Share your experience using Pandora FMS

We needed a tool to know what the space inside of the infrastructure is like. My work was to use Zabbix to get information about the IT infrastructure in the village or in the towns that are very far from the headquarters. I had to use Zabbix to provide information with maps that the IT was working and so that the headquarters can see in real-time what the healyh of the IT infrastructure we had deployed in the electrical network is.

After this experience, I tried Zabbix in african organization based in my country and it was used to monitor the IT infrastructures in three countries, cameroon, benin and ivory coast. For the moment, Zabbix is not yet very popular here but I really appreciate it and really want to make people know that it's very simple to use. 

In 2023 i tried Zabbix 6.0 on Rocky Linux 9. And news features like pdf report have improved my Admin Sys routine.

Zabbix has improved the daily monitoring tasks by making them easier and faster.

The feature that I find most valuable is the stateful map. In fact, the Zabbix map designing tools permit to make monitoring stateful maps with topologies similar to the reals IT network maps.

My company wanted to do an exercise command to access IT from Cameroon. They wanted to access an FSS to a second host with second equipment that was on another coast but it is not possible on Zabbix to do it. They want to directly access from the front-end of Zabbix to access a prompt in Zabbix to an access terminal. In the front-end, there is no way to do that. That would be an important improvement. 

II have been using this product for seven years.

It is very scalable because I tried version 5. I used 5 from 0 and I see that they have improved many things, but there is not yet this option to have an access terminal where you have many functionalities. 

The scalability works fine because the community is very active. When a new version comes out, we can see that they have tried to add.

The technical support is very quick. When I have a problem and I post it in the community, they answer me very quickly. For now, i don't need any technical support. 

Positive

In fact, even if I have looked at Nagios first, before Zabbix I did not really use it or any other monitoring solution.

The initial setup was very quick. The first time it was long because I didn't know it yet. I was only using Windows. The first time was very difficult because of the operating system. 

I implement Zabbix in-house with as outsourcing offficials webs tutorials

Zabbix exploitation has dispensed with financing frequent visits to the technical area through alerts, notifications, and stateful maps. Thus, the return on investment is more than 100%.

Zabbix is an effective cheaper network monitoring solution because it doesn't need any ongoing cost due to licensing.

Before choosing Zabbix, we evaluated Nagios but we were not comfortable with notifications messages syntax and configurations.

I would recommend Zabbix to people who want to monitor a simple network.

I have found that the literature on the website is not very easy for some people. They want to be in those to read more about Zabbix, how to install it, and what the normal problems are.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

Our main focus is APM-related functionality, so we were looking for a convenient way to get all the details, as some of them are missing from New Relic and Grafana. Currently, we are working with Site24x7, where we are getting the information we are looking for in our comfort zone.

We used the Docker container as the agent in our server, which was split into one agent to collect the client's logs and metrics to see the web vitals, and another metric to collect the server metrics and APM-related traces.

The main benefit we found was the Error Inbox, and having all features available at a single point was very useful for us. The API functionality allows us to get hit counts from external sources, such as APIs or databases, and everything is mapped very clearly. We can overview which components are experiencing response delays, which ones are getting correct responses, and identify any unknown external APIs inside the application. We can investigate why we are getting 400 responses and similar issues.

I reviewed another observability tool, DataDog, and we moved away from New Relic because the pricing was not convenient and didn't fit our budget. With DataDog, some of the APM features we were looking for were not available, so we discontinued using both solutions.

Grafana is helpful, but it requires significant work in adding agents and configuring applications and server metrics. We implemented open-source Grafana, which wasn't convenient regarding APM, and most of the logs and traces related to APM were not what we needed, so we moved to Site24x7.

The Grafana Open Source implementation was done through their vendor. While they provided certain features, when compared to Grafana Cloud, the customized Open Source version wasn't really convenient for us. The only helpful aspect was that we could get server metrics on Grafana Open Source from our servers.

I have been working with New Relic for approximately six months.

New Relic was stable enough, and there were no downtimes or issues.

New Relic offers 400 GB per month free, but that quota was completely used within two weeks for a single server. We have substantial data in our server as our company is a trading financial company. For a single server, it takes around one and a half to two weeks to reach the limit. Additionally, we need to store logs for over five years based on SEBI regulations.

I didn't seek any support help from New Relic, but when I tried to get information regarding the plans, the response was delayed for a week. Other than that, everything was fine.

Positive

We reviewed Grafana and moved to another observability tool. We also evaluated DataDog, but we ultimately moved away from New Relic because the pricing wasn't convenient and didn't fit our budget. We are now using Site24x7 in production.

Implementing the New Relic agent is quite simple, and we were very comfortable with New Relic overall. However, it wasn't convenient based on our budget, which is why we discontinued using it.

The Grafana Open Source implementation wasn't done by ourselves; we worked with their vendor. They explained the features available in Grafana Open Source, and we implemented those solutions. However, compared to Grafana Cloud, the customized Open Source version wasn't really convenient for us.

The Error Inbox and consolidated features at a single point were very useful features. We could get hit counts from external sources, APIs, and databases, with clear mapping of all components. We could monitor response delays, correct responses, and identify unknown external APIs within the application.

We also reviewed DataDog as an observability tool, but we moved away from New Relic due to pricing concerns that didn't fit our budget. With DataDog, some of the APM features we were seeking weren't available, so we discontinued using both solutions.

We had everything in hand with New Relic initially. However, the pricing wasn't convenient for us, so we had to step back from using it.

I primarily focused on the data we were getting from New Relic, without exploring custom dashboards and other features. We were mainly focusing on the metrics and logs needed to trace our applications effectively.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate New Relic an eight. It's overwhelming from my point of view, and we needed to do some organizing in our New Relic account based on our preferences.