Network Monitoring tool

[majed.balsharaf]

Hi

  I want to monitor my network, in monitoring tool.

My LAN is 10.x.x.x/24 and I'm connected with my Network Cloud and Internet link.

F0/0

description Connected to LAN

Tunnel1

description Connected to Network Cloud

f0/1

description Connected to Internet

Please advice me which Monitoring tool should I use and what configuration. 

Thanks

[Marvin Rhoads]

What equipment? If you have a Cisco router, Cisco Network Assistant (CNA) is a free tool with monitoring capability. More info here.

For an open source solution, also free (free to acquire - everything costs you to own it since it itakes time to set up and use) you can use Nagios (for fault management and monitoring) and Cacti (to graph performance). Those require a bit more know-how and setup work but are not limited to Cisco equipment.

[majed.balsharaf]

Thanks Marvin,

  Actually I am having a server in my branch office 10.x.x.2 and I want to monitor that server from my HQ. So i need to know what should I do for it. I am new in monitoring.

[Marvin Rhoads · Accepted solution]

You're welcome. None of the Cisco tools will really do any useful server monitoring.

A third party tool such as SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is pretty powerful - you have to buy it though. They do offer a free 30-day trial installation. List price for the basic license level (monitor up to 25 processes/applications) is USD 995. Another good product is ManageEngine Application Manager. It is a little bit cheaper but they want an annual licensing fee.

Arguably you could setup scripts in Nagios (free) but if you're new to monitoring, there's a pretty fair amount learning that needs to be done first with Nagios. Opennms is another open source solution - it might be a little bit easier than Nagios to setup.

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

Define "monitor"?

Do you want to see the bandwidth being used?  CPU/Memory utilization? 

As what Marvan has described, Nagios is good if you want to do simple monitoring.  With Nagios you can also customize what you want to do.  Otherwise, you'll need to think about something else bigger like SolarWinds Engineer's Toolbox or Cisco Prime Infrastructure.