Top 11 Open Source Monitoring Tools for Linux

In this article we are going to cover Open Source Monitoring Tools for Linux-Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic search, Nagios Core, Zabbix, Cacti, Icinga, MRTG, Netdata, Sensu, Pandora FMS

Open Source Monitoring Tools for Linux

#1. Prometheus

Key Features:-

• Prometheus is an open source tool used for event monitoring and altering.
• Prometheus has changed the way of monitoring systems and that is why it has become the Top-Level project of Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
• Prometheus components are written in Go.
• Prometheus uses a powerful query language i.e. “PromQL”.
• The Prometheus servers are independent and able to gather time series by a pullover method over HTTP.

Advantages:-

• In Prometheus tabs are on and handles hundreds of services and micro services.
• Works as effectively one service to rule them all.
• Prometheus use multiple modes used for graphing and dashboarding support.

#2. Grafana

Key Features:-

• Grafana is an open source tool used for event monitoring.
• Grafana is a multi platform open source analytics and interactive visualization web application.
• Grafana provides i) Charts ii) Graphs iii) Alerts

• Grafana supports many databases and mix them together in the same dashboard.

In Grafana we can discover hundreds of dashboards and plugins in the official library of Grafana.

Advantages:-

• Grafana is a completely open source and backed by a vibrant community or Grafana cloud.
• Grafana cloud can be easily installed and used on any platform.
• Due to backed by vibrant community, new ones (plugins) are added to it almost every week.

#3. Elastic Stack

Key Features:-

• Elasticsearch is a open source search, distributed and analytics engine which is build on Apache Lucene and developed in Java.

• Elasticsearch allows you to store, search, and analyse huge volumes of data quickly

• Elasticsearch gives the result as per your searches on milliseconds.

• Elasticsearch is a server that can process JSON requests and give you back JSON data.

• Elasticsearch backend components includes

i) Cluster

 ii) Nodes

 iii) Shards

 iv) Replicas

Advantages:-

• Elasticsearch searches an index, due to this it is able to achieve fast search response.
• Elasticsearch monitors the Cluster Health.
• In Elasticsearch we can enable Self-monitoring.
• We can also easily enable monitoring Elasticsearch nodes with Metric beat.

#4. Nagios Core

Key Features:-

• Nagios core is used for continuous monitoring of servers, network, applications, business processes and infrastructure.
• Nagios core is scalable, manageable and secure server monitoring tool.
• Nagios core detects network errors, server crashes and automatically sends the alerts.
• In Nagios issues occurred can also be fixed automatically.

Nagios uses the results from the plugins to determine the current status of the hosts and services on your network.

Advantages:-

• Nagios is built on a server/agents architecture which makes easy to communicate with servers.
• In Nagios core, fast detection of server and network protocol failures can be done.
• In Nagios core 3500 different addons available to monitor your servers.
• Using Nagios core, saves our time as monitoring everything is done at one single platform.

#5. Zabbix

Key Features:-

• Zabbix is purely open source and free server monitoring tool.

• We can easily monitor severs, applications and network devices, which gives accurate statistics and performance data

• Data collected by Zabbix, it will be easy to analyze our infrastructure.

• Types of monitoring done by Zabbix-

i) Network monitoring

ii) Server monitoring

iii) Cloud monitoring

iv) Application monitoring

v) Services monitoring

• Zabbix has end to end encryption and well authentication, and due to this Zabbix has a strong security.

• In Zabbix there are multiple branches that is why distributed monitoring is possible at same time.

Advantages:-

• Zabbix is designed to scale from small environments to large environments.
• Zabbix is trusted by global brands worldwide like Dell, HP, Salesforce, T Systems, etc.
• Zabbix has high availability because it has multiple servers like proxy servers, so load is distributed.

#6. Cacti

Key Features:-

• Cacti is a open source network monitoring tool which is developed by The Cacti Group, Inc
• Most useful feature of Cacti is its unlimited graph creation tool
• Hardware monitoring is possible in Cacti.
• We can also perform web server monitoring operations on Cacti.
• Cacti Is build in SNMP support.
• In Cacti we can graph network bandwidth utilization, ram usage, CPU load and other statistics.

