Ok, ill try to keep this short and simple, my company's MSP dept remotely monitors and fixes issues for a number of clients, from customers without an AD structure to companies with multiple sites, vpns, etc... and we are currently looking for another hosted (or host it yourself) monitoring package with a little less problems than N-Able
Currently with n-able we have a probe on one server at a site, and every computer and server gets an agent installed. the agent checks things like cpu/ram, hd space, logs (not very well though), connectivity, services, and is a remote access agent (much like logmein on steroids) The probe on the other hand, checks things like connectivity, cpu/ram/disk via WMI, and monitors items that you cant put an agent on, like a router. (it will check ping, telnet, http, etc...). Also notifications of when things go wrong, cpu spikes, agent stops responding, etc.. Through the N-Able dashboard, we can see everything's status, and more often than not, has a lot of red Xs of things that n-able thinks is wrong with the system.
Heres an issue, with all the "problems" that may not be problems, i can go through server by server and configure them so i only get notifications if it stops responding, sql dies, etc... but with N-Able it is currently painful. I have spent 20 hours on a server to get it to purr like a kitteh and i get critical emails about something being down when i need to know about it, but i cant spend 20 hours on configuring monitoring options when i cant copy that template to another client because their structure is completely different. What im looking at is more like a few hours for setup, maybe an hour or 2 for maintenance per server every month or so (not server maintenance, maintenance on the monitoring software on the server.)
N-able is fairly expensive, im not sure what we pay for under 500 devices total across all clients, but for us to host it ourselves in house, a license for 5 years costs $40,000, not including the server. (n-able has actually complained to us because we over-tax their servers. They said we were the only ones that monitored other companies, where as normally a customer would monitor a hundred devices on their own network. i lol'ed when the tech guy said that.)
So basically we are looking for another monitoring software (hosted or otherwise), that supports multiple non-connected networks and isnt limited to just workstations and servers. Ive been a few datacenters/NOCs and have seen the monitoring alerts on a big screen in the middle, never bothered to ask what they use though, might be an option.
If anybody has names of companies / software that might fit go ahead and throw them to me. Also we arnt afraid to spend some $$; seeing how some of our contracts bring in 2-5k per month for me to sit there and check backups and remote into a user's workstation because she cant print from the terminal server. lol. Also multiple techs would be in on the action, possibly with their own dashboards or list of customers to watch.
Thanks in advance.
Currently with n-able we have a probe on one server at a site, and every computer and server gets an agent installed. the agent checks things like cpu/ram, hd space, logs (not very well though), connectivity, services, and is a remote access agent (much like logmein on steroids) The probe on the other hand, checks things like connectivity, cpu/ram/disk via WMI, and monitors items that you cant put an agent on, like a router. (it will check ping, telnet, http, etc...). Also notifications of when things go wrong, cpu spikes, agent stops responding, etc.. Through the N-Able dashboard, we can see everything's status, and more often than not, has a lot of red Xs of things that n-able thinks is wrong with the system.
Heres an issue, with all the "problems" that may not be problems, i can go through server by server and configure them so i only get notifications if it stops responding, sql dies, etc... but with N-Able it is currently painful. I have spent 20 hours on a server to get it to purr like a kitteh and i get critical emails about something being down when i need to know about it, but i cant spend 20 hours on configuring monitoring options when i cant copy that template to another client because their structure is completely different. What im looking at is more like a few hours for setup, maybe an hour or 2 for maintenance per server every month or so (not server maintenance, maintenance on the monitoring software on the server.)
N-able is fairly expensive, im not sure what we pay for under 500 devices total across all clients, but for us to host it ourselves in house, a license for 5 years costs $40,000, not including the server. (n-able has actually complained to us because we over-tax their servers. They said we were the only ones that monitored other companies, where as normally a customer would monitor a hundred devices on their own network. i lol'ed when the tech guy said that.)
So basically we are looking for another monitoring software (hosted or otherwise), that supports multiple non-connected networks and isnt limited to just workstations and servers. Ive been a few datacenters/NOCs and have seen the monitoring alerts on a big screen in the middle, never bothered to ask what they use though, might be an option.
If anybody has names of companies / software that might fit go ahead and throw them to me. Also we arnt afraid to spend some $$; seeing how some of our contracts bring in 2-5k per month for me to sit there and check backups and remote into a user's workstation because she cant print from the terminal server. lol. Also multiple techs would be in on the action, possibly with their own dashboards or list of customers to watch.
Thanks in advance.