Server Monitoring Tool

This article provides an overview of server monitoring tools and their importance in managing server performance and security. It discusses various tools like Nagios Core, Ganglia, Zabbix, Cacti, CollectD, Spiceworks, Icinga, OpenNMS, and WhatsUp Gold. The article also explores the architecture of server monitoring and the impact of tool failure.

Running head: SERVER MONITORING TOOL
System Management
[Name of the Student]
[Name of the University]
[Author note]

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Introduction:
Server generally refers to the system which is associated with providing of different kind
of resources along with data and services for the system of the clients from the network channel.
Once the request is received the server would be responsible for responding to the request which
has been generated along with the require information [1]. The functions of the server is
associated with including the verification of the identity of the requestor along with the
permission related to accessing of the data resources as well as the formatting of the different
responses. The servers are monitored by making use of tools which are essentially needed for the
purpose of administrating the entire work of the systems. The reports which are presented from
this tools is associated with aiding in the comprehension of the server health capacity along with
the performance within the existing surrounding. Besides this the automated checking is also
associated with helping in the generation of checks in a scheduled way along with providing of
the pre-emptive warnings related to the servers which are working in the environment [2].
Numerous layers of the monitoring software is associated with following the aforementioned
protocols along with getting synchronized with the different applications which are monitored
and are dependent upon the surrounding environment where it is operating. Individual software
are having a specific method or predefined protocols for the approach towards this particular
problems which are faced by the server system. The software checks done on any of the
degradation of the service is associated with the checking of the performance of the service
delivery along with improving the troubleshooting as the quality of the entire system stack.

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IT Infrastructure monitoring tools:
There exists various kind of IT server monitoring tools and this is associated with
including the following:
1. Nagios Core:
This is one of the customizable as well as cost-effective open sources server monitoring
tool and the matrices which are offered by this tools is associated with helping in the
monitoring of the performance of the servers as well as in reporting and remediate
services [3]. However the features provided by this tool is seen to be limited in nature.
2. Ganglia:
This is an open server monitoring tool which is specially designed for the computer
systems which are having a higher performance such as the grids or clusters. The
architecture which this system is having is seen to be scalable and is distributed in nature
and is dependent upon the hierarchical design which is associated with targeting the
federations of clusture. The XML and the XDR is generally used for the purpose of
representing the data and the data which is being transported respectively. This tool helps
in leveraging this two functions. The algorithm of the software engineers along with the
structures of the data is associated with helping in the maximization of the efficiency
which in turn is resulting in the overheads for the individual nodes. The monitoring tool
is associated with supporting numerous processors along with helping the operating
systems.
3. Zabbix: This is a software monitoring tool which is also considered to be an enterprise
solution and is equipped with different characteristics which are responsible for the

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providing of commercial support [3]. This server monitoring tool is associated with
checking the time for response of the different services such as the HTTP. The tool is
also responsible for the checking of the uptime for the different responding services.
4. Cacti: This is considered to be front end tool associated with monitoring of the servers as
well as the graphic tools for the data system along with having the capacity of managing
various data collection. Gathering of the data is generally seen to be occurring in the corn
job by means of utilization of the external scripts which is responsible for feeding of the
metrics. This software is seen to be associated with the creation of the graphs for any of
the datasets. It is very easy to create the graphs from the infrastructure elements which is
also responsible for the including of the servers as well as the load balancers.
5. CollectD: This is an open source daemon which is associated with the collection of the
statistics of performance along with storing of the data which is collected in various
formats such as the RRD files. It is possible to use the software in different operating
systems and the software is entirely responsible for the searching and identification of the
bottlenecks in the performance along with helping in prediction of the load overtime in
the system and is responsible for the creation of warnings. This software is seen to be
integrated with the different graphing tools.
6. Spiceworks:
This is another sever monitoring tool which is associated with providing of insights about
the servers along with providing of insights of the various SNMP devices, the switches
and the services as well [4]. The software is written in Ruby on Rails and the tool is

