2014-04-03T10:59:00Z

Should we choose Nagios or PRTG?

We are about to make a choice for a Networking Monitor and the finalists are PRTG and Nagios.

Do you have a comparison chart to help us to make a final decision?

it_user102387 - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner with 51-200 employees
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9
PeerSpot user
9 Answers
it_user6642 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Director - Data Center Solutions at Atrion
Consultant
2014-04-08T18:35:02Z
Apr 8, 2014

I would be glad to help, contact me if you have any questions.

- John

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it_user69183 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
2014-04-04T16:58:08Z
Apr 4, 2014

I don't have a chart as such - as I've said before, matrices are highly subjective and the common error is to ignore the inherent biases built in. Building your own does not take much time or effort, and the exercise gives good insight into the biases YOU build in. More, as they are your biases they will be important to your final decision.

A few things to consider:

What are you trying to monitor? Both seem to take a lot of effort to get Windows details, that can be important.
Who will be using this? Is it primarily visual (live) or alerts?
Does it run cross platform, or is it limited to an environment you are familiar/unfamiliar with?
Should node management be included?
Ease of install is mostly equal to ease of recovery, but not quite. If you have time run a recovery scenario to find out.
Does it have auto discovery? If so, how effective is it?
How much effort does it take to configure details? This can be major?
Is your team familiar with the programming environment?
What are the limits - that is, how much traffic can a single monitor handle, and how big can the system grow?
Can you configure the interface for different groups/people? How much effort does this take?
How ugly is the Interface? This can be an issue, especially if presenting to non engineers. Even engineers can get tired of something hideous; they will spend a lot of time in it.

Then comes the ugly task of weighting each of these. As this is an internal effort I recommend avoiding weighting entirely. The concept of condensing complex issues to a single number is fatally flawed, and the resulting chart will show the winner just as well. Or, in the event of a close tie this will also be apparent, and the decision will have to be made with other criteria.

it_user103107 - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Opsview
Vendor
2014-04-04T09:16:39Z
Apr 4, 2014

If you want Nagios plugins and the extensibility Nagios brings, but not the awful user interface and lack of scalability and enterprise-features (reports, auto discovery, netflow/sflow, etc) then look at Opsview.

If you are monitoring a large number of servers, networks, etc then you need to look further afield than PRTG and Nagios.

Disclosure: I work for Opsview

it_user89637 - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner Fox-Solutions
Vendor
2014-04-03T13:17:11Z
Apr 3, 2014

When I must to choose, I prefer Splunk as an universal Monitoring system :)

It's easy to implement this logging system on your systems.

it_user100863 - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Systems at Thomson Reuters
Real User
2014-04-03T11:44:02Z
Apr 3, 2014

I would not choose either, I prefer icinga.

it_user89637 - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner Fox-Solutions
Vendor
2014-04-03T11:36:27Z
Apr 3, 2014

Take a look at this URL for a comparison of the 2 software packages:

http://www.paessler.com/nagios-alternative

Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios XI vs. PRTG Network Monitor and other solutions. Updated: September 2023.
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it_user78108 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales at Paessler AG
Vendor
2014-04-03T11:28:21Z
Apr 3, 2014

I get this question every day, and to be fair, I believe that the answer always comes down to how valuable your time is to you. I don't mean for that to come off as sarcasm. I know that today's IT environments require an acute review of where every penny is spent, and thus having an open-source (read FREE) alternative available for monitoring your network can be quite compelling. But, free is not always free. In fact, the man-hours invested into deploying and maintaining Nagios can offset the nominal cost for implementing and maintaining PRTG in most environments. To truly understand...read this article www.paessler.com/nagios-alternative or others that have been written in regards. Better yet, install both into a subset of your environment and calculate the man-hours. Figure your costs across those man-hours. Then imagine that in a year's time, how many more man-hours both would require for updating and maintaining your network optimally...and I think the picture will start to come into more focus for you. I hope that this helps.

Disclosure: I work for Paessler AG

it_user88299 - PeerSpot reviewer
User at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
2014-04-03T11:14:43Z
Apr 3, 2014

Nagios will be a better choice. Ask the Nagios support team to give you a demo of their product so that you can decide whether the product suits your requirements. 

it_user90867 - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
2014-04-03T11:11:47Z
Apr 3, 2014

Actually ZABBIX is better :)

We dont work with Nagios neither PRTG. I think ZABBIX can help/solve all issues about monitoring in any environment.
If you need some more help, please let me know.

Luciano

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Collecting as many metrics, statuses, and logs about the servers is indeed the first step, you never know what data you will need to solve a particular problem. The second step is to process and correctly pinpoint where the network performance/behavior differs from the expected range/baseline.  Can your network monitoring software automate the obvious (execute remote corrective actions in response to alerts) and notify the IT person about only critical situations where the human needs to make a decision about the resolution options? We expect the network monitoring software today to do just that.  I would say NetCrunch can do it, but do you have any experience with other monitoring products that provide a similar type of monitoring experience for IT teams?
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