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Home > Reviews > 10 Switch Monitoring Tools to Keep Your Network in Check
January 23, 2024
Network switches play a crucial role in today’s interconnected world, silently orchestrating the flow of data through connected devices and ensuring access to critical applications, seamless video calls, and lightning-fast file transfers.
Network switch monitoring tools ensure these vital devices stay working, keeping an eye on switch health, performance, and security. Why is this monitoring so crucial? Imagine a faulty switch acting like a broken traffic light, throwing your data flow into disarray, causing cascading outages, and crippling your network’s efficiency.
This article delves into the world of these tools. We’ll discuss what they are, unveil the importance of proactive monitoring, and equip you with the knowledge to select the best one for your needs, alongside a list of 10 top-tier switch monitoring tools, each with unique features and strengths.
So, buckle up and prepare to explore the fascinating world of switch monitoring. It’s time to give these silent heroes the care they deserve and ensure your network’s orchestra plays in perfect harmony for years to come.
Switch Monitoring Tools are those dedicated to monitoring the status, performance, and behavior of network switches. This means not only monitoring port status and the traffic that goes through them but also operational parameters like device temperature, power supply status, resource utilization, software versions and updates, configuration, etc.
Because of this, switch monitoring tools offer a wide range of capabilities: some may monitor only the network-related aspects of the operation, and others may cover the “whole package”. In this article, we have recommendations in both camps, and it is up to you to determine what are your monitoring requirements before committing to a tool.
There are many reasons to invest in Switch Monitoring. Here are five of them, in no particular order.
Broadly speaking, there are 5 main features you need to look out for when choosing switch monitoring tools. Keep in mind that this may vary according to your specific needs.
There are many switch monitoring tools, from as many different vendors, which may focus solely on a single aspect of the task or offer this capability as a subset of a broader range of features. We present a few of them below, in no particular order.
Paessler PRTG is the Swiss army knife of the monitoring world. PRTG is based on basic monitoring elements called “sensors”. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, e.g. the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, the free space of a disk drive, and so on.
PRTG has more than 250 built-in sensors for various tasks, device types, and use cases, so you would be hard-pressed to find something you can’t monitor. Plus, you can mix and match sensors, and even deploy custom ones, to create monitoring solutions specific to your needs.
Many sensors can be used to monitor network switches with PRTG. Most devices are capable of communication using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), and PRTG has sensors for querying the CPU Load, Hardware Status, Disk Space, Memory Usage, and Network Traffic of any SNMP-compatible device.
PRTG can also be used for network traffic analysis, with sensors for NetFlow (v5 and v9), jFlow (v5), sFlow, and IPFIX protocols. And if you need a simple “up or down” status, there is always the Ping sensor.
The information gathered by PRTG is shown on a centralized dashboard with all the relevant metrics. You can set alerts based on threshold values, with notifications delivered by text (SMS) or email if those values are exceeded. There is also an automatic reporting feature, so you can keep management and co-workers informed.
PRTG Network Monitor runs on Windows (Server 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019, 2022, Windows 10 or 11) and is available either with perpetual licenses (starting at US$ 1.899) or subscription licenses (starting at US$ 159 monthly), a flexible and affordable pricing scheme when compared with other tools. A 30-day free trial is available. There is also a free version for personal use that lets you monitor up to 100 sensors at no charge.
Besides being a full-featured network monitoring system, ManageEngine OpManager is a comprehensive switch monitoring package, allowing you to check availability, health, and performance, with features like auto-discovery and mapping of switches (and associated ports).
This tool can be set up to monitor only critical ports and show which ones are blocked and which are forwarding. Port utilization and traffic can be monitored, with the capability to detect and prevent broadcast storms, identify over and under-utilized ports, and generate alerts when a port starts discarding packets.
OpManager can also create Live Network Maps which are automatically updated as devices are added or removed from the network, and supports the NetFlow protocol, allowing for real-time monitoring of bandwidth, application traffic, QoS, VoIP & WAN RTT, and wireless network monitoring.
ManageEngine OpManager is available on a subscription or perpetual licensing model in three editions (Standard, Professional, and Enterprise). Prices start at US$ 245 for a subscription to the Standard edition, which can monitor 25 devices. Keep in mind that Switch Port Monitoring is an add-on on all editions, charged separately.
OpManager runs on Windows Server (2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019, 2022) or Linux (Ubuntu 14 to 20.04, Red Hat version 7 to 9.1, CentOS 7 or CentOS Stream 8). There are also mobile clients for Android and iOS, so you can take your monitoring on the go. There is a 30-day free trial available.
