Network Monitoring Tools

Zabbix

Zabbix is a networking monitoring tool that is owned by Zabbix LLC that is based in America, Japan and Europe. It is developed as commercial open source software that is primarily used to monitor networks and applications used in different environments. Zabbix is modified to track the health of any network device. It is also user friendly because it has a simple graphical user interface which most users find it convenient for navigating and moving from one icon to the next. Furthermore, unlike other network monitory tools, Zabbix is scalable and very cost effective which makes it preferable for many users (Alves 89).

Zabbix is also designed to meet the expectations of the business world by integrating their systems with a wide range of services to carter to each profession. Another interesting feature is its ability to complement databases and systems such as Oracle, Windows OS and other systems. This brings Zabbrix to technological standards that are only achieved by few network monitoring tools. Without the host using software, the system still has the ability to routinely check the performance and availability of standard monitoring services which ensures quality service is also achieved. Although Zabbix has proved to be a system ahead of its time, there are certain flaws that need to be addressed.

Need for Research

It is a complex system when it comes to installation; it requires a lot of time and skilled manpower to properly execute its integration. Even though it is popular because it has customized solutions for various business problems and uses advanced programing languages, it should be easier to install for any business. This will increase its product consumer base and companies will save a lot of resources.

More research should also be directed to smaller networks. Zabbix is only convenient for large network because of the personal home page (PHP) performance. The web graphical user interphase also makes it unsuitable to for it to be used in small networks of less than 1,000+ nodes. Finally, Zabbix lacks tests that give real time results. More research should be invested in these areas so that better tests can be formulated and complex templates can be designed to better monitor infrastructure.

Icinga

Incinga was first developed in 2009 as a Nagios’ fork. It is a commercial networking monitoring system that was designed to overcome the short comings of Nagios. The advantage of Incinga is that it is flexible and customized to meet the needs of its users. It also alerts users on the health, connectivity, availability of a server or an infrastructure (Mehta 47). In comparison to other network monitoring tools, Incinga is fast and capable of doing many runs at the same time; it is multithreaded meaning that it can run hundreds of checks every second. This makes it one of the strongest systems available. The Incinga is very similar to the Nagios but one of the primary differences is that the Incinga has an object-based configuration which brings about clarity in its usage unlike in the Naigos. The other interesting feature or model of the Incinga is its ability to carter to the needs of the market. The information technology marketplace is dynamic and the Incinga has solved the marketing problems by being more community-focused. This has made their systems friendlier; the Incinga is more scalable and its configuring format is simple unlike other network monitory tools. Another interesting feature of the Icinga is that it offers a simple module of reporting based on Jasper Reports.

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Need for Research

Although the Icinga has proved to be a useful networking monitory tool, more research is needed to make its installation easier. A lot of time and skill required to install the system.

Cacti

Cacti is an impressive free network monitoring tool that is web-based and uses front-end application. It is also convenient to users because it permits them to poll services at various intervals and allows them to represent the resulting data as graphs. Moreover, the system is generally used to display metric time-series information in the form of graphs. The powerful aspect of Cacti is that it uses graphs to present information and data that has been analyzed. The advantage of this system is that graphs make information simple and digestible in a comprehensive manner. This trait has made it popular to many network monitory users because it is easy and free. The use of graphs is especially useful when the information involved is bulky and very detailed. This helps to present the data in way that can be in way that summarizes information that can be understood (Haydon 36).

Cacti was first developed by Ian Berry while still in high school. His main aim was to create a system that was easy and more flexible to use than RRDtool and MRTG. Since 2001 when it was first designed, Cacti has gone on to provide its users will quality services in the network monitoring systems. Its main features are the advanced poller capability and the multiple benefits of using graph templates in interpreting data. Unlike other systems such as Zabbix, it is easy to install and use. Its graph features have unlimited items, easy manipulation of data and it is easy to collect information from any source. 

Need for Research

Although Cacti is a successful network tool there is more it can do to achieve greater success in the telecommunication world. Cacti can expand its range of features by focusing more on other applications rather than primarily graphs. It can also make use of modern advanced programing languages that will help solve more technological problems.

Nagios

Most professionals in the information technology sector are aware of Nagios as a network monitory tool because it’s in an efficient system which solves many institutional problems. Naigos is a free open source networking monitoring system that checks systems and networks to ensure they are performing well. One of the main benefits of using Nagios is that it is able to find where there are problems in servers and applications. It ensures that systems are running properly with no hiccups. These systems can effectively operate in any Unix variants but it was initially developed to operate under Linux.

Naigos was originally released in March 2002; it was developed by Ethan Galstad and was licensed and registered under GNU General Public License. Naigos is usually considered very useful and recommended by many informational technology professions because of its problem solving capacity. It does everything in terms of monitoring systems. One of the other impressive characters of Naigos is its external plug-in support to give solutions for users. It provides solutions to the world’s largest organization that experience problems of overloaded data (Kocjanand Beltowski 62).

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Need for Research

Although Naigos is considered one of the leaders in offering monitory solutions in the world today, there are certain limitations that the company still faces. By overcoming these hurdles, the company will be able to offer better services to their customers. One of the major limitations of Nagios is that it is time consuming and costly to maintain. Nagios is mainly preferred by large organizations because they have the skilled manpower and financial resources to maintain operations of such a system. In addition, users of Nagios need Linux to install and configure it. More research is needed to ensure that Linux is not the only application that is needed to use Nagios. Furthermore, more research should be directed to improve the kind of programming language used to write plugins; as it stands at the moment, too many languages are used to write the plugins. Moreover, the parent company needs to improve the quality of plugins and ensure integrating them is easy.

To improve the performance of Nagios, more research needs to be employed to upgrade the graphical user interphase. Graphical user interphase makes it easy for non-technical individuals to navigate across the application. Furthermore, the graphical user interphase reduces the amount of details and information of a system and simplifies actions to be used by individual.