtsupGold, Grafana, Zabbix
  • Open Source: Nagios, Icinga, Check_MK (OMD), MRTG, RRD, Cacti,
  • Custom crafted Monitoring:
  • US department of Energy (https://my.es.net/)
  • Challanges:
    • Active vs passive monitoring (MPLS Explorer)
    • Visibility (https://my.es.net)
    • Maps and visualization
    • Keep it up to date
    • custom check development

What tools are you using?

Dominik highly recommends that folks check out Check_MK, if they are interested in looking at a new monitoring solution. Mike suggests you also give a look at PRTG, there is a 100 sensor version of PRTG available for free.

Cheers!