BEST System Monitoring Software | Top Tools for 2021

Lawrence WilliamsByLawrence Williams Hours Updated

A System Monitoring tool is a software that tracks the resources and performance of any system. The main reason for using a system monitoring tool is to detect the system issues, identify the root cause, and get them resolved quickly. It helps you to visualize your network by using real-time heatmaps with live status information.

Following is a handpicked list of Top System Monitoring tools, with their popular features and website links. The list contains both open source (free) and commercial (paid) software.

Best System Monitoring Tools

Name Free trial Deployment Pricing Links
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Yes Web-based and on-premises. Pricing starts at $1,622 Learn More
PRTG Network Monitor Yes Web-based and Cloud-based. $ 1,750 Perpetual license Learn More
ManageEngine OpManager Yes Web-based and Cloud-based Pricing Starts at $245 to monitor 10 devices. Learn More

1) SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Server and Application Monitor is a tool that can make application and server monitoring simple and easy. This system monitoring tool allows you to visualize application dependencies.

Features:

  • It allows you to monitor AWS, SaaS, LaaS, and PaaS.
  • This tool enables you to perform infrastructure dependency mapping.
  • Server Configuration Monitor supports more than 1200 application monitoring templates.
  • You can monitor multiple sites and cloud environments like Azure and AWS.
  • Provides custom monitoring with WMI, REST API, SNMP, and PowerShell scripts.
  • This is one of the best system monitoring software that offers customizable monitoring of the server.
  • Pricing: $1,622 for lifetime plan.
  • Mobile Apps: No.

2) PRTG Network Monitor

PRTG Network Monitor is a system monitoring tool that helps you check all the devices, systems, traffic, and applications in your I.T. infrastructure. It is a suitable business solution for organizations of all sizes.

Features:

  • PRTG can scan network segments by pinging specific I.P. ranges.
  • It allows you to create web pages with up-to-date monitoring data in your desired design.
  • You can visualize your networks using real-time maps with live status and historical data information.
  • This server monitoring software helps you to visualize your network by using real-time heatmaps with live status information.
  • Allows failover tolerant monitoring, including sending of notifications.
  • PRTG alerts you when it finds problems or unusual metrics.
  • Alerts you when it sees warnings or unusual metrics in your network.
  • Pricing: It starts at $1,750 for a lifetime plan.
  • Mobile Apps: iOS and Android.

3) ManageEngine OpManager

ManageEngine OpManager is a unified network systems monitoring and management solution for efficient and seamless IT Operations Management. This tool is suitable for enterprises, distributed networks, SMBs, etc.

Features:

  • Dashboards, heat maps, business views, network device grouping, for better network overview.
  • Unified network performance monitoring, server and VM monitoring, switch monitoring, router monitoring, WLC monitoring, hardware monitoring.
  • With the ManageEngine Applications Manager plug-in for OpManager, you can monitor critical performance metrics of your business applications both on premise & cloud.
  • Pricing: Starts at $245 to monitor 10 devices.

4) Network Bandwidth Analyzer

Network Bandwidth Analyzer is a tool that enables you to monitor the performance of the network. It helps you to track response time, availability, switches, and more.

Features:

  • You can find which network application uses the most bandwidth.
  • Provides visual analysis for a device with a delivery path
  • This application can monitor the fault of your network
  • You can see changes along the path and fin service provider issue
  • The tool allows you to drag and drop performance metrics on a timeline
  • Monitor the logical component of the SDN (Software Defined Networking) environment.

5) NetFlow Configurator

SolarWinds NetFlow Configurator is a tool that can quickly and easily activate NetFlow (Cisco router feature) on your network devices. This application can monitor traffic data as per the interface.

Features:

  • It can remotely configure NetFlow on SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol).
  • This system monitoring software can analyze network performance.
  • Find a network that utilizes more bandwidth.
  • Bypass the CLI (Command Line Interface) with an intuitive GUI.
  • Monitor traffic data per network interface.

6) Nagios

Nagios network is a network monitoring tool that allows your company to identify and resolve I.T. infrastructure problems. It helps you to determine the issues before they affect critical business processes.

