We currently use PRTG, but it has not been maintained well and the price increase means we will not renew it. We need a free or open-source replacement for basic monitoring and alerting rather than a highly complex setup.
Our main requirements are Jira ticket integration, SSL certificate expiration alerts, notifications when network devices or servers go offline, alerts for sustained high CPU usage on servers, and possibly notifications when a switch port negotiates at 100 Mbps instead of 1 Gbps.
The environment includes Cisco Catalyst 3000-series and Nexus switches, a voice router, FortiGates at headquarters and branches, FortiSwitches, FortiAPs, FortiAuthenticator, FortiAnalyzer, a Nimble SAN, HPE servers running VMware, mostly Windows servers, and a few CentOS systems. I am new to monitoring platforms and am considering Zabbix, Prometheus, LibreNMS, or similar tools. Which option would be the simplest fit?
4 Answers
Checkmk is another strong option and can cover most of these requirements with less manual work than some traditional monitoring systems. It has good host and service discovery and supports network gear, servers, and many common vendors. Just verify the available checks for your specific hardware and decide whether the free edition provides everything you need.
LibreNMS is a simpler choice for the network side. It auto-discovers many SNMP devices and is very good for switch, firewall, interface, availability, and basic performance monitoring. It should work well with your Cisco and Fortinet equipment, although you may need another tool or a custom check for SSL certificate expiry and some server-specific monitoring. It is also worth pairing with a configuration-backup tool if you want versioned switch and firewall configs.
The main limitation is that LibreNMS is primarily SNMP-focused, so Zabbix is usually more flexible for Windows agents, file checks, and custom application or server conditions.
Zabbix is probably the best overall fit. There is an initial learning curve, but the day-to-day operation becomes straightforward once the concepts click. It can handle SNMP devices, Windows and Linux agents, availability checks, CPU thresholds, certificate expiration, custom checks, and Jira integration through webhooks or automation. Cisco and Fortinet templates are available, so you would not need to build everything from scratch. Plan on spending several days learning and tuning it rather than expecting a ten-minute deployment.
Can it also monitor a file or folder and alert if something gets deleted? That would be useful for our file shares.
I would skip Prometheus for this particular use case unless you already have experience with it. It is excellent for application and time-series metrics, but network monitoring often means maintaining SNMP exporter configuration and building more of the alerting yourself. Zabbix is a more natural all-in-one replacement here, while LibreNMS is attractive if your priority is quick network-device monitoring. Jira integration should not decide the choice because all of these can generally send alerts through webhooks or an intermediary automation step.
I agree that Checkmk is worth evaluating, especially if you want a polished interface and broad built-in coverage without creating every check yourself.