A Guide to SNMP Monitoring: Top 10 Tools Uncovered

SNMP is one of the most basic technologies for monitoring your network, and there are several SNMP monitoring solutions available on the market. Our Newsroom Consultants have chosen and compared what they consider to be:

The best SNMP monitoring tools currently available.

• Paessler PRTG Network Monitor
• ManageEngine OpManager
• Checkmk
• SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
• Progress WhatsUp Gold
• Datadog
• LogicMonitor
• Nagios
• Kaseya VSA
• Site 24×7

SNMP is widely seen as a legacy protocol, and Microsoft and Google even pronounced that SNMP was dead. This might be correct in a way because SNMP is not actively worked on anymore. However, the benefits of SNMP are still undeniable, particularly for network monitoring.

As SNMP is still the common network monitoring language, most network components across all vendors have a built-in SNMP capability. With SNMP, you can monitor all sorts of network parameters from CPU load, disk usage, bandwidth, traffic, overall uptime, to environmental parameters like temperature etc. And SNMP is still unparalleled regarding its low performance impact.

Learn more here:

1. What is SNMP?
2. What are SNMP key components?
3. SNMP versions

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and changing their behavior. Widely supported by many hardware and software vendors, it is one of the essential technologies for monitoring your network devices.

Despite being considered a legacy protocol (as it is not being actively worked on anymore), and even pronounced “dead” by Google and Microsoft, SNMP is still the network monitoring “lingua franca”: network components across most vendors have built-in SNMP capability. With it, you can monitor all sorts of hardware parameters like CPU load, disk usage, bandwidth, traffic, overall uptime, device temperature, and more. And SNMP is still unparalleled regarding its low-performance impact.

In this article, we will give you an overview of what SNMP is, why monitoring is beneficial, discuss the key features to consider when selecting monitoring tools, share insights into effective SNMP monitoring practices, and explore 10 of the best SNMP monitoring tools, that cater to a spectrum of needs.

Whether you’re a novice or an experienced user, we hope this article will provide a comprehensive guide to empower you with the knowledge needed to choose the SNMP monitoring tool that aligns with your specific requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions About SNMP Monitoring

What is SNMP?

SNMP is an IP-based application layer protocol used for network management, and, more particularly, for network discovery and network monitoring. It is composed of various key components:

• The managing system, which includes one or more SNMP managers.
• The SNMP managers, that run the so-called network management station (NMS) software.
• The managed devices that run pieces of software called SNMP agents. Managed devices can be anything from servers, workstations, routers, switches, firewalls, IoT devices, etc.

An SNMP manager usually fulfills administrative tasks such as sending requests to and receiving responses from an SNMP agent, and can also actively change the configuration of a managed device.

The SNMP agent collects and stores local information about the managed device it runs on and sends this information to the SNMP manager if requested. It can also actively push data packages about specific events, so-called SNMP traps, to the managing system without an explicit request. In this case, the SNMP manager also acts as an SNMP trap receiver.

A very important component for SNMP communication is the Management Information Base (MIB), a text file that contains hierarchically organized data that a managed device can collect. This data consists of variables that are clearly identifiable by the so-called object identifiers (OID). SNMP can read and translate these variables for the SNMP manager, and, consequently, the SNMP monitoring tool.

SNMP comes in three different versions, which all have their benefits and drawbacks.

• SNMP v1 (released in 1988) is the most basic SNMP version. While it is quite universal, as most SNMP-enabled devices support it, it also has major security limitations. In addition, SNMPv1 only supports 32-bit counters.
• SNMP v2 (released in 1993) is the most used SNMP version. It has the same security limitations as in SNMP v1 but supports 64-bit counters.
• SNMP v3 (released in 2002) provides authentication and optional data encryption. However, this also results in more overhead and needs more configuration work.

Why Should You Invest in SNMP Monitoring?

There are many reasons to invest in SNMP Monitoring. Here are five of them, in no particular order.

1. Performance optimization: continuous monitoring can help you pinpoint issues and identify optimization opportunities that will improve your infrastructure’s performance, sometimes without the need for hardware upgrades.