Icinga is an Open Source monitoring tool packed with features. Originally developed as a fork of Nagios in 2009, Icinga has a web-based interface and is expandable with plugins, add-ons, and modules available on the Icinga Exchange. The software is also compatible with Nagios plugins available on the Nagios Exchange.
The network monitoring module can do device-specific (with support for devices from vendors like Cisco, Juniper Networks, Huawei, Dell, HP, Checkpoint, MikroTik, and many more) and generic SNMP monitoring.
Metrics, such as the availability, bandwidth usage, and errors on every interface, are collected and can be stored on a database of your choice, simplifying tasks such as capacity planning and identification of usage trends. There’s also Logstash integration, providing a powerful log-parsing engine that comes in handy when analyzing hundreds of events.
Icinga is free on most platforms, but some packages (for RHEL and Amazon Linux 2) and support are only available through subscriptions, offered on a three-tier system (Basic, Premium, and Enterprise). It runs on Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Raspbian, SLES, RHEL, and Amazon Linux 2) and also Windows Server 2012 R2 and up.
This “combo” package from SolarWinds is composed of SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM, for short) and Network Configuration Manager (NCM). NPM offers automatic discovery of devices and dynamic network topology mapping, showing performance metrics, connectivity, and link utilization. Performance monitoring is done via SNMP, polling the MIB of each device to obtain metrics that are displayed on dashboards that can be customized to your needs.
NCM can help you generate inventory lists of network devices, spot configuration changes, centrally manage devices from multiple vendors, on multiple locations, backup configurations, track and manage firmware updates, and more.
The alert system of NPM features “topology-aware, intelligent alerting capabilities”, reducing the flood of unnecessary alerts. Alerts can be customized to include exactly the information you need to solve an issue, and you can fine-tune sending parameters, so they are sent only during specific times or to specific members of your team.
SolarWinds’ solutions can be deployed in the cloud (on Amazon Web Services, Azure, or Google Cloud) or on-premises. For an on-premises deployment, you will need Windows Server 2016, 2019, or 2022. Licenses are available both on a perpetual license or subscription model, with prices available by quote. There is a 30-day free trial available.
Site24x7 is an all-in-one monitoring solution with an impressive array of features, including website monitoring, server monitoring, cloud monitoring, network monitoring, application performance monitoring, and real user monitoring, to name a few.
Switch Monitoring is also one of those features. There are built-in integrations for devices from Cisco, 3Com, HP, Allied Telesis, Adtran, Juniper, Cabletron, and Alcatel, among others, with automatic discovery and the capability to monitor all their key performance metrics.
This includes data such as CPU utilization and detailed network and traffic stats (like network errors and restarts, active session count, outstanding DNS requests, buffer hits and misses, over/undersized packets, outstanding DNS requests, and more). Need more? You can deploy custom monitors to collect the data you want from any device with support for SNMP.
Site 24×7 is SaaS (Software as a Service) offered on a subscription model, starting at US$ 35 per month, and there is a 30-day free trial available. The monitoring agent supports Windows Server (versions 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, and 2019), Windows 7 or above, all the main Linux distros (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Red Hat, Mandriva, Fedora, SuSE, Amazon Linux, Gentoo, CoreOS, and RancherOS), Docker, FreeBSD (9 or above) and macOS (10 or above).
Nagios XI is a complete IT Infrastructure Monitoring Tool that can monitor your network switches and much more, including applications, services, operating systems, network protocols, and network infrastructure. Its web-based interface is configurable and easy to use, providing at-a-glance access to monitoring information.
One of the highlights of Nagios XI is a robust ecosystem with “thousands of community-developed add-ons that extend monitoring and native alerting functionality”, alongside multiple APIs that facilitate integration with in-house or third-party applications.
Nagios XI can be used to monitor any SNMP-enabled switch, gathering information such as device status information, packet loss, round-trip average, bandwidth and traffic rate, and more. The powerful and customizable web interface, combined with multi-user access, allows you to create user-specific views to ensure clients only see the infrastructure components they’re authorized for, enhancing observability and collaboration without risking exposure to sensitive information.
Nagios XI is available in two editions, “Standard” and “Enterprise”, with licenses for 100 nodes starting at US$ 2,495. There is a fully functional 30-day free trial. It only runs natively under Linux, more specifically distributions like CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Ubuntu, or Debian. However, it can be run on Windows servers using virtualization solutions like VMWare, Virtual Box, or Hyper-V.
Zabbix is a free and Open Source monitoring package that can do a lot, including server, cloud, application, services, and network monitoring into one tool. It can also monitor your network switches, with integrations for Cisco, D-Link, 3Com, Alcatel, Juniper, and many more devices.
