Checkmk vs PRTG Network Monitor comparison

Checkmk is a powerful tool for monitoring IT infrastructure, providing vital insights on servers, databases, network devices, and custom applications.

Primarily used for supervising IT infrastructure, Checkmk helps organizations ensure service availability by monitoring hosts, processes, load, storage, and network appliances. With support for both Linux and Windows environments across multiple data centers, Checkmk performs compliance checks and preserves historical data for core network devices.

• Auto-discovery: Automatically identifies new hosts and applies monitoring rules.
• Custom monitoring: Enhances MySQL performance tracking.
• Slack integration: Provides immediate downtime alerts.
• Graphical trend analysis: Offers 400 days of trend data.
• Multiple site monitoring: Ensures seamless data synchronization through task automation.
• Resource and infrastructure monitoring: Configures log factors to fit budget constraints.
• System metric imports: Includes servers, SQL, file systems, and application monitoring.

• Time-saving: Auto-discovery and task automation streamline processes.
• Proactive alerts: Immediate downtime notifications optimize response times.
• Historical insights: Long-term graphical trend analysis aids strategic planning.
• Cost efficiency: Resource monitoring aligned with budget constraints.

Checkmk is deployed extensively in large enterprise environments for monitoring critical infrastructure. It proves particularly useful under conditions of frequent power outages or network issues, helping maintain smooth operations. While the alert acknowledgment process and interface require improvements, and the lack of an agent-less platform complicates server management, the strengths in auto-discovery, integration, and comprehensive monitoring make Checkmk a strong contender for IT infrastructure monitoring.

PRTG Network Monitor runs on a Windows machine within your network, collecting various statistics from the machines, software, and devices which you designate. PRTG comes with an easy-to-use web interface with point-and-click configuration. You can easily share data from it with non-technical colleagues and customers, including via live graphs and custom reports. This will let you plan for network expansion, see what applications are using most of your connection, and make sure that no one is hogging the entire network just to torrent videos.

To monitor a large IT environment, it's important to be able to scale PRTG up. Paessler PRTG Enterprise Monitor includes all the proven capabilities of PRTG Network Monitor, which are enhanced by exclusive ITOps Board for a service-oriented, central overview of multiple PRTG servers.