Server monitoring software is used to track and measure all activity, operations, and processes that occur on a server. The data gathered from the solution can be aggregated to deliver metrics on performance, health, and efficiency of the server. You are able to understand how specific applications and connections interact with the server in granular detail.
This performance data can provide actionable insights into issues or bottlenecks. The extensive visibility provided by the solution enables organizations to remedy potential security issues and minimize downtime.
For many companies, server downtime will have a serious impact on lost revenue, reduced productivity, and damaged brand image. Problems with the server can also frustrate users who are trying to use it, thereby encouraging them to go elsewhere. Server monitoring allows IT teams to have a full, consolidated view of the server and its overall health, meaning that if something were to occur, they have a better chance at mitigating the impact and reducing downtime.
In this article we have selected the ten best server monitoring solutions on the market today. In each case we will give some context to the vendor, an explanation of the key features, then give our recommendation as to the type of organization that the tool is best suited to.
Datadog is a New York-based company recognised in the server and network performance monitoring space. Their infrastructure monitoring tool is a SaaS-based solution that offers robust metrics, alerting, and visualizations so that teams can optimize any environment. The tool can be deployed on-premises, to hybrid, IoT, or multi-cloud environments. Server data can be grouped through tags and categorizations, allowing for improved search and analytics.
Notably, the solution includes individual DNS servers, allowing admins to isolate metrics from a single server to track performance for individual servers. This granular monitoring capability allows for improved troubleshooting – for DNS server latency, for example – as well as ensuring that processes are streamlined. Server performance can be compared to similar servers, thereby creating baselines, and providing context. Teams can track a processes in its entirety, including its impact on other services, through the solution’s Live Process monitoring feature. This advanced tool does have a learning curve. Therefore, we would recommend Datadog’s server monitoring software for large organizations with adequate resource to onboard and utilize the solution’s range of capabilities.
Based in Waltham, MA, Dynatrace is a key player in the infrastructure and server monitoring space. Their server monitoring software offers full visibility into all environments including the ability to identify and monitor virtual machines. The solution is both proactive and reactive; any changes within your environment are logged by Dynatrace, triggering the software to automatically updating in response to this. Although the software is customizable, it is designed to run “out-of-the-box”. From the moment it is installed, it will begin to monitor containers and cloud environments, giving you valuable information.
Intuitive and intelligent, Dynatrace will learn to understand and develop your server’s baseline metrics, including response times, response rates, behavior, and error rates. Admins will receive immediate alerts for specific events such as new code having a high-level of resource consumption. Visibility with this product is enhanced, allowing insight into all servers and virtualized environments, with admins able to see the effect of every vMotion event. Other key features include availability and performance analysis, visualizers to understand the potential impact of an issue, and AI capabilities that can automatically identify dependencies within your environment. Dynatrace offer a range of pricing models with differing capabilities for different use cases. We would recommend Dynatrace for medium to large sized enterprises that would benefit from the AI and predictive features.
ManageEngine’s OpManager is a powerful, multipurpose networking monitoring software solution that is able to monitor routers, firewalls, VMs, storage devices, as well as servers. OpManager can monitor Hyper-V, VMware, Xen, Nutanix HCI, and Citrix servers. It offers comprehensive and in-depth visibility into all IP-based devices in real-time, with device availability, performance, and health easily viewable. The platform will provide customized alerts (email or SMS) based on a multiple thresholds and anomaly detection.
The platform also includes a network visualization tool, allowing the creation of layer2 maps, virtual topology maps, Business Views, and 3D floor and rack views for data centers allowing enhanced network management. Overall, the platform is sophisticated and provides comprehensive visibility. We would recommend the solution for medium organizations looking to adopt a comprehensive, all-in-one solution.
Microsoft Systems Center is a robust and advanced infrastructure monitoring tool with a variety of applications that include server monitoring. The platform offers comprehensive insights and visibility into your server’s performance and availability. Alongside monitoring capabilities, the platform also provides provisioning, configuration, protection, automation, and self-service features. It can manage a wide range of environments and can effectively unify management across a range of operating systems including Linux, VMware, Hyper-V SQL Server, Azure Stack, and Windows Server. The tool can deliver efficient and consistent server performance across your customer base, using a multi-tenant cloud infrastructure and virtual network management.
