Best Server Monitoring Tools and Software

Why Use Server Monitoring Tools?

The server monitoring tool is gaining visibility into the activity on your servers — whether physical or virtual. A server is a device that stores and processes information for delivery to other devices, applications, or users.

A server can support hundreds or even thousands of requests simultaneously. Therefore, managing an organization's IT infrastructure relies heavily on ensuring all its servers work as expected.

Monitoring your servers' performance and uptime is crucial to the health of your IT infrastructure, as they are some of the most critical components of your IT infrastructure. For example, you may lose customers if your web server is offline, running slowly, or experiencing outages or other performance issues.

In addition, crucial business data, such as accounting files or customer records, may get corrupted if an internal file server generates errors. Server monitoring software is designed to monitor your systems and provide critical metrics to IT management.

What are the Benefits of Server Monitoring Tools?

Below are the benefits of server performance monitoring tools:

1. Monitors Server Health

   Server performance monitoring tools program tracks various metrics, such as CPU optimization, memory usage, disk allocation, response time, and many more.

   Using this remote monitoring tool, users can keep track of all components from a vantage point, ensuring the server is healthy and no issues are causing a system slowdown.

2. Promptly Identifying Server Issues

   As soon as a problem arises, real-time server monitoring software alerts the user, allowing them to be proactive.

   As many businesses cannot afford downtime, which could result in substantial financial losses, this software will enable them to keep servers running at 100% efficiency without any lapses. Moreover, this allows for easier, faster troubleshooting.

3. Continuous Business Operations

   Companies can run daily operations without problems by monitoring server uptime and downtime. For example, if a company website fails to function correctly and goes down, the server monitoring tools will alert the user immediately and take the necessary action.

   This way, the website can be up and running quickly, preventing the company from losing website traffic.

4. Provide Performance Monitoring

   A user can analyze real-time and historical data and pinpoint possible causes of system failure using performance statistics.

5. Seamless Integration With Other IT Software

   IT infrastructure monitoring can seamlessly integrate various software tools, including log analysis software, IT alert systems, IT issue resolution software, etc. In addition, its data is used in collaboration with other tools to build a robust IT infrastructure ecosystem.

6. Identify Security Breaches

   A sudden spike in data processing or bandwidth consumption may indicate a security breach, allowing the user to take preemptive action.

What are the Common Features of Server Monitoring Software?

Server monitoring tools are a great way to monitor the health of all your physical and virtual servers and ensure no issues could lead to downtime. Below are some metrics that help users monitor their servers:

1. CPU Utilization

   Software that monitors the CPU load must be able to perform this feature efficiently. Because the CPU is the center of processing for the server, any fault or issue with CPU performance could slow down the server, eventually leading to a crash. Furthermore, heavy CPU usage will result in poor memory utilization, diminishing the server's health.

2. Disk Usage

   The feature allows users to see how much disk space is left for use, identifies the applications and processes that take up the most space, and provides solutions to prevent complete disk space utilization. Using it, users can make simple and efficient decisions regarding capacity planning.

3. Network Monitoring & Analysis

   As the backbone of the IT environment, servers are connected to large computer networks worldwide. Performing a manual network check across every connection point is impossible for humans to do, so software plays an important role. Network statistics can be tested, collected, processed, and built into a database to be analyzed and derived insights from.

4. Error Rate Detection & Analysis

   As a percentage of total error requests, the error rate refers to the number of issues that occur. By analyzing an error rate, the user can identify possible errors before they occur, thereby preventing downtime. Even though a standard error rate of less than 1% is acceptable, ensuring that mistakes are as minimal as possible would be ideal.

5. Bandwidth Analysis

   Taking up more bandwidth would slow down a server's performance. Instead, users can reduce congestion and bottlenecks and ensure that the server runs smoothly by tracking the bandwidth consumed by an application.

   Three bandwidth monitoring options are available: packet sniffing, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), and Netflow. The SNMP protocol is an ideal tool for monitoring bandwidth. An SNMP-based server monitoring solution gathers data or transmits and receives values through the interfaces of network devices.

Need to Consideration While Purchasing Server Monitoring Tools?