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responsible for the finding out of the IP addressing devices and is also responsible for
providing of the knowledge base as well as function of the help desk.
7. Icinga: This server monitoring tool is considered to be an extension of the software
Nagios and the software is associated with the providing of the REST API as well as data
connectors. This new attribute of the API is associated with allowing an easy integration
of the different kind of extensions which is generally seen not to be requiring any of the
modifications of the core in a direct way.
8. OpenNMS:
This is another server monitoring tool which is associate with providing a freemium
monitoring option and there exists a free version of the OpenNMS which is having a maximum
number of 10 devices along with a single user login and is only associated with the providing
support to the basic monitoring functions which a server is having [5]. This tool is associated
with living up to its billing as an enterprise-class solution which is having the capability of
monitoring a wide range of hardware as well operating systems and the virtualized platforms.
This software is capable of monitoring the applications as well as the services in a remote
manner. The architecture of this tool is event-driven and is capable of handling thousands of
events.
9. WhatsUp Gold: This is the tool which acts as the first foray for the IT professionals in
world of monitoring and by usage of this software many of the IT pros has been
associated with finding out that they have outgrown the various abilities of this tool as
soon as the tool is installed and this is still a good option for easing into the water. By
having a clear interface as well as with the ability of discovering, mapping and displaying

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the fact that most of the devices which are typically to small and medium-sized
businesses along with some of the nice-to-have capabilities like the configuration
backups of the network devices along with the usage of the WMI upon the top of the
usual SNMP and the ping for the data collection and this is associated with acting as a
good-to-go option for the teams as well as the departments which are not sure where else
to turn [6]. This is not only associated with the scanning of the network but is also
responsible for understanding the architecture of the network by usage of the routing
protocols as well as tables. Elimination of the duplicate devices are done so as to use the
licenses in an efficient way.
Comparison
CollectD
Disk usage
Figure 1: Disk Usage)
Source: (Created By Author)

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CPU Monitoring
Figure 2: CPU Monitoring
Source: (Created by Author)

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Process Monitoring
Figure 3: Process Monitoring
Source: (Created By Author)
Resource Monitoring

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Figure 4: Resource Monitoring
Source: (Created by Author)
Bandwidth Measuring
Figure 5: Bandwidth Measuring
Source: (Created By Author)

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Ganglia
Disk usage
Figure 6: Disk Usage

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Source: (Created by Author)
CPU Monitoring
Figure 7: CPU Monitoring
Source: (Created by Author)
Resource Monitoring

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Figure 8: Resource Monitoring
Source: (Created by Author)
Bandwidth Monitoring
Figure 9: Bandwidth Monitoring
Source: (Created by Author)

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Process Monitoring
Figure 10: Process Monitoring
Source: (Created by Author)

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Zabbix
Disk Usage

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Figure 11: Disk Usage
Source: (Created by Author)
Process Monitoring

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Figure 12: Process Monitoring
Source: (Created By Author)
CPU Monitoring
Figure 13: CPU Monitoring
Source: (Created By Author)

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Bandwidth Monitoring
Figure 14: Bandwidth Monitoring
Source: (Created By Author)
Resource Monitoring

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Figure 15: Resource Monitoring
Source: (Created By Author)
WhatsUp Gold
Disk Usage

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Figure 16: Disk Usage
Source: (Created By Author)
Process Monitoring

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Figure 17: Process Monitoring
Source: (Created By Author)
CPU Monitoring
Figure 18: CPU Monitoring
Source: (Created By Author)
Bandwidth Monitoring

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Figure 19: Bandwidth Monitoring
Source: (Created By Author)

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Resource Monitoring
Figure 20: Resource Monitoring
Source: (Created By Author)
Server monitoring architecture:
Monitoring the servers is not an easy task and for making this routine the virtualization
along with the cloud computing has been used. Results obtained from the enterprise IT
infrastructure has been associated with increasing the number of diverse elements so as to get
managed. In addition to this the systems existing in today’s world is seen to be dispersed
geographically or are associated with the usage of different Oss which are responsible for
making the management complication [7]. This particular situation has been associated with
renewing the importance of the old topic which is the monitoring of the IT infrastructure and the