Microsoft Systems Center is centrally managed through a clean and intuitive interface, with easy to navigate, real-time dashboards. The platform will diagnose and troubleshoot server and general infrastructure issues to maintain availability, reliability, and optimized performance. It can inventory your assets, deploy software, and automate patch management. Security for this tool is maintained through Microsoft’s Azure security, backup, and log analytics tools. The tool is powerful and works well with other Microsoft products. As this platform does have a learning curve, we would recommend the solution for medium to large sized enterprises that use a Microsoft environment and are looking for a comprehensive infrastructure monitoring solution.
Nagios is a well-established and highly trusted vendor in the software monitoring space. Their solution, Nagios XI, is a comprehensive IT infrastructure monitoring tool that includes both server and network monitoring capabilities. Alongside extensive visibility and monitoring, Nagios XI includes hundreds of third-party addons for monitoring all applications, services, and systems. Also included is a versatile GUI for extensive customization of layout, design, and preferences on a per-user basis. The Nagios Core 4 monitoring engine offers high levels of monitoring server performance.
Notably, Nagios XI has a useful capacity planning feature which offers automated, integrated trending and capacity planning graphs to help plan for upgrades. The solution’s dashboards are particularly clear, ensuring that complex data can be understood easily. Through these dashboards, admins can gain valuable insights through advanced graphs to help identify network incidents faster. The platform also includes multi-tenant capabilities, with multi-user access to a web interface, allowing stakeholders and external users to access relevant information. Security is maintained through personalized, user-specific views which means that clients can only see infrastructure components and information they are authorized for. The solution also has configuration snapshot and configuration wizard features. We would recommend this solution for medium to large sized organizations that may need to share specific information with a range of stakeholders.
NinjaOne is a well-regarded vendor in the remote management and monitoring sphere. Their server monitoring tool is combined with their infrastructure management and monitoring solution. The platform is powerful and easy to use. It includes strong monitoring and alerting capabilities, simplified IT automation, patch management, secure remote access, and integrated cloud backup capabilities. The solution can monitor and support all types of end-user devices, virtual machines, networking devices, and servers from one single, clean user-interface.
The entire platform is managed from a clean and intuitive interface that is quick to navigate and can centralize control. The platform can monitor servers (and other devices and assets) in real-time and automatically alert IT staff whenever anything anomalous is detected. This is further supported by a mobile app that allows teams to receive updates on-the-go and understand crucial details to assist in remediation. The platform is highly scalable, allowing coverage to grow as your company’s infrastructure expands. We would recommend NinjaOne for small to medium sized businesses looking for a comprehensive management system with additional capabilities and features for wider infrastructure management.
Paessler is a German IT infrastructure monitoring vendor. Their solution, Paessler PRTG, is an effective IT infrastructure monitoring solution that offers robust and comprehensive monitoring and alerting. The solution can adapt to a range of environments, with on-prem and cloud-based solutions offered. Paessler PRTG offers extensive visibility, performance, and health metrics. It can also monitor multiple systems and equipment simultaneously. The tool dutifully tracks, monitors, and reports on the CPU capacity, memory usage, disk status, and performance.
Health and performance is detailed through clean and intuitive dashboards that allow for easy navigation and quick metric and data retrieval. These dashboards can also be customized to highlight information of particular concern to your organization. Other notable features include distributed monitoring, multiple interfaces, customizable reporting, SLA reporting, and failover cluster capabilities. The solution has been designed for a range of use cases, with a range of pricing and feature tiering available, as well as subscription and perpetual license options. As such, we would recommend the solution for companies ranging from SMBs to enterprise-grade, as well as MSPs in need of a versatile and comprehensive solution.
The Sematext Infrastructure Monitoring solution is a fully stacked infrastructure monitoring platform that can map and monitor your company’s entire infrastructure in real-time. The tool is designed to operate in both on-premises and cloud environments and can aggregate data metrics from across your entire environment with over 100 integrations. The platform is easy to set up and run, with out-of-the-box dashboards, alerts, and anomaly detection rules. Metrics can be analyzed easily through a range of context-aware filters.
