Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
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.
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.
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.
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.
Owner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
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.
Nagios XI and PRTG Network Monitor are prominent competitors in the network and server monitoring tools category. PRTG Network Monitor appears to have a slight advantage due to its user-friendly interface and comprehensive out-of-the-box functionality that appeals to many organizations.Features: Nagios XI provides strong customization capabilities through plugins and custom scripting, appealing to users who enjoy flexibility. It supports real-time alerts, a network map, and is highly...
I would be glad to help, contact me if you have any questions.
- John
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.
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
When I must to choose, I prefer Splunk as an universal Monitoring system :)
It's easy to implement this logging system on your systems.
I would not choose either, I prefer icinga.
Take a look at this URL for a comparison of the 2 software packages:
www.paessler.com/nagios-alternative
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
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.
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