Paessler PRTG – Network Monitoring Made in Germany

It is not a secret, that a functional network keeps the company productive and your boss happy. In further consequence, your life as the responsible administrator is without stress and more comfortable.

To reach this goal, the implementation of a network monitoring tool is a reasonable measure 🙂

When reviewing the market of network monitoring solutions,  you will discover sooner or later Paessler’s PRTG Network Monitor.

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Paessler AG was founded 1997 in Nuremberg, Germany and is a privately held company. In the beginning, PRTG was a solution closing the gap of having a tool to monitor the network and server load.In the meantime, PRTG is providing the “all around wellness package for monitoring” and the

In the meantime, PRTG is providing the “all around wellness package for monitoring” and the list of available sensors for PRTG is long and growing permanently.

Beside the initial capabilities of network and server load monitoring, the solution now enables you to monitor your virtual infrastructure (VMware, Hyper-V) as well as mail server, databases, hardware, and much more.

With the power of the vCommunity, there are also possibilities to connect solutions with PRTG that are not available “out of the box”. A quick search on google and you will find great posts like this: Monitoring Veeam Backup and Replication using PRTG.

But how does PRTG get the information from the monitored devices?

The good answer is: PRTG does not require agents, nor any other additional software installed on the monitored systems. It is using the native management interfaces including SNMP, SSH, WMI and others.

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When it comes to licensing, you should know that PRTG is not licensed on a per device basis. Paessler is using license options based on the number of sensors. Per their own definition, a sensor is one aspect that you monitor on a device.

It therefore follows, that you normally have to license more than one sensor for one monitored device. Paessler is calculating with between five and ten sensors. (What counts as a sensor?)

The best way to learn about a product is hands-on. After downloading and installing the software you have 30 days without any restrictions to test it for free. And there is also a Freeware Edition available that allows up to 100 sensors (PRTG Network Monitor Licenses and Prices) – enough to monitor your home lab or smaller environments for example.

paessler-prtg-apple-watchNice to have: for technically affine users (or better the computer nerds…) they offer an Apple Watch extension of PRTG for iOS. Busy admins can use it to receive push notifications directly to their Apple Watch where ever they are…

What are my personal findings of PRTG Network Monitor?

First, I am not a networking guy. So I can definitely not say if there is something missing or badly implemented from this perspective.

What I need is a tool that is simple to manage, easy to scale out and serving as my eyes and ears in the infrastructure I am responsible for. And, of course, once implemented it should not be time intensive during operation.

I installed PRTG in my home lab and spent some time to configure it in accordance with my wishes. This was working very well for me in a reasonable time and I was able to see all the information I was looking for in this test environment.

So, as a conclusion – if you are evaluating a new monitoring solution it makes sense to take Paessler’s PRTG Network Monitor into account. For a first impression, you can take a look at the PRTG Online Demo available here: PRTG Online DEMO

By the way, Paessler AG was presenting at Tech Field Day Extra Europe 2016. The presentations are available online and they are a great resource to learn about their solution in a form:

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