A server monitoring system service must have one common goal: monitor a server's health and alert the user when errors occur. However, there is plenty to think about before purchasing server performance monitoring tools, including:

1. Comply With Business Objectives & Budgets

   When purchasing a server monitoring solution, the primary objective is to ensure it is well aligned with the buyer's business objectives and budget. For example, the buyer may opt for a free software version or a primary offering with minimal features if they only need to maintain server health.

   On the other hand, it is possible to choose a more sophisticated and feature-rich server monitoring program if a buyer needs software capable of handling a wide range of operations and large advanced tasks.

2. Environment Surveys

   The buyer must examine the company's IT systems and applications to choose the right software for the server. For example, buyers with several physical or virtual servers need server monitoring software to manage each server individually.

3. Plan Ahead

   To accommodate current server requirements and future upgrades, buyers must choose software to support current and future promotions as companies grow and expand operations.

   Therefore, it is vital to ensure hardware compatibility in the future by checking with the software vendor if the monitoring software can also provide long-term support for the buyer.

4. Compare Different Best Server Monitoring Tools

   After deciding that you need server monitoring tools to keep track of server health and have a budget, the next stage would be to make a long list of the best server monitoring tools on the market. Software with long lists is eliminated if it does not provide critical functionality, resulting in a more compact, precise list.

5. Utilize a Free Trial

   Following the narrowing down of the list, customers can decide whether the vendor provides a live demo or a free trial version (limited in functionality) of the server monitoring tools. It's an excellent way for buyers to determine if the server performance monitoring tools are the right choice, and they can use the trial versions before committing to the purchase.

6. Invest in Training

   It is a good idea to ask the software vendor if they can train employees who will operate the software regularly when choosing new software.

   Employees can become more comfortable with the server tools if software vendors provide training. As a result, employees can adapt more quickly to the server tools by reducing the learning curve.

Who Uses Server Monitor Solution?

1. IT teams

   Network monitoring tools alert the IT team to errors and take quick actions to reduce downtime. The alerts are sent to the server monitoring software system administrator, who then raises them with the appropriate system engineers.

   Using the system engineers' expertise, they can troubleshoot and resolve application performance, hosting issues, and server functionality changes. The team will also establish performance monitoring benchmarks to maintain server efficiency.

2. Executive Teams

   Business professionals can make data-driven decisions by using verified data to achieve business goals. The executive team can proactively derive insights from data visualization by using the server monitoring systems' data (via dashboards or templates or by integrating the software with other methods).

   As a result, executive teams can assess risk, analyze efficiency, and track their assets' return on investment (ROI).

3. Security Management Specialists

   Server monitoring solutions can help the team ensure that all web servers are secure and are not compromised by tracking the data they collect. In addition, this is extremely useful when multiple web and virtual servers need to be monitored at various locations, as the team can eliminate any risks even before they occur.

What are the Alternatives to Server Monitoring Tools?

There are several alternatives to server monitoring tools, and you can use those instead of a network monitoring tool:

1. Enterprise Monitoring Software

   With integrated enterprise monitoring software, all IT environments within an organization can be monitored, including servers, storage, networks, database management, etc.

   You can access data via a single dashboard. Since this approach allows complete infrastructure monitoring tools, multiple users can utilize the same system instead of independently monitoring servers.

2. Hardware Monitoring Software

   Hardware monitoring software tracks the performance of hardware components, such as CPU performance and fan speed, which are critical components of a server. It sends alerts in case of potential problems, allowing the user to pinpoint the source of the error and take the measures needed.

3. Log Monitoring Software

   A log monitoring software scans and monitors the log files generated by servers and networks and generates alerts when abnormal patterns are detected.

What are the Challenges with Server Performance Monitoring Tools?

Companies encounter the following challenges when using server monitor software:

1. Managing Hundreds of Servers

   The sudden need for working from home drives companies to invest heavily in server infrastructure to facilitate high-speed data processing, file transfers, and smooth operation.

   However, as the number of servers increases, server monitoring service becomes more challenging to keep up with the added servers and therefore needs to be constantly updated.

2. Alert Blindness

   A condition known as alert blindness happens when a user receives several alerts from a server monitoring tool that, with time, may be ignored due to their repetitive nature.

