The radical change in business landscape has forced organizations to offer the best service delivery, calling for streamlined operational processes. This is why mission critical applications, like servers and network, have to be efficient. This requires that these gadgets be consistently monitored round the clock, so that any failure or malfunction is detected immediately. Monitoring the server and network infrastructure is critical.

The Top 10 Server and Network Monitoring Tools
GFI Network Server Monitor. This application comes embedded with features that automatically scan the network for irregularities. When failures are detected, the software provides instant notification to the administrator via SMS, pager, or e-mail technology. In addition to notifications, the system can be configured so that it can take remedial actions such as automatic rebooting of the system, running a script, or restarting certain services.

Monit. An open source application that is used to manage and monitor file systems, directories, files, programs, and processes on UNIX based system. The application performs automatic maintenance and repair. The system can be used to monitor server systems, network, or even cloud services.

Ganglia. Mainly used to monitor high performance computing systems such as servers, clusters, and grids. The application leverages popular technologies such as XML, XDR, and RRD tool.

Nagios. This is a server and network monitoring application that enables enterprise identify and resolves IT infrastructure related problems before they affect critical business processes. The software enables the system administrator to detect and repair faults within servers and networks before the problem directly affects end users and customers.

Zenoss. This is a freeware open source application that is used to monitor servers, networks, and applications. It is very popular and since its launch it has been downloaded over a million times and it is widely deployed across the globe.

Argus. Comes with capabilities to monitor virtually anything residing within the company network infrastructure including databases, application programs, SNMP OIDS, IP connectivity, TCP + UDP applications, and server systems. In case it discovers faults, it can send alerts to the system administrator through SMS or pager services.

Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG). This particular application monitors while graphing traffic on network links. It can provide hourly, daily, monthly, or weekly graphs. It can also possible to graph any SNMP variable.

Ntop. An open source application that monitors the traffic, this software looks at the IP traffic, protocol information, and any other network related statistics. The system then sorts out the collected information by subnet or hosts, or can scan the entire network. It works under both windows and Linux environment.

Big Brother. A low cost application with the capabilities of supporting hundreds of network devices, it can also monitor various aspects of the network such as functions, event logs, applications, and processes.

Observium. This monitoring application comes with support for PHP/MySQL/SNMP and it is primarily geared towards Cisco and Linux based networks. It also comes with support for various network hardware and operating systems.

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