[Jamsan]

For all the admins out there, what are [some] of your favorite tools to monitor the overall health/performance of your network and servers? We are currently using Big Brother from Quest, and our service contract is about to expire. The renewal is high enough to warranty looking elsewhere, and as I'm not entirely pleased with it's functionality. I've been looking around, and there's plenty of software out there to test, and not enough time in the day to test them all out. Here are some of the following I've been looking into to:

GFI Network/Server Monitor
What's up
MOM 07
Solarwinds ipMonitor

So far, ipmonitor and what's up are my 2 leading candidates, but any reccomendations and/or insight into these or any other pieces of software out there would be much appreciated.

We are a mostly Windows shop (the only server not runinng Windows is a Red Hat box for VOIP, but I don't manage it). Our main apps are SQL Server, Exchange 07, and file/print/web servers (IIS). All other devices are switches/routers/firewalls with SNMP.

[chrebbie]

Hi Jamsan, I'm product manager for ipMonitor at SolarWinds and I caught your post on a Google Alert. If it helps at all, this list you specified above accurately reflects the competitors we typically run into with ipMonitor, especially based on the environment you described. Let me know how your evaluation goes and if there's any questions I can answer for you.

Cheers,

-Chris

[Mr. Ali]

^^ holy crap, wtf, that is pretty damn cool. the power of the internet google.

I wish I was in the network monitoring business, it sounds like something that would be laid back until shit hits the fan. I have nothing really helpful to add, I just wanted to reply because of the post above me.

[MSP]

We use What's Up and MOM, but not me personally. Unfortunately they sourced that shit out a few years back.

[Jamsan]

Originally Posted by chrebbie

Hi Jamsan, I'm product manager for ipMonitor at SolarWinds and I caught your post on a Google Alert. If it helps at all, this list you specified above accurately reflects the competitors we typically run into with ipMonitor, especially based on the environment you described. Let me know how your evaluation goes and if there's any questions I can answer for you.

Cheers,

-Chris

How bout some discounts?


MSP - Have you heard anything about What's up? I know you siad you don't use it personally, but anything the grapevine?

We're looking at MOM, but it's pretty expensive. It'd be about $5-7k depending on the differences between the Enteprise/Standard CAL, and that's just to monitor our servers. We'd need to get management packs for all of our Cisco devices and for any other non-Microsoft products that we may come across down the road.

[tex]

nagios hands down (its even free)

We use onsite manager, but thats geared more towards multiple clients. I heard about Kaseya the other day. Looks interesting. However, its more oriented towards remote control.

The Dude is supposed to work pretty well also (again, free)

[Daveyiv2k1]

We use what's up at the hospital and I like it

[Jamsan]

I've been told by a few friends that nagios is the way to go, but I know next to nothing about *nix, and don't really have the time to learn it well enough to support in the timeframe we're looking to implement this solution. I'll look into the other 2 options you mentioned.

Originally Posted by Daveyiv2k1

We use what's up at the hospital and I like it

Thanks for the thorough review Davey! I guess that settles it

[Torx]

dan sold us out to google.