2. Security: monitoring allows you to spot early signs of uncommon behavior or usage patterns indicative of an intrusion attempt or ongoing attack. This will give you time to react and deploy countermeasures before a data breach occurs.

3. Resource allocation: find out where resources are being underutilized or overutilized, allowing you to redistribute them according to real needs to ensure the most effective usage of your systems.

4. Proactive maintenance: monitoring allows you to detect and fix potential issues before they become critical and result in outages that may affect the performance of your applications or even the profitability of your business.

5. Regulatory compliance: businesses that handle sensitive information, like financial or healthcare data, need to meet strict regulatory standards that specify how this information is stored and handled. Monitoring will allow you to prove compliance with these standards and secure approvals that may be crucial to keeping your business running.

What to Look for When Choosing SNMP Monitoring Tools?

Broadly speaking, there are 5 main features you need to look out for when choosing SNMP Monitoring Tools. Keep in mind that this may vary according to your specific needs.

• The capability to monitor many aspects of your SNMP Infrastructure at once.
• A centralized display of information from many sensors for better observability.
• Customizable alerts and automated notifications when alerts are triggered.
• Native and automated reporting features so that you can keep co-workers and management “in the loop”.
• A free trial period, so you can attest to how the tool works with your network infrastructure.

How to do SNMP Monitoring?

There are many SNMP 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.

SNMP monitoring tools vendors

1. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor

PRTG Network Monitor, by Paessler, is a comprehensive, all-in-one tool for monitoring your entire IT infrastructure. The software runs on Windows, is vendor-agnostic, and supports monitoring of SNMP v1, v2c, and v3-enabled devices in real-time.

This tool 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. What’s great is the fact that PRTG offers a lot of preconfigured SNMP sensors for many known vendors such as Dell, Cisco, HPE, NetApp, or Synology that can be deployed out of the box.

With the auto-discovery function of PRTG, you can scan your entire network for devices that have SNMP enabled. PRTG then creates suitable SNMP sensors so that your initial monitoring setup is completely automated. Customizable dashboards and maps give you a clear overview of your network monitoring via SNMP.

PRTG can be deployed as an SNMP trap receiver as well by using the preconfigured SNMP Trap Receiver sensor. This sensor creates alerts if it receives SNMP traps from your monitored devices. Several filter options let you filter the received trap messages, for example according to severity, so that you are only alerted if necessary.

The comprehensive feature set of PRTG is complemented by the free tools that Paessler offers for SNMP monitoring. For example, you can use the SNMP Tester to find communication issues in case your SNMP monitoring configuration does not work. With the MIB Importer, you can import MIB files into PRTG.

PRTG Network Monitor is available in a free version for personal use that lets you monitor up to 100 sensors at no charge. For commercial use, you can choose between 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.

2. ManageEngine OpManager

OpManager is the network monitoring solution from ManageEngine that lets you monitor the performance and health of your servers and network devices. OpManager supports monitoring of SNMP v1, SNMP v2c, or SNMP v3 devices. With the network device discovery feature, you can automatically detect these devices in your network.

In contrast to the other monitoring solutions, OpManager only uses asynchronous SNMP trap messages to get management information about monitored devices, and therefore relies on passive SNMP monitoring. A benefit of OpManager is that you can also use it as an SNMP trap processing engine with which you can forward the received SNMP traps to other NMSs.

Additionally, ManageEngine offers free tools to complement basic SNMP monitoring functionalities. With the SNMP Trap Viewer, you can troubleshoot trap query issues in real-time. The SNMP MIB Browser can even be used as a complete tool for SNMP monitoring with functionalities for loading MIB files or performing SNMP operations.

Prices for licenses of OpManager are based on the number of devices in your network. Depending on how large your network is, the costs can quickly rise to thousands of dollars.

30-day free trials for Windows and Linux are available.

Checkmk

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.

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

SolarWinds offers various software solutions for different monitoring tasks in your IT infrastructure. SNMP monitoring is done with the SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) which lets you monitor and analyze the availability and performance of devices in your network. NPM supports the real-time monitoring of SNMP v1, v2c, and v3-enabled devices from multiple vendors.