   It is unlikely that users will be able to recognize severe issues that need immediate attention in such a scenario. To resolve this challenge, you can set threshold notifications for various components and retest intervals to ensure the errors are not repeated or one-time.

   You can also set it up to restart servers for cases where the site is freezing automatically. For example, if a server fails, it can be set up to continue and check if the issue is resolved. If not, it can alert system administrators to troubleshoot the problem.

3. Hardware Health & Environmental Issues

   In some cases, admins cannot control issues such as power outages, UPS failures, temperature, and humidity levels in a data center, cooling system failures, and fan breakdowns.

5 Best Server Monitoring Tools

Many Windows, Mac, and Linux server monitoring tools are available today. To help you make the right choice, here are the ten best software for server monitoring:

• Atera
• DataDog
• SolarWinds Server & Application Manager
• Dynatrace
• Panopta

1. Atera

   Atera is an integrated and powerful cloud-based Remote IT Management platform for managed service providers (MSPs), IT consultants, and IT departments. All servers on your managed networks can be monitored and managed using the Atera agent for a flat fee with Atera.

   Moreover, Atera's Network Discovery add-on identifies unmanaged devices and opportunities instantly. Providing all-in-one IT management solutions, Atera is an integrated solution that includes everything you need.

   Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM), Remote Access, Network Discovery, Reporting, Script Library, Ticketing, Helpdesk, and more are just a few features in Atera.

   Features

   Monitoring server availability & performance

   Run automation profiles for continuous maintenance & updates

   Automated self-healing alerts with real-time alerting

   Pricing

   Pro - $99 per user, per month billed annually

   Growth - $129 per user, per month billed annually

   Power - $169 per user, per month billed annually

2. DataDog

   DataDog provides a unified view of monitoring your infrastructure, applications, network, and logs. One of the features of Datadog is its ability to offer correlated metrics associated with server log discovery and trace, which can be helpful when trying to troubleshoot server performance issues. 

   For example, When you monitor server metrics with application data, you can discover hidden sources of lag, such as overburdened servers or contested databases.DataDog's real-time Linux server monitor capabilities allow you to visualize the server's health and performance.

   Features

   Resolve issues quicker with ML-based insights.

   Connect distributed traces to infrastructure metrics, network calls, and live processes.

   Reduce service latency with a breakdown of slow requests by time spent in code on CPU, GC, lock contention, and I/O.

   Pricing

   Starts at $15 per host per month

3. SolarWinds Server & Application Manager

   Using SolarWinds server monitoring software, you can monitor the server performance, alert any errors, report errors, manage the server, etc. In addition to monitoring the server response time, services, memory, CPU load, and event logs, SolarWinds' server management allows you to restart the server, kill processes, and restart services.

   SolarWinds windows server monitoring tools cover all Microsoft products and services such as Windows Server, SQL-DB, Hyper-V, Azure, and more. 

   Features

   Tracks the status and availability of servers

   Monitors real-time processes

   Resolves issues faster and minimizes downtime.

   Pricing

   Starts at $1,663

4. Dynatrace

   The Dynatrace server performance monitoring tool offers software (SaaS) and on-premise implementations. In addition to monitoring server metrics and logs, Dynatrace can show you network metrics specific to processes. One of Dynatrace's cool features is that it can offer you network metrics specific to operations.

   Features

   On-premises version available

   All-in-one platform for infrastructure, applications, analytics, and cloud automation

   AI-powered anomaly detection and alerts

   Pricing

   Full-stack monitoring - Starts at $74

   Infrastructure monitoring - Starts at $22

   Digital experience monitoring - Starts at $11

5. Panopta

   Panopta is a web-based SaaS monitoring tool that helps companies and service providers track network and server performance in the cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments. In addition, it has a built-in incident handler that helps manage incidents and resolve issues centrally.

   Using Panopta's cloud monitoring functionality, you can automatically check application performance, disk space usage, load balancers, and many other applications. In addition, OpenStack allows you to manage servers across Linux, Unix, Windows, and Mac operating systems.

   Features

   Availability Testing & Bandwidth Monitoring

   Configuration Management

   Mail Server Monitoring & Maintenance Scheduling

   Pricing

   Enterprise -$749

   Standard - $49

   Corporate - $399

   Advanced - $129