What tool can I use to monitor a network of PCs?

Question

I want my system to act as the central system for the rest of my network of 10 PCs. I also want to monitor what's going on, and monitor the activity of other systems. So how can I do this? What are the tools I need to monitor; just using top or any bandwidth monitoring tool is the only thing required, and how can I use my system as a centralized server for rest of the systems?

In one of your comments below, you mention user administration, ldap and samba. I suggest you ask about those in a separate question since they are very different subjects to monitoring. — David Edwards, Jun 13 '13 at 08:32
http://askubuntu.com/questions/169033/how-to-install-icinga-on-ubuntu-12-04-monitor-remote-host — Qasim, Jun 13 '13 at 10:39
you can also look here http://askubuntu.com/questions/293426/system-monitoring-tools-for-ubuntu/293447#293447. — Qasim, Jun 18 '13 at 13:56

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 13 '13 at 07:13

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Nagios is considered one of the best monitoring tools on the market. They also offer an open source version "nagios core" (nagios3-core in the Ubuntu Software Center). Having said that, you might want to take a look at this directory of network monitoring tools.

edited Jun 13 '13 at 07:13

karel

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answered Jun 13 '13 at 06:53

hmayag

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what about top and htop? I heard they are also good. – Tarun Jun 13 '13 at 07:05
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OK, now I'm confused. Your question was about monitoring a network and the systems connected to it, right? top, atop, htop and the like are very powerful tools but their purpose is to display and manage the running processes on a single system. Perhaps you could edit your question and clarify what you mean by monitoring. Or even better, please describe what is your use case, that is, what purpose will the network serve? – hmayag Jun 13 '13 at 08:16
ok ya your right top and htop are for a single system. thanks for helping. – Tarun Jun 13 '13 at 08:22

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 13 '13 at 06:42

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Take a look at http://munin-monitoring.org/

there are many plugins available and the possibility to write own ones, so you can nearly monitor everything you want.

answered Jun 13 '13 at 06:42

herrhansen

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Thanks quidage for the reply I got the monitoring thing sorted out now. And what about making it as a centralised server. – Tarun Jun 13 '13 at 06:49
@Tarun What do you mean by "centralised server"? What are the purposes of it? Fileserver, Webserver, DNS-Server...? What shall the server do for you? – herrhansen Jun 13 '13 at 07:01
It is meant to manage all the user accounts. should I go for ldap and samba 4 for it? – Tarun Jun 13 '13 at 07:05
Are there only Ubuntu or windows machines too in your network? – herrhansen Jun 13 '13 at 07:06
All are ubuntu but it need to be able to accompany mac and windows as well for future uses. – Tarun Jun 13 '13 at 07:08
so i would recommend ldap and samba too – herrhansen Jun 13 '13 at 07:10
ok thanks. And if they were only ubuntu then only ldap was fine then? – Tarun Jun 13 '13 at 07:14
if you only use ubuntu/linux there is no need for samba, which is an open source implementation of the windows network protocol – herrhansen Jun 13 '13 at 07:17
You might consider to look at Kerberos later for authentication and authorisation later with ldap. – Anders Jun 15 '13 at 13:05

What tool can I use to monitor a network of PCs?

2 Answers2