The Best Open Source Network Monitoring Tools of 2017

The demand for open source software continues to grow, and network management tools have adapted to this trend. No longer do you have to pay small fees for software that you may not need, look out for (mostly) free open source tools for monitoring, configuring, and mapping your networked devices.

Here are several open source network monitoring tools to assist IT administrators in their work.

1. Open source network monitoring tool: NetXMS

NetXMS provides an enterprise-class open source network management and monitoring program with a simple user interface on Windows and Linux.

NetXMS provides distributed network monitoring, automated network discovery and detailed reporting for all layers of the IT infrastructure through a relatively simple installation process.

Additionally, the server appliance and agent are fairly lightweight for such a comprehensive product.

2. Open source network monitoring tool: Pandora FMS

Targeted at the enterprise level, Pandora FMS offers a sleek and uncluttered user experience, providing easy-to-read quick insight tools and important network statistics such as network status, reported alarms, number of deployed agents, and a list of other recently performed tasks.

Pandora FMS can perform network diagnostics without the need for external access, meaning users can respond faster to any network issues. In fact, FMS claims that the server monitoring system in agent mode responds in around 10 seconds.

3. Open source network monitoring tool: Cacti

Initially released in 2001, Cacti is an open source web-based network monitoring and graphing tool designed for data logging. It can be used to display network data in real time, such as CPU load or bandwidth utilization.

Cacti is a front-end application for RRDtool, an open source database tool for storing real-time changing data. It uses SNMP as its default collection algorithm, but if you prefer native Perl PHP scripts, you can use them too.

Its latest version 0.8.8h was released in May 2016. Its main features include advanced graphic projects, graphic automatic filling support, graphic data processing, custom data collection scripts, built-in SNMP support, graphic templates, data source templates, host templates and user-based management.

4. Open source network monitoring tool: GroundWork Monitor Core

GroundWork Monitor Core is a platform for monitoring networks, applications, and cloud usage. The open source version includes a license for monitoring up to 50 devices and community-based support, and the software also has a commercial counterpart.

In terms of its network management capabilities, GroundWork provides network and device self-discovery and maintenance, topology, alarm control, data collection through API/SNMP/IPMI, and support for OpenDaylight SDN.

GroundWork also provides storage management, supporting large-scale enterprise-class vendors such as NetApp and EMC, as well as data collection and storage buffering from disk, block or object storage and outage visualization.

Because of GroundWork's turnkey approach to network management, this suite may be better suited for larger businesses and enterprises looking for an established brand than a developer-focused tool like Big Brother or Big Sister.

5. Open source network monitoring tool: Hyperic

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VMware's Hyperic tool is used to monitor web applications and their performance in physical, virtual or cloud environments. It works with application servers, web servers, databases, operating systems, hypervisors, messaging services and directory servers.

Hyperic provides infrastructure and operating system monitoring, detailed reporting, application and middleware monitoring, alerting and remediation workflows, and a universal extensible API.

This network monitoring tool offers an enterprise version that improves network alerting capabilities and allows for better baseline creation.

6. Open Source Network Monitoring Tool: Observium

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The Linux-based Observium is an automated network monitoring tool. According to the website, "The tool is developed and maintained by a team of experienced professional network engineers and system administrators. Observium is a platform designed and built by users themselves."

Observium is available in community and professional editions, uses RRDTool for buffer storage and graphing, and has an easy-to-use user interface and reporting capabilities. However, it does not have a report export function, which may be a problem for business applications.

The community version will provide users with complete automatic monitoring capabilities for all supported devices or indicators, network mapping through automatic discovery protocols, automatic identification of hundreds of devices, and a new version will be released every six months.

Professional version users will get all the features of the community version and will also get real-time software updates and repairs, rule-based automatic grouping, network threshold and status alert system, and traffic statistics system.

7. Open Source Network Monitoring Tool: Zabbix

Zabbix is ​​an enterprise-level network monitoring tool that provides real-time monitoring, automatic discovery, mapping, and scalability through data collected from servers, virtual machines, and network devices.

Zabbix's enterprise-level monitoring software provides users with built-in Java application server monitoring, hardware monitoring, VMware monitoring, and CPU, memory, network, and disk space performance monitoring.