The platform can monitor both current and historical use of all your company’s servers and cloud instances. The platform can analyze memory, disk usage, IO, load, network, and CPU statistics. Through a clean and concise dashboard, admins can filter by tags, disks, hosts, and network interfaces to provide extensive visibility to help your team get the data they need. Sematext also provides an effective, in-house support team, allowing you to gain support when needed. The platform offers customizable plans based on daily data volumes and retention periods. Plans can be chosen based on feature set, then can be further customized to fit specific business needs. This, twinned with the feature-rich and robust platform, makes it a smart choice for SMBs and medium sized enterprises.
VMware vCenter Server is an advanced server management software that helps organizations deliver infrastructure to endpoints and users at scale and in hybrid environments. The platform offers a centralized platform with a clear and intuitive dashboard for simplified management and streamlined monitoring. These user-focused features enable fast analysis and helps teams remediate issues efficiently with visibility into vSphere virtual infrastructure. The tool integrates well with your existing environment, with the scope to extend capabilities through third-party integrations.
vCenter includes single sign-on features to ease user access. Inventory search functions and a HTML5 based vSphere client further improves the solution’s functionality. Datastore and VM specific alarms can be configured to support predetermined net metrics and events, with these triggering automated workflows for immediate remediation. The tool can effectively manage up to 70,000 virtual machines and 5,000 hosts across 15 vCenter instances. VMware’s solution is powerful and designed to operate at scale. We would, therefore, recommend the VMware vCenter Server for medium to large sized businesses.
Zabbix is an open-source IT infrastructure monitoring software solution that provides a clear, single pane view into your entire IT infrastructure stack. The tool can diligently track server performance, server availability, and any configuration changes that may occur. The solution works well within your existing environment, coming with a range of “out-of-the-box” templates that provide pre-configured settings such as triggers, applications, screens, rules, and graphs. Zabbix works well with leading servers and operating systems, including organizations like IBM, Lenovo, and Dell.
Zabbix can identify multi-level dependencies between network nodes, helping it to detect root cause failures. The solution can perform flexible and extensive data gathering, calculate and aggregate metrics, and process collected data. It is optimized for high performance and can operate at scale. Other notable features for this product include LDAP authentication, flexible user permissions, and buffer monitoring data. The platform can use task automation for configuration management, retrieve monitoring data, and generate custom reports. This open-source platform is easy to use, and we would, therefore, recommend Zabbix for small businesses looking for a straightforward and transparent solution.
FAQs
What Is Server Monitoring Software?
Server monitoring refers to the process tracking and logging key server metrics to gain visibility into activity, to check for performance health, and other optimization metrics. As servers deal with the vast amounts of information that is delivered to potentially hundreds and thousands of devices, apps, and users, it is important that server health is maintained. If its performance is not optimized, or there are any bottlenecks, this could have a knock-on impact on the rest of the network.
Server monitoring software helps to ensure that a server is working as it should, providing alerting and notification to IT teams who can remediate any issues.
How Does Server Monitoring Software Work?
Server monitoring methods depend on the type of server that is being monitored. Generally, server monitoring begins with admins deciding what metric they want tracked on each server. Once you know what KPIs (key performance indicators) you are trying to monitor, the server monitoring tool can be configured to identify relevant information. This gathered data will be compared with expectations, allowing admins to identify anomalies and discrepancies.
Server monitoring tools will collate information and data regarding issues, events, and user activity. The monitoring software will then carry out advanced analysis and comparison, triggering alert notifications when necessary.
What Are The Benefits Of Server Monitoring Software?
Implementing server monitoring software’s main benefit is that IT administrators can detect performance issues before they affect end users. The faster that admins can identify potential issues, the faster they can resolve it.
Ultimately, this saves time, thereby reducing the potential impact of an issue. Server monitoring software can gather data and metrics on a range of events, pinpointing specific issues. This information is invaluable when it comes to resolution as it can detail key troubleshooting data.
Top Features In Server Monitoring Software
Not every vendor on the market will offer the same capabilities; some may have more features or excel in a particular use case. It’s always good to keep in mind some key features and any additional benefits that a potential solution can offer your business.
- Real-time monitoring and reporting: As server monitoring software tracks the general health and performance of your server, it is important that the solution can do so in real-time to allow for fast remediation in the event of a security issue or downtime.
- Performance dashboards: All information gathered by the solution should be displayed through clean, intuitive, and customizable dashboards to ensure that admins understand issues in their entirety.
- Server availability monitoring: While this type of solution can monitor a range of metrics, one of the most useful to track is server availability. This details usage in real-time, allowing you to manage capacity.
