Linux server monitoring is an important aspect of the entire network performance monitoring and IT operations management process if your network has Linux servers. Basic troubleshooting of Linux servers can be easily achieved using simple built-in commands, especially for monitoring CPU, memory, and processes. But that doesn't quite do the job of effective Linux server monitoring tools. A full-fledged, multi-faceted, all-in-one Linux server performance monitor is needed for a holistic monitoring approach. This is especially true for businesses and enterprises that want to ensure the best business-continuity experience for their organization and end users.
Advantages of Linux servers over Windows servers
Monitoring Linux servers is more advantageous because:
The total cost of owning a Linux server is lower compared to a Windows server.
Linux servers have lower licensing fees, software and hardware costs, maintenance expenses, and system support service and administrative costs.
Linux is a more secure kernel, so Linux-based operating systems are secure and suitable for servers.
Challenges of Linux server monitor
Here are some of the challenges of Linux server monitoring:
Overused or underused resources go unmonitored until a command is run to identify the resource usage.
Most monitoring vendors design tools without Linux support.
OpManager: The potent Linux server monitoring software
OpManager is an all-in-one IT monitoring solution that provides unmatched real-time Linux server management and monitoring capabilities for various servers, including those running Linux. Important Linux server performance metrics like CPU, memory, and health can be monitored using OpManager. Multi-level thresholds can be set up for the important Linux server monitoring metrics to ensure they are constantly or periodically monitored.
To carry out Linux server performance monitoring, make sure either Telnet or SSH is enabled on the server. OpManager supports all major Linux distributions, such as Red Hat Enterprise, SUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and CentOS.
Linux server monitoring: Track health and availability of Linux servers
OpManager's Linux monitoring helps scrutinizes the health and availability of Linux servers via SNMP and CLI. If a device has both SNMP and CLI credentials associated with it, OpManager's Linux server management software will first try to fetch the processes via CLI and then via SNMP. You can monitor performance metrics such as overall resource usage, resource usage by workload, CPU usage, memory usage, disk I/O utilization, system load, network traffic, process details, thread count, process count, and more. From the pre-configured resource monitors, you can select CLI monitors and associate them to the required devices.
With OpManager's Linux server monitor, you can also monitor hardware components in your Linux server including fan speed, temperature, power supply, and more to protect hardware and in turn server health. You can configure to receive alerts when a hardware component fails or encounters an issue via SMS, Email, web alarms, and more.
Linux server monitoring: Achieve unified view of the Linux server performance metrics
OpManager's Linux server monitoring dashboard provides the holistic view of the status of your servers. It provides a graphical view of the performance metrics that allows you to get a glimpse of the server health. It also lets you quickly drill down to the root of the issue, in the event of downtime. You can customize the dahboard as Linux server performance monitoring dashboard, Linux server availability monitoring dashboard and more.
Linux server monitoring: Access performance data for any time interval, anytime
Monitoring Linux servr made easy with OpManager as you can access the Linux server monitoring data in the form of reports. With OpManager having over 200+ built-in reports, you'll always know what has happened in your network at a particular period of time. You can choose to have Top N reports on server performance or availability and use this information to analyse the issue when the server is acting up. You can also schedule reports to be notified to the concerned persons, not missing out on a single issue.
Linux server monitoring: Isolate rogue processes and resolve issues faster
OpManager acts as a Linux process monitor, using both SNMP and CLI to fetch data on critical processes running on Linux, Solaris, Unix, HP-UX, and IBM AIX. Though, monitoring Linux server processes using CLI is one of the effective ways to collect data for monitoring. Such real-time monitoring of processes helps identify rogue processes and act upon them in a single click.
With server performance being constantly monitored, you can identify server performance issues such as high response time, latency, or packet loss in a jiffy and troubleshoot them with troubleshooting tools provided by OpManager. You can also automate certain troubleshooting L1 and L2 actions with Workflows. This way, not only you reduce MTTR to a greater extent but also maintain server uptime.
Linux server monitoring: Automatically associate devices to performance monitors
OpManager offers Linux-specific device templates. But first, let’s look at what device templates are. Device templates in OpManager are used to automatically associate a device model's details with a new or existing device in the network. A device template is pre-populated with device-related details such as device type, vendor, system description, and the object identifiers provided by the vendors' MIBs. The primary use of device templates in OpManager is to simplify initial Linux network management configurations for the end-user as pre-configured thresholds are applied automatically saving them some time. A secondary value-add would be that device details can be viewed in OpManager.
Monitor Linux server with OpManager that supports more than 11,000 device types and 500 device vendors, helping you efficiently discover, classify, and monitor the devices in your Linux network, thus simplifying the overall Linux network monitoring. This is possible with OpManager's plethora of monitoring metrics, wide range of supported devices such as routers, switches, servers, LANs, WLCs, printers, IP addresses, and more.
FAQs on IBM monitoring
What is server monitoring in Linux?
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Server monitoring in Linux ivolves scrutinizing the health, availability, and performance of a Linux-based server. This also includes tracking critical performance metrics, resource usage trends, network activity and more to ensure that the server is running smoothly and efficiently.
What is the purpose of Linux server monitoring?
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The purpose of Linux server monitoring is to:
Optimize the server performance by tracking resource usage and system load.
Manage critical resources such as CPU, memory, disk space and bandwidth to ensure their efficient use.
Detect issues proactively so as to address problems before they affect end users.
Secure your Linux network from unauthorized access, or potential threats.
Meeting regulatory and compliance standards by maintaining detailed logs and reports of server activity and performance.
How to monitor Linux server?
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Linux server can be monitored with the help of a Linux server monitoring tool such as ManageEngine OpManager. With OpManager's threshold based monitoring and active alerting, you can identify network issues and initiate faster troubleshooting to reduce MTTR and imporve network uptime.
"I have a long-standing relationship with ManageEngine. OpManager has always missed one or two features that would make it truly the best tool on the market, but over it is the most comprehensive and easy to use the product on the market."
OpManager
Easy Implementation, Excellent Support & Lower Cost Tool
- Team Lead, IT Service Industry
Review Role: Infrastructure and OperationsCompany Size: 500M - 1B USD
"We have been using OpManager since 2011 and our overall experience has been excellent. The tool plays a vital role in providing the value to our organisation and to the customers we are supporting. The support is excellent and staff takes full responsibilities in resolving the issues. Innovation is never stopping and clearly visible with newer versions"
OpManager
Easy Implementation With A Feature Rich Catalogue, Support Has Some Room For Improvement
- NOC Manager in IT Service Industry
Review Role: Program and Portfolio ManagementCompany Size: 500M - 1B USD
"The vendor has been supporting during the implementation & POC phases providing trial licenses. Feature requests and feedback is usually acted upon swiftly. There was sufficient vendor support during the implementation phase. After deployment, the support is more than adequate, where the vendor could make some improvements."
OpManager
Great Monitoring Tool
- CIO in Finance Industry
Review Role: CIOCompany Size: 1B - 3B USD
"Manage Engine provides a suite of tools that have made improvements to the availability of our internal applications. From monitoring, management and alerting, we have been able to peak performance within our data center."
OpManager
Simple Implementation, Easy To Use. Very Intuitive.
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