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System monitoring software is essential for modern IT infrastructure to maintain uptime and performance. As infrastructure becomes more complex with cloud, containers, and distributed environments, having visibility into the health and performance of servers, applications, and network devices is critical.
In this comprehensive guide, we evaluate the top system monitoring tools to simplify your search. We look at key features like anomaly detection, log management, custom dashboards, alerting, reporting, cloud monitoring, and more.
How We Evaluated the Best System Monitoring Software
There are many factors to consider when selecting a monitoring system for a modern technology stack across on-prem and cloud environments. Here are some of the key criteria we used:
- Comprehensive monitoring capabilities – Ability to monitor servers, VMs, containers, applications, logs, networks, custom metrics
- Automatic discovery – Automatically discover infrastructure and map dependencies without manual config
- Alerting and notification flexibility – Highly configurable alerting with multiple notification channels
- Visual data analysis – Interactive dashboards to visualize metrics and logs for rapid troubleshooting
- Anomaly detection – Machine learning to detect unusual metric patterns and service degradation
- Cloud native support – Pre-built monitoring for AWS, Azure, GCP environments
- Efficient data collection – Lightweight, high performing agents to collect and stream monitoring data
We compared both commercial and open-source options across these criteria to compile the list below.
Top 10 System Monitoring Software
1. Datadog
Datadog is a hosted monitoring service that integrates real-time metrics and events from servers, databases, applications, tools, and services. With 400+ integrations, it can monitor the full dev to prod stack.
Key Features
- Unified view across infra, logs, APM traces – metrics, dashboards, alerts
- 450+ integrations with cloud platforms, technologies
- Anomaly detection powered by AI to catch issues
- Flexible alerting with on-call schedules & escalations
- Live Container, host, and app mapping with dependencies
Pricing: Start from $15 per host/month, with volume discounts available
2. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor (SAM)
SolarWinds SAM provides unified performance monitoring, metrics, alerting, reporting for hybrid IT infrastructure. With support for common app stacks, it simplifies correlation of app service issues.
Key Features
- Unified monitoring for applications, databases, servers, VMs
- Automatic application dependency mapping
- Anomaly detection for metrics and logs
- Customizable dashboards and reporting
- Alert management with automatic ticket creation
Pricing: Free 30-day trial. Commercial pricing available on request
3. Zabbix
Zabbix is a widely used open-source monitoring solution for networks, servers, cloud environments. With auto-discovery of resources, it simplifies monitoring configuration.
Key Features
- Auto discovery and monitoring setup for servers, apps, services
- Supports monitoring of cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, GCP
- Customizable thresholds, triggers, and alerts
- Detailed analytics with drill-down graphs and dashboard
- Available as on-prem, cloud SaaS, managed hosting
Pricing: 100% Open source and free. Paid enterprise version available.
4. Nagios XI
Nagios XI delivers powerful infrastructure monitoring capabilities in a user friendly web interface. With thousands of freely available plugins, it can monitor any infrastructure component.
Key Features
- Monitor network devices, servers, applications, services
- Auto detect infrastructure and suggest monitoring config
- Customizable alerts and event handlers for remediation
- Scheduled reporting for long term analysis
- Hassle-free setup on Linux and cloud infrastructure
Pricing: Freemium model – Free core with Premium XI version ($1995 per year)
5. PRTG
PRTG by Paessler is a comprehensive network monitoring solution to analyze uptime and usage of IT infrastructure. It simplifies monitoring configuration with auto-discovery and pre-configured sensors.
Key Features
- Auto discovery of network devices, VMs, systems
- Monitor IoT devices, cloud, web applications, Docker
- Interactive maps to view status and dependencies
- Flexible alerts via Email, SMS, Slack, Teams integrations
- Failover cluster for high availability monitoring
Pricing: Free trial available. Commercial pricing starts at ~$1,600 per year
6. Icinga
Icinga is an enterprise grade monitoring framework which extends the popular Nagios system. With a large library of plugins, it can monitor traditional and cloud environments.
Key Features
- Monitor availability and performance of devices, OS, services
- Schedule reports, customize dashboards and views
- Event processing for alerting, event correlation, notifications
- Native clustering for high availability
- Supports Docker, Kubernetes, OpenStack cloud monitoring
Pricing: 100% open source and free to use
7. NetXMS
NetXMS offers a unified approach to monitor across physical and virtual infrastructure. Leveraging agentless and agent-based data collection, it simplifies monitoring configuration.
Key Features
- Single console for multi-platform infrastructure monitoring
- Monitor Windows, Linux, Network devices, Cloud VMs
- Automatic discovery of monitoring objects using SNMP scans
- Flexible event processing pipeline for alerting
- Live dashboards for visualization and troubleshooting
Pricing: Free version for up to 10 nodes. Paid licenses start at $249
8. Centreon
Centreon is an IT infrastructure and network monitoring platform based on open source software. It offers custom views, BI dashboarding and integrates well with ITSM solutions.
Key Features
- Unifies monitoring data from multiple platforms
- Custom dashboarding with drag and drop interface
- Map based status viewing with colour coding
- Flexible reporting using stored historical data
- Open framework with extensions library
Pricing: On-premise free product. Hosted plans from ~$20 per month
9. Pandora FMS
Pandora FMS is an end to end monitoring solution for infrastructure and applications, supporting hybrid cloud environments. It is highly scalable and offers advanced analytics.
Key Features
- Unified monitoring of on-premise, public and private cloud
- Inventory with deep visibility into infrastructure components
- Flexible alerting based on thresholds and baselines
- Scalable architecture from small to large environments
- Custom dashboards and reporting pipeline
Pricing: Free community version. Paid pricing customized based on infrastructure
10. LibreNMS
LibreNMS is a fully featured network monitoring system that provides rich insight into network devices. It has a growing community across varied environments and integrations.
Key Features
- Auto-discovery for switches, routers, firewalls and servers
- Detailed topology mapping of inter-connections
- Dashboard customization using drag and drop widgets
- Alerting and notifications for monitored parameters
- APIs, CLI tooling for management and data access
Pricing: 100% open source and available for free
So which system monitoring tool is best for your needs? Consider factors like current tech stack, scale of infrastructure, in-house capabilities to manage monitoring and costs. We hope this guide gives you a headstart on your evaluation process!