Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of edz_pgt
edz_pgtFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

asked on

Remote system monitoring - Recommendations please.

I run an IT Support business and I'm looking for a no-cost or low-cost system for monitoring client machines. I'm thinking along the lines of an agent program running on each server which sends info to my server.

I've seen Kaseya and although it worked I found it expensive and slow to operate.

Any better suggestions?
Avatar of Alan Hardisty
Alan Hardisty
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

I am currently using GFI MAX Remote Management.
Very simple to use - simple installation of a small app on each server / workstation and it reports to a central system where you log in and monitor via a web-site centrally seeing any issues that are reported:
http://www.gfi.com/it-managed-services-software
Free 30-day trial - Max cost to you per month with prospect of double that per month in terms of customer invoice.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of naykam
naykam
Flag of Australia image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
I can tell you Spiceworks mult-tenant features suck. It is great for an in-house IT shop, but doesn't scale to MSPs well.
To be blunt, it takes money to make money, so I just don't buy into the "I want to charge customers to monitor their stuff, and I want a low/no cost solution to do so."
I'd love it if AT&T gave me free T-3's that I could resell too, but it isn't how ISPs make money.
-----
Harsh words aside though, there are some great MSP programs. I happen to agree with you on Kaseya. Tigerpaw makes a better one, as someone else mentioned, GFI has a good service (definitely not low cost though, it'll cut into your profit margin) and there are others. For a good quick list, I've actually been recommending that people head over to www.mspu.us and sign up for a free account. While I'm not yet sold on their "premium" services, their basic account gives you access to some basic documents and their partner list.  That partner list, in particular, has over a dozen different MSP monitoring solutions the last I checked. You should be able to find one that will accomodate your business plan from within that list.
 
-Cliff
 
options
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_network_monitoring_systems

I prefer XYMON ( not listed ) Free open source and configurable.

You will need to put it on the Internet or port forward the reporting port to your XYMON server

I hope this helps !
http://www.eyesofnetwork.com/ - Free and OpenSource

EyesOfNetwork (“EON”) is the OpenSource solution combining a pragmatic usage of ITIL processes and a technological interface allowing their workaday application. EyesOfNetwork Supervision is the first brick of a range of products targeting to assist IT managment and gouvernance. EyesOfNetwork Supervision provides event management, availability, problems and capacity.

The Release 2 reinforces this positioning, and provides a richer user experience. Among numerous fixes, the release 2 allows better modelling of the IT’s organization, adds support for SNMPv3 for security, and better ergonomics especially for mapping of applications. This release reveals the future of EyesOfNetwork Exploitation. This brick of the suite offers already a very first approach of “Service Desk”, and “Configuration Management” through, among other things, adding a stable version of the wonderfull GLPI.
An easy to use windows based software is IP Switch What's Up Gold

http://www.whatsupgold.com/

WhatsUp Gold is a powerful monitoring & management solution, designed to easily manage networks of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises. It's tried, tested, and proven on networks just like yours – thousands of them.
Avatar of scraane
scraane

www.nagios.org

Free, and easy to setup (use the manual). The server runs on linux, but clients can be anything.
Avatar of edz_pgt

ASKER

Scraane>
I had a look at Nagios yesterday. I managed to figure out how to install a virtual machine running Ubuntu (I'm not good with Linux!) and I managed to get Nagios running on it. However, at this point I got the impression that it only monitored machines within it's own LAN / VPN network.
So, does Nagios have the ability to monitor machines it cannot see? (via an agent software or similar)
Having spent such a long time working on this already it does seem a shame to throw it all away. Nagios does seem to be liked by many people.
Help on this would be appreciated!
Avatar of edz_pgt

ASKER

Thanks. I had looked at this system a few years back and decided against it. However, although it is sluggish to use, it ticks most of the right boxes for me .......and it's free! :)
Avatar of edz_pgt

ASKER

(Spiceworks, that is!)