Of course, you are not limited to that. Like other tools mentioned in this article, Zabbix can monitor any SNMP-enabled device. Monitoring is robust, and, when problems occur, Zabbix can do root-cause analysis, anomaly detection, and trend prediction.
The alerting system is very flexible, supporting not only SMS and email, but also modern communication platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, and more. Messages can even be customized according to the type and role of the recipient.
The Zabbix server can only run on Linux, on-premises, or in the cloud. Supported distributions are Alma Linux, CentOS, Debian, Oracle Linux, Raspberry Pi OS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Ubuntu, both for x64 and arm64 architectures.
Zabbix may be Open Source and free, but you pay for the technical support. There are five support tiers (Silver, Gold, Platinum, Enterprise, and Global I) with prices available by quote, each one with different levels of availability, response times, and amount of incidents and support contacts.
With support for more than 600 data sources and integrations, Datadog advertises full observability and increased security for your server environment, with metrics collected to a granularity down to one-second resolution.
The Network Device Monitoring (NDM) solution allows you to discover and collect metrics from any network device, including network switches. Device lists can be filtered by parameters such as location and, from a list, it is possible to drill down into performance details of specific devices and interfaces with a single click.
The anomaly detection feature allows you to configure customizable alerts, and forecasting can alert you before an interface exceeds predefined parameters, like bandwidth. Dashboards can be customized, and issues can be correlated to help your teams quickly pinpoint their cause.
Datadog is a SaaS (Software as a Service), with prices starting at US$ 7 per device, charged monthly. Monitoring is done by agents who collect and report data to cloud-hosted servers. There are agents for Windows, all the main Linux Distributions (such as Ubuntu, SuSE, RHEL, Fedora, CentOS, and Amazon Linux), and even AIX. You can try Datadog free for 14 days.
LogicMonitor is a cloud-based monitoring platform and Cisco Preferred Solution Partner, with built-in integrations for a wide range of Cisco devices, including routers, switches, wireless equipment, ASA Firewalls, VoIP solutions, Meraki and UCS platforms, and much more.
An auto-discovery system promises to deliver the monitoring, alerting, and graphing you need “within minutes”, even on complex networks, whether resources are on-premises, spread across multiple data centers, or in the cloud.
This tool offers powerful visualizations, custom dashboards, and real-time network insights to help you understand how your network is connected and help you reduce MTTR (Mean Time to Repair).
Data about your network and devices is gathered using a “collector”, described as “an application that runs on a Linux or Windows server within your infrastructure and uses standard monitoring protocols to intelligently monitor devices within your infrastructure”. This is different from agents, as you do not need to install a collector on each device or resource to be monitored.
LogicMonitor recommends running collectors on Windows Server 2022 or a supported Linux distribution, like Amazon Linux, CentOS, RHEL, Debian, or Ubuntu. Pricing is available by quote, and a 14-day free trial is available.
Checkmk is a comprehensive IT infrastructure monitoring solution that offers a free, Open Source Raw Edition alongside an Enterprise Edition with more advanced features. The tool supports monitoring the availability and performance of network devices via SNMP v1, v2c, and v3. An intelligent auto-discovery feature scans your network for SNMP-enabled devices from multiple vendors and adds relevant aspects to monitor.
While the software needs the installation of an agent for comprehensive monitoring, this is not the case for SNMP monitoring, as network devices usually have a built-in SNMP agent. However, Checkmk explicitly recommends the use of their native agent in their documentation because it is way more performant.
For monitoring SNMP traps, Checkmk offers the fully integrated Event Console that has its own SNMP engine and therefore does not need any additional tools. The Event Console also helps to filter SNMP trap messages so that you are only notified about relevant events.
What’s great: for just SNMP monitoring and visualization, you can use the free Checkmk Raw edition, which is as easy to set up as Checkmk’s licensed edition – compared to Nagios, for example, which requires lots of manual effort.
There is a free trial of the Enterprise edition (which starts at €65 monthly), but keep in mind that CheckMK only runs on Linux-based operating systems, such as Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Red Hat.
Among all these, our favorite switch monitoring tool is Paessler PRTG, as it “ticks all the boxes” in our list of desired characteristics, and streamlines your workflow by enabling you to monitor all of your infrastructure with a single tool.
The built-in sensors cover many of the main use cases, without the need to purchase extras, so it can monitor not only your switches, but also your network, services, servers, IoT devices, cloud infrastructure, and much more. And it is extensible, which means you can deploy third-party sensors, or even develop your own, to cover specific needs.
That means you can do away with having to rely on a variety of individualized solutions, which can carry potential risks such as conflict with your current workflow and even network security issues. It is a “Swiss army knife” of the monitoring tools.
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