Why users are changing their monitoring solution
Change Track
Many enterprises use the free Nagios monitoring solution; some would prefer to change to something else. We talked to people who switched to find out how they fared.
The open source world has many free monitoring systems, but if you need a comprehensive and versatile solution, you will quickly end up in the Nagios camp. In the more than 15 years of its existence, Nagios [1] has gained a reach that is unrivaled, largely because of its plugin concept and an engaged and productive community.
But is everyone happy with Nagios? The free version, at least, has a reputation for suffering from performance issues as the number of checks increases, and many people view it as difficult to configure. The commercial version does not offer onsite support outside of the United States and, even within the US, support agreements are not exactly cheap.
More than a few enterprise users are looking into alternatives or have already made the move. Some opt for solutions derived from Nagios, including Icinga [2] (which no longer includes any Nagios code in its Icinga 2 embodiment) or Naemon [3]; others rely on new implementations such as Shinken [4] and commercial derivatives such as op5 [5], NetEye [6], GroundWork [7], or SNAG-View [8].
[...]
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