Advantages:-

• Cacti is user based management due to which it allows administrators to create and assign users.
• Cacti can be extended to monitor any source via shell scripts.
• Cacti has flexible data sources.
• Remote data allocation can be done using Cacti. 

#7. Icinga

Key Features:-

• Icinga is completely open source and free monitoring tool.
• Icinga is a scalable and extensible server monitoring system.
• Icinga monitoring tool checks the availability of the resources and notifies you.
• High availability is maintained in Icinga monitoring tool.
• Distributed monitoring can be done in Icinga monitoring tool.
• Clusters are present in Icinga

Advantages:-

• Multithreaded design is implemented in Icinga that is why it runs thousands of check per second and due to this, Icinga is fast.
• Icninga is completely top to bottom object oriented designed.
• Icinga is flexible to use and to make hands on.
• Services Monitoring problem are easily detected in Icinga and also recently resolved problems are also displayed.
• Icinga monitoring tool also monitors the infrastructure health.
• Icinga is ease of use.

#8. MRTG

Key Features:-

• MRTG stands for Multi Router Traffic Grapher.
• MRTG monitoring tool is network monitoring tool.
• MRTG uses SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) to monitor network traffic.
• MRTG has Agent which has local knowledge of management information.
• NMS (Network Management System) is present in MRTG which runs applications that monitor and control managed device.
• In managed device it contain an SNMP agent and reside on a managed network.

Advantages:-

• MRTG provides resources required for network management.
• Agent makes the information available using SNMP.
• Network traffic is properly analyzed using MRTG.
• Live network traffic is analyzed in MRTG.
• Network traffic is also monitored on our network ports and links.
• MRTG is a open source monitoring tool.
• Well network optimization.
• Well network troubleshooting.
• Good network administration is obtained.

#9. Netdata

Key Features:-

• Netdata is a distributed, performance and health monitoring for systems.

• Netdata gives real time performance systems, applications.

• Using Netdata we can monitor:-

i) Server

ii) System Application

iii) Containers

iv) Web Applications

v) Virtual Machines

vi) Databases

vii) IOT Devices.

• We can monitor 1000 devices using Netdata.
• We will need to install a python plugin for monitoring PostgreSQL databases.

Advantages:-

• Netdata is mostly used tool which is an open source monitoring tool.
• Netdata can also monitor specific SNMP devices.
• Netdata has a good interactive web dashboards.
• Netdata is fast and efficient.
• Netdata is open source and platform independent.
• RAM usage, kernel optimization monitoring becomes very easy by using Netdata.

#10. Sensu

Key Features:-

• Sensu is an open source event monitoring tool.
• Sensu includes

 i) Event

ii) Filter

iii) Mutator

iv) Handler

• Sensu monitors Servers, Services, Applications health, network.
• Sensu monitoring tool uses third-party integration.
• Sensu monitoring tool uses sensu agent for operating system checks and metrics.
• We can monitor cloud infrastructure using sensu monitoring tool.
• Sensu is written in Ruby.

Advantages:-

• Sensu monitoring tool is portable.
• Sensu monitoring tool is easier.
• Sensu monitoring tool fast.
• We can create

i) Checks

ii) Register entities

iii) Handlers

iv) Filters, etc

using API.

#11. Pandora FMS

Key Features:-

• Pandora FMS stands for Pandora Flexible Monitoring Solution.
• Pandora FMS is a IT infrastructure monitoring tool in a single console.
• Pandora FMS elements consists of Console, database, Servers, Agents.
• By using Pandora FMS we can monitor:-
  1. Network
  2. Logs
  3. Database
  4. Cloud
  5. Applications
  6. User Experience
  7. Servers  
  8. IPAM
  9. SAP   
  10. IoT
• It can do both remote monitoring and monitoring based on agents installed on the servers.

Advantages:-

• Pandora FMS has an open source community edition.
• It also has a Enterprise version which is used by many IT companies.
• Pandora FMS’s both open source and enterprise versions are regularly updated every month.
• It has direct access from the console.

Conclusion:

We have covered Open Source Monitoring Tools for Linux-Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic search, Nagios Core, Zabbix, Cacti, Icinga, MRTG, Netdata, Sensu, Pandora FMS.

Related Articles:

Monitoring Tools Tutorial

Reference:

Opensource official site