Is there any free monitoring applications for Windows servers?

Question

I understand that this question had answered before many times, but I can't find something to help me.

I tried Nagios and Munin from a Linux VM but I don't find them so helpful (maybe my fault on configuration). Does anybody know any other Windows friendly programs for monitoring servers, network?

Thanks in advance for your help.

PS: Not only for network monitoring, mostly for IO, free space, users, traffic, errors, services.

Answer 1

You say that you've tried Nagios but apparently didn't get the results you were after. Nagios WILL do what you want, as will a number of alternatives, but you have to put in a bit of effort to learn how to configure it. If you want something that "just works" you're in for some bad news. All monitoring systems require configuration. The effort spent in learning a good system, such as Nagios, will be more than repaid by the results it can give.

I suggest having another look at what you've already tried but this time take it slowly. Don't try to create an all singing all dancing system from scratch. Create something to monitor a few simple things first. Then, when you understand how to get what you want out of it the rest will be a lot easier to set up and the system will grow. Once you get a good start you may be surprised at just how much you can do with a good monitoring system and how much of your time it will free up.

Answer 2

Look at Spiceworks... I've not used it myself but have heard and read good things. But I prefer Nagios and Cacti for these tasks.

Answer 3

• Free
• Simple
• Flexible

Pick any 2.

If you just want a simple 'is the box still alive' monitor, there's plenty around. If you have hardware from one vendor, they may have a free product that suits your needs.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/hpsim/index.html

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/sitelets/solutions/management/server_monitor?c=us&l=en

http://www.tallsoft.com/pingmonitor.htm

Answer 4

I'm a fan of a new app Anfibia Reactor. Many of the linux/unix monitoring applications are very confusing, too many options. Reactor runs on Windows but it's a web-app and the use is very simple, no complex configuration. I use it to monitor a couple of web servers, smtp and an Oracle db. It also monitors cpu, memory, and hard discs (both space and hardware errors). Also you can manage windows services and see the current open connections. You can easily set it up to receive alarms via email, sms and even twitter. You can download it and try it, no need to register or anything. There is also a free version with reduced functionality.

Answer 5

If you can run a Linux box, this box is fully able to monitor Windows servers with solutions like Zenoss, Nagios and OpenNMS. In the case of OpenNMS it is written in Java so it should be possible to run it on a Windows server. For the other two it might be easier to install on Linux since there exists packages for most Linux distributions.

We're using Zenoss to monitor Windows servers. Here's a list of ZenPacks which enables you to monitor specific Windows processes such as IIS, Terminal Server, MS SQL and much more.

Here's a thread about disk monitoring of Windows boxes.

Answer 6

We have 99% Windows server + one Linux box for Nagios ;-)

Nagios does all our internal monitoring. For external monitoring we choose AlertFox, because of their very powerful transaction monitoring features (that is important for our Ajax web applications and Nagios can not do it very well).

Answer 7

Nagios, Cacti, Zenoss, xabbix are all fine monitoring apps.

Then there is Scripting. For Example, I wrote an Exchange Monitoring script and published it to the Microsoft Script Center Repository

Answer 8

I use and prefer Microsoft System Center Operation Manager. Most MS software has out of the box monitoring capability, and it integrates with SCCM, SCVMM, and SCDPM for added capabilities in those packages.

_{Slightly biased by the Microsoft Gold Partner I work for.}

Answer 9

Quest pt360 looks worth a look.

I have to admit I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like a nice solution for monitoring if you just want something client based and single user.

Nagios is notoriously difficult to configure - something that is made easier by using one of the many packages that bundles Nagios with a config management system plus alternative dashboards. Many of these are linked to in previous answers.

Even if you use one of those you'll need to get your head around Nagios. A good book for this is Nagios 3 Enterprise Network Monitoring by Schubert, which outlines all the concepts and dependencies very well.

Answer 10

I think its always necessary for network administrators to spend some money on monitoring and management softwares for their networks. However the best free management software I have seen is SpiceWorks

There are also some simple free monitoring softwares too: http://netsecurity.about.com/cs/hackertools/a/aafreenetmon.htm

But if someday you could spend some money, I myself think SolarWinds can be the best choice To monitor server performance But to only control your servers remotely, you can also use NetSupport