Features:

  • This free system monitoring software offers a comprehensive dashboard.
  • Allows you to keep track of specific subsets of network flow information.
  • Allows you to select multiple devices you want to ping.
  • This server monitoring software provides results in ribbon, bar, column, step, or area charts.
  • Offers network diagnostics with Engineer’s toolset.
  • Provides complete insights on network traffic, bandwidth, and overall network health.
  • It sends alerts when any abnormal user’s activity takes place.
  • It has advanced users feature that allows I.T. teams to work together efficiently.
  • Mobile Apps: No.

Link: https://www.nagios.org/

7) Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch helps you to monitor AWS environments like RDS instance, EC2, and CPU utilization. It also triggers alarms depending on various metrics. It allows you with data and complete insights to monitor your applications, respond to system-wide performance changes, and optimize resource utilization.

Features:

  • It helps you to collect metrics in AWS and on-premises.
  • It helps your I.T. team to improve operational performance and resource optimization.
  • CloudWatch helps your company to correlate, visualize, and analyze metrics and log.
  • This is one of the best system monitoring software that offers proactive resource optimization.
  • This server monitoring software offers infrastructure monitoring and troubleshooting.
  • Allows you to get operational visibility and insights.
  • Supports log analytics.
  • Mobile Apps: Android.

Link: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/

8) LogicMonitor

LogicMonitor is an automated SaaS network testing tool. It is one of the best network monitoring tools that offer customizable dashboards, alerts, and reports. This tool can identify incoming issues by providing predictive alerts and trend analysis.

Features:

  • It is one of the best network testing tools that help you discover all network devices and interfaces.
  • Monitors CPU, memory, temperature, and other hardware.
  • Monitoring via SNMP, jFlow, NetFlow, sFlow, WMI, NBAR2, etc.
  • Support for SD-WAN and cloud-based networks.
  • Wireless access-point monitoring.
  • Mobile Apps: No.

Link: https://www.logicmonitor.com/

9) Operations Bridge

Operations Bridge is a system monitoring tool that offers multi-cloud and on-premises monitoring. It also allows you to view business and I.T. infrastructure status in real time with dashboards streamed on popular devices.

Features:

  • Provides application performance analytics and monitoring.
  • I.T. process automation and automated remediation.
  • It allows dashboards and reporting.
  • This is one of the best system monitoring software that offers a one-click reporting facility.
  • Offers filter search results with the help of an intuitive menu.
  • It helps you to reduce the storage cost of your log files.
  • This log management software has a user-friendly environment.
  • It automatically detects Syslog (System Logging Protocol)
  • Automatic log, metric, and allows event and historical analysis.
  • Allows the use of HTML 5 policy editors to handle the output from the Windows event log.
  • Mobile Apps: No.

Link: https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/products/operations-bridge-suite/overview

10) Spiceworks Network Monitor

Network Monitor from Spiceworks is one of the best free network testing tools, which offers real-time status and alerts for your critical devices. It is simple to install and has an easy to set up network monitoring system.

Features:

  • You can adjust alert thresholds for in-app notifications or emails.
  • Provides real-time up/down status and alerts about critical web applications and services.
  • It starts monitoring in minutes.
  • Enables you to get alerts whenever you need
  • Offers distributed HTTP check
  • It offers full integration with the Spiceworks IT management cloud tools suite.
  • Provides support online as well as on the phone or chat.
  • Mobile Apps: iPhone (& iPad) and Android apps.

Link: https://www.spiceworks.com/free-network-monitoring-management-software/

11) Zabbix

Zabbix is a network monitoring tool that offers I.T. infrastructure, services, applications, and resources. This tool offers a network server, cloud, application, and service monitoring.

Features:

  • It helps you to collect metrics from any device, system, and application using multi-metric collection methods.
  • Allows visualization with widget-based dashboards, maps, graphs, etc.
  • Effortless deployment by saving your time and using out-of-the-box templates.
  • Highly automated metric collection.
  • Advanced problem detection.
  • It offers flexible escalation scenarios.
  • Provides agents for most platforms.
  • Mobile Apps: Android.

