Open source cloud monitoring tools offer several advantages. As the name implies, the underlying principle of open source software is that they are available for users to study and tinker with.
These publicly available cloud tools allow users to utilize a cloud infrastructure with more freedom and less cost to the enterprise. They are free to install and use. They give the ability for users to modify the tool’s code to fit their needs and provide free resources for users and developers to operate the programs effectively.
The majority of open-source programs have dedicated user communities, consisting of experts on the tools who want to build a series of resources for its userbase to consult. Users of an open-source tool can take advantage of these communities.
All in all, implementing a cloud monitoring system using an open-source program can save you a lot of money in the end. This post will explore some of the most popular and powerful open-source cloud monitoring tools you can consider to integrate into your cloud system.
1. Nagios
Nagios is an open source monitoring solution that monitors all types of components of the cloud-like network protocols, operating systems, System performance metrics, applications, web server, web services, website, etc. Nagios provides a high level of performance by consuming lesser server resources using a Core 4 monitoring engine. It aids organizations in identifying and resolving issues with their IT infrastructure. Nagios is capable of managing and monitoring system logs, application logs, log files, and Syslog data, and alerting you when a log pattern is detected and provides complete management and monitoring on Windows servers, Linux servers, and Unix servers.
2. Zabbix
Zabbix is a free and open-source monitoring tool that can monitor both large and small businesses in real-time. It is an agent-based cloud monitoring tool where multiple agents are installed on servers and clients to collect, filter, and analyze it. Built for real-time monitoring, its enterprise-grade monitoring framework is designed to monitor applications, platforms, and cloud infrastructure and databases. It can monitor thousands of servers, virtual machines, network or IoT devices, and other resources. Zabbix automates troubleshooting while also identifying vulnerabilities through root cause analysis. Zabbix also integrates automated notification alerts and remediation systems to troubleshoot issues or escalate them in real-time.
3. Cacti
Cacti is an open-source, web-based network monitoring and graphing tool, which can be installed on various operating systems like Linux or Windows OS. RRDTool can create a graphic representation of any quantifiable data collected via network protocols like SNMP or scripts personalized by the user based on the metrics solution. Considered a successor of MRTG, this tool has highly advanced configuration capabilities that allow it to be used as a complement to supervision solutions like Nagios, particularly for the metrics side. The community has developed many plug-ins that extend Cacti’s functionalities. It operates from a web server equipped with a database and uses the PHP language. Cacti uses a system of scripts (Bash, PHP, Perl, VBs, etc.) to perform more complex measurements.
4. Prometheus
Prometheus is one of the most popular, robust monitoring systems that can monitor various cloud-like SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. This open-source platform provides high customization options, and a native visualizes engine that helps in integrating third-party tools as well. It offers enterprise event monitoring and notification tools for cloud infrastructure. Prometheus uses graph queries to record real-time metrics, which aren’t the same as a virtualized dashboard. The tool must be hooked up to Grafana to generate full-fledged dashboards. Prometheus provides its query language (PrmQL), allowing DevOps organizations to manage collected data from IT environments.
5. Manage IQ
Manage IQ is a cloud infrastructure monitoring tool specializing in identifying, optimizing, and controlling hybrid and multi-cloud IT environments. This open-source monitoring tool enables continuous discovery as it provides round-the-clock advanced monitoring capabilities across virtualization containers, applications, storage, and network systems. Manage IQ adds compliance to IT infrastructure monitoring, ensuring that all virtual machines, containers, and storage adhere to compliance policies via continuous discovery. Manage IQ collects metrics from virtual machines to uncover system performance trends and patterns.
6. Netdata.cloud
Netdata.cloud is an open-source platform for cloud ecosystems that monitors the health of distributed systems and troubleshoots performance issues. Real-time insights into enterprise systems and applications are provided by the platform. Netdata keeps track of IT infrastructure slowdowns and vulnerabilities. Auto-detection, event monitoring, and machine learning are among the monitoring feature it employs to provide real-time monitoring. It works on physical systems, virtual machines, applications, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Through its interactive visualization dashboard, you can see key performance indexes and metrics.
7. Cloudify
Cloudify is another open-source cloud infrastructure monitoring tool that can manage hybrid environments. IoT device monitoring, edge network monitoring, and vulnerability troubleshooting are all supported by the monitoring tool. Cloudify is an open-source monitoring tool that allows DevOps teams and IT managers to create monitoring plug-ins that can be used in the cloud and bare metal servers. Cloudify keeps track of on-premise IT and hybrid ecosystems. It uses Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) to handle cloud monitoring and management. The TOSCA approach simplifies application monitoring in IT environments by centralizing governance and control through network orchestration.
Other open-source cloud monitoring tools include:
- Icinga: Icinga is the monitoring framework that monitors all the available systems in the network, which alerts users in many ways and provides a database for your SLA reporting.
- Collectd: Collectd is a monitoring tool monitors various components like system resources, networks, sensors, databases, applications, and services, etc. The Collectd is an agent-based monitoring tool written in C language and operates in Linux and Mac Platform.
- Opsview core: Opsview core is an enterprise cloud monitoring tool that offers a free license to use Opsview Monitor, limited to 25 monitored hosts. It monitors multi-tenant Virtual and physical IT infrastructures with high availability and a large dashboard feature.
- Ganglia: Ganglia is a distributed, scalable monitoring tool for high-performance computing systems such as grid and cloud computing. The Ganglia monitors applications, platforms, and infrastructure of cloud and grid computing. The Dashboard displays lives and/or recorded statistics covering different types of metrics related to CPU, Memory, database, and network systems.
- Hyperic: Hyperic is application monitoring and performance management for physical, virtual, and cloud IT infrastructures. Auto-discover resources and collect availability, performance, utilization, and throughput metrics. Hyperic monitors databases, application servers, middleware, web servers, network devices, and many more.
- Riemann: Riemann provides a unified, straightforward tool to monitor distributed applications and IT infrastructure. It enables developers to define various types of events to monitor and streams that generate alerts when a particular event occurs. It builds an index of all of the services it monitors and provides a live dashboard to visualize all data types.
- cAdvisor: cAdvisor is Container Advisor, one of the first open-source monitoring tools built for containerized applications such as grid and cloud computing. It does not monitor all the application that runs on the cloud, but only those installed in containers. It is a browser-based graphical interface for data visualization, and developers can configure the tool via a command line.
- Elasticsearch: Elasticsearch is an open-source, RESTful search engine built on Apache Lucene and released under an Apache license. It provides a scalable, multi-tenant monitoring solution and performs real-time searches to manage the cloud effectively.
- Graphite: Graphite is a popular open-source tool to monitor cloud applications, platforms, and infrastructure. It doesn’t collect data or store it persistently, but enterprises can integrate Graphite with various other tools, including Riemann, to perform monitoring activities.