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applications. Monitoring of the IT infrastructure at the hardware as well as in the services and the
application levels is the first step. Below is the architecture which represents the infrastructure
monitoring architecture. There exists certain tools which are used for the purpose of monitoring
the availability and for detection of the issues and this in turn is associated with ensuring the fact
that the components are available and the resources are measured which are used by the
components.
Fig 21: Architecture for server availability monitoring
Data vulnerability and Server monitoring solution:
There exists various tools for monitoring the vulnerabilities faced by the server which are
responsible for providing of solutions so as to avoid the vulnerabilities and one such tool is the
Comondo Hackerproof. This is a scanning tool which is associated with detection of the
vulnerabilities faced by the servers [8]. The tool is seen to be capable of overcoming the security
concerns which are faced by the servers. In addition to this the tool is also capable of reducing
the abandonment cart and is responsible for regular scanning so as to detect the vulnerabilities.

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Impacts of failure in prediction:
There are several impacts upon the server in case if the monitoring tools fails and this
includes the following:
 The main purpose of monitoring would be disturbed that is the security or the performance or
the network status cannot be determined.
 Unable to detect any kind of vulnerabilities might be leading to failure of the entire server
 The server might crash if the server monitoring tools fail [9]
 The failure of the tools would responsible for not determining if any kind of changes are
required or not.

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References:
[1.]K. Alhamazani, R. Ranjan, K. Mitra, F. Rabhi, P.P. Jayaraman, S.U. Khan, A. Guabtni and
V. Bhatnagar, An overview of the commercial cloud monitoring tools: research dimensions,
design issues, and state-of-the-art. Computing, 97(4), pp.357-377, 2015.
[2.]J. Hernantes, G. Gallardo and N. Serrano, IT infrastructure-monitoring tools. IEEE
Software, 32(4), pp.88-93, 2015.
[3.]M. Chandran, and J. Walvekar, Monitoring in a Virtualized Environment. GSTF Journal on
Computing (JoC), 1(1) , 2018.
[4.]H.J. Syed, A. Gani, R.W. Ahmad, M.K. Khan, and A.I.A. Ahmed, Cloud monitoring: A
review, taxonomy, and open research issues. Journal of Network and Computer
Applications, 98, pp.11-26, 2017.
[5.]Y. Tsujita, Y. Furutani, H. Hida, K. Yamamoto, A. Uno and F. Sueyasu, I/O Interference
Alleviation on Parallel File Systems Using Server-Side QoS-Based Load-Balancing.
In International Conference on High Performance Computing (pp. 36-48). Springer, Cham,
2018, June.
[6.]V. Casola, A. De Benedictis, and M. Rak, Security monitoring in the cloud: an SLA-based
approach. In 2015 10th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and
Security (pp. 749-755), IEEE, 2015, August.G.Q. Peng, G. Xue, and Y.C.Chen, Network
Measurement and Performance Analysis at Server Side. Future Internet, 10(7), p.67, 2018.
[7.]M. Vierhauser, R. Rabiser, P. Grünbacher, K. Seyerlehner, S. Wallner and H. Zeisel,
ReMinds: a flexible runtime monitoring framework for systems of systems. Journal of
Systems and Software, 112, pp.123-136, 2016.

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[8.]S.S. Kolahi, K. Treseangrat, and B. Sarrafpour, Analysis of UDP DDoS flood cyber attack
and defense mechanisms on web server with Linux Ubuntu 13. In 2015 International
Conference on Communications, Signal Processing, and their Applications (ICCSPA'15) (pp.
1-5). IEEE, 2015, February.
[9.] B. Nevarez, SQL Server Storage. In High Performance SQL Server (pp. 181-196).
Apress, Berkeley, CA , 2016.