Link: https://www.zabbix.com/network_monitoring

12) Atera

Atera is full remote monitoring & management tool suite. Atera helps you to manage your I.T. support business or department. This system monitoring system includes the supervision of networks, servers, and applications.

Features:

  • It is easy to install and get going within less time.
  • This help desk management software includes remote access and offers chat facilities for users by the technicians managing the help desk.
  • Easily connects with various tools
  • Free Trial: Yes.
  • Mobile apps: iOS and Android.

Link: https://www.atera.com/lp/rmm-software-nlp-2/

13) Icinga

Icinga is a free-to-use system monitoring tool that alters and reports the health of your I.T. environment. It also allows clustering and zone monitoring.

Features:

  • Monitoring of services.
  • Supports both direct and SNMP monitoring.
  • Provides monitoring automation.
  • Infrastructure Monitoring.
  • Allows you to collect, store, visualize and combine performance and metrics data.
  • Provides secure SSL and user restrictions alert through notifications and incident management.
  • Offers compelling configuration language, swift synchronization, and web-based configuration.
  • Deployment with REST API and automated integrations.
  • It offers distributed and agent-based monitoring.
  • Mobile Apps: No.

Link: https://icinga.com/

14) OpsView

OpsView Monitor offers unified insight into your dynamic I.T. operations. It provides on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid solutions. This app also helps you to maximize network security & control.

Features:

  • Allows you to automate and scale anywhere
  • Maximizes security & control
  • Offers business service monitoring
  • Ensures regulatory compliance
  • Provides notification platform integrations
  • Service desk integrations
  • Built-in notifications
  • Mobile Apps: iOS and Android

Link: https://www.opsview.com/

15) LibreNMS

LibreNMS is an open-source, powerful, and feature-rich auto-discovering PHP-based network monitoring system that uses the SNMP protocol. It allows you to load a range of operating systems.

  • It is a highly flexible alerting system that notifies via email, IRC, Slack, and more.
  • It has a mobile-friendly web U.I. with customizable dashboards.
  • Updates automatically with bug fixes, new features, and more.
  • Full API support to manage, graph, and retrieve data from your system.
  • Offers horizontal scaling, which grows with your network.
  • Supports platforms like Native iPhone and Android apps.
  • Mobile apps: iOS and Android mobile apps.

Link: https://www.librenms.org/

16) Pandorafms

Pandora FMS is an enterprise-ready employee monitoring software. It provides greater flexibility to address both immediate and unanticipated operational issues that include infrastructure and I.T. processes.

Features:

  • Offers network and WMI monitoring
  • SLA and KPI metrics on reporting
  • Offers WYSIWYG Visual console screens and Dashboards
  • Offers multi-tenant and several layers of access control
  • GIS tracking and viewing
  • Remote network monitoring
  • Allows you to analyze networks with real time tracking
  • Mobile apps: No

Link: https://pandorafms.com/network-monitoring/

17) OpenNMS

It is an open-source system monitoring tool that is designed for building network monitoring solutions. This tool comes with a discovery engine to automatically configure and manage network devices without any human intervention.

Features:

  • Collects performance metrics in JMX, SNMP, WMI, NRPE, and XMP agents
  • Provides a flexible and extensible architecture
  • It offers service assurance, performance management, critical service, typology discovery, and dashboard components
  • Provides support for the geographical map, elastic search forwarder, business service monitoring, and provisioning
  • Allows you to discover your network and applications
  • Extends the Java native notification strategy API
  • Mobile apps: No

Link: https://www.opennms.com/

FAQ:

❓ What is System Monitoring Software?

A System Monitoring Software is a tool that tracks the resources and performance of any system. The main reason for using system monitoring software is to detect the system issues, identify the root cause, and get them resolved quickly. It helps you to visualize your network by using real-time heatmaps with live status information.

🚀 Which are the Best System Monitoring Software?

Below are some of the Best System Monitoring Software:

  • SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor
  • PRTG Network Monitor
  • ManageEngine OpManager
  • Network Bandwidth Analyzer
  • NetFlow Configurator
  • Nagios
  • Amazon CloudWatch

⭐ What are the key features of a System Monitoring Software?

