Network Monitoring

A network monitoring tool periodically makes a request to a system end point and records the result in a database of some kind.

Whether the polling interval is every few seconds, one minute or ten minutes or longer there is an awful lot of time when the network monitor has nothing meaningful to say about the state of the end point.

The network monitor is unlikely to be the first system to spot a problem. If the network monitor won’t be the first to spot a problem, what will?

The first ICINGA beta has been released with a new GUI written in PHP 5 utilising the Agavi MVC framework. A project roadmap is available so you can see where the project is headed.

… a nice roundup by Linux.com outlining some of the options for network monitoring in a *nix environment.

Robert Aronsson is the CEO of Intellipool AB a company with over ten years experience of the network management market. Intellipool introduced a distributed network monitor over four years ago. I interviewed Robert with a view to getting some insight into Intellipool’s experience of implementing distributed network monitoring solutions with their customers.

The interview was conducted via email. My questions are in bold with Robert’s answers underneath.

Q: What key factors determine whether you need a distributed solution?

The most obvious factor is network location, doing direct network monitoring over, for example, a branch office VPN is not something I would recommend. Depending on what you are monitoring it can be a huge resource drain on a VPN that should be used for “normal” office work.

A number of mid-level network monitoring products, like What’s Up Gold & Intellipool for instance, have recently implemented distributed monitoring features. Mid-level network monitoring products are now implementing distributed monitoring so it is affordable by a lot more companies.

Single Poller Monitoring

With regular network monitoring you have a single poller measuring network and server performance from a single location on your network.