Here are some important features of System Monitoring Software:

  • Monitoring multiple servers: Your system monitoring software should be able to handle servers from different vendors running various operating systems. It should also be able to monitor from various servers at multiple sites and in cloud environments.
  • Monitoring range of server metrics: It should offer various metrics like CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, upload/download rates, Monitoring CPU temperature, etc.
  • Monitoring applications: It should provide common monitoring applications using a deep knowledge that helps you to monitor key server processes, including web servers, database servers, and application stacks.
  • Automatic alerting: The most important and vital feature of any system monitoring tool is to provide automatic alerts when servers or network devices are down or overloaded.
  • Triggering actions in response to alerts: It should help to handle specific classes of network problems automatically.
  • Collection of historical data: Should be able to collect historical data about the server and device health and behavior.
  • Reports: It should allow generating useful predefined reports that help with tasks like optimizing resource usage and forecasting capacity.
  • Customizable reporting. It should help you to create customized reports.
  • Easy configurability: A System monitoring software should be easy to configure and install on complex network infrastructures.
  • Scalability: It should be able to grow with your business requirements, from a small or medium business (SMB) to a large enterprise.

⚡ What are the best practices for System monitoring?

When using network infrastructure monitoring tools, you need to keep in mind the following best practices. By implementing these, you can boost the success of your network infrastructure monitoring strategy.

  • Prioritize: Before establishing notification or threshold settings, you need to determine which components are most important.
  • Create alert resolution processes: You should always try to achieve the fastest and most efficient resolution for each type of alert you set up. This should be tied in with prioritization and should consider escalation.
  • Practice redundancy: If you have several data centers, make sure you are monitoring each of them from multiple locations.
  • Combine monitoring tools: You will get on-premises and cloud-based tools. Use both if it is necessary.
  • Keep tabs on the monitor: Never assume that just because you are not getting alert messages, nothing is wrong in your system. There could be an issue with the monitoring tool itself or in the system settings.
  • Review metrics on a regular basis: The thresholds you establish can be too high or too low. However, if you are receiving plenty of alerts or you aren’t notified when a problem in your system occurs, so you should change your threshold settings.
  • Conduct tests: You need to find out whether your alert system is effective when a critical issue arises. You need to do it only once when you implement a monitoring and alert system. It needs some fine-tuning. For that, you need to conduct regular tests so the robustness and effectiveness of the system remain efficient before a specific issue occurs.

❗ What is Result-based monitoring?

Result-based monitoring is the approach for tracking the results and performance of a system on a transparent basis. It helps you to measure the impact of evaluation.

💻 Where can I find device monitoring templates?

In case if your system monitoring software operates on a template model according to the device type and if you cannot find one, then you can ask the help desk of the software provider for device monitoring templates. You can also check forums for that tool.

🏅 When should you not use System Monitoring Software?

You should not use System Monitoring software when analyzing small and simple networks as these tools take lots of time to analyze I.T. infrastructure performance and generate the final report.

👉 What are the Network Monitoring Techniques?

Network monitoring uses a variety of techniques to test the availability and functionality of the network. Some more common techniques used to collect data for monitoring software are:

  • Ping: Ping monitoring tools send signals and record data, like the signal was received or not and how long it took the host to receive that signal.
  • SNMP: SNMP monitors individual devices in a network through monitoring software.
  • Syslog: Syslog is an automated messaging system that sends messages when a specific event affects a network device.
  • Scripts: In networks, scripts are used to substitute for any lack of functionality in network monitoring software.

🚀 What are the types of system monitoring software?

There are Seven types of system monitoring software:

  • Performance monitors: Processors of Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) status messages.
  • Performance testers: These type of software issue commands, such as ping and traceroute, to gather statistics.
  • Wireless sniffers: Are the packet sniffers or packet analyzers for wireless networks.
  • Firewalls: Read packets traveling through the network boundary.
  • Intrusion detection systems: Help you to identify standard and anomalous traffic patterns.
  • SIEM tools: This type of system monitoring tools examine log files for security breaches.

❓ How are system monitoring software deployed?

System monitoring tools can be deployed on-premises, on the cloud, or in a hybrid fashion. When comparing system monitoring tools, consider what type of deployment is ideal for your business.