Together with the Orion Discovery Wizard, NPM can be deployed as an SNMP scanner to discover devices SNMP-enabled devices on the network and create maps to visualize network topology and device relationships. You can also use customizable dashboards to display performance metrics of your network devices collected via SNMP.

A downside of NPM is that you cannot use it as an SNMP trap receiver to monitor SNMP traps to get information about issues and events, including their severity. For this purpose, you need the SolarWinds Log Analyzer.

NPM pricing is steep: a perpetual license starts at US$ 3,265.00, and a subscription will cost you at least US$ 1,785.00. And costs can quickly add up due to the different software modules you may need for more extensive SNMP monitoring tasks. A 30-day free trial is available.

Progress WhatsUp Gold

WhatsUp Gold by Progress (formerly Ipswitch) is a Windows-based tool for monitoring the status and performance of applications, servers, and network devices. The monitoring solution supports real-time SNMP monitoring of devices that support SNMP v1, SNMP v2c, or SNMP v3. With its automated device discovery, WhatsUp Gold also uses SNMP to query each device for more detailed information and generate customizable and interactive network topology maps.

In addition to the basic SNMP monitoring functionalities, WhatsUp Gold offers web-based SNMP management tools, for example, the SNMP MIB walker, to find out what SNMP objects a device supports, or the SNMP MIB Manager to identify errors in MIB files.

WhatsUp Gold can be deployed as an SNMP trap receiver (or listener). However, this needs some configuration work in the WhatsUp Gold console. In addition, it is not possible to use the SNMP trap listener functionality of WhatsUp Gold if the Microsoft SNMP Trap Listener is enabled.

A major drawback is the licensing of WhatsUp Gold which is a mixture of device-based or point-based subscriptions or perpetual licenses excluding add-ons for different features, which is quite confusing and can quickly become cost-intensive. A free trial is available.

6. Datadog

Datadog is a modern SaaS-based management, monitoring, and security platform that also offers SNMP monitoring and supports all SNMP versions. To be able to collect SNMP data from your SNMP-enabled network devices, you need to install at least Datadog Agent v6 in your on-premises network.

The tool offers an auto-discovery feature that scans your network for SNMP-enabled devices and automatically creates monitoring metrics for these devices based on Datadog’s out-of-the-box device profiles available for multiple vendors.

Unfortunately, making use of the auto-discovery feature first needs some manual configuration, for example, you need to configure Datadog’s SNMP integration check with the subnets you want to discover. Monitoring SNMP Traps is even more cumbersome to configure, for example, you need to manually set up different monitors for specific Trap events.

As SNMP monitoring with Datadog requires more manual work than other features that the platform has to offer, we recommend it only if you use Datadog for other monitoring purposes as well. For basic SNMP monitoring, you can make use of the Network Device Monitoring module, which starts at $5 per host per month, in addition to an Infrastructure Pro plan that starts at $15 per host per month and that you need for alerts. A 14-day free trial is available.

LogicMonitor

LogicMonitor is a cloud-based infrastructure monitoring platform that also offers SNMP monitoring. The tool supports SNMP v1, v2c, and v3-enabled devices and provides an SNMP Active Discovery feature to scan your network and create a corresponding device inventory.

With the help of out-of-the-box LogicModules for SNMP monitoring, you can quickly monitor critical metrics of your network devices that are available using SNMP.

While LogicMonitor offers SNMP Trap monitoring in its portfolio, setting it up requires some manual effort, for example, you need to configure specific EventSources to be alerted when the LogicMonitor Collector receives SNMP Traps. To be able to decrypt SNMP v3 Traps, it is even necessary to configure the Collector’s agent configuration file. This makes SNMP Trap monitoring relatively unwieldy.

As with Datadog, we recommend SNMP monitoring with LogicMonitor only if you already use the tool for other monitoring purposes. You can monitor up to 200 devices with the Hybrid Monitoring Pro plan. Pricing is quote-based, and a free trial is available.

Nagios

If you prefer open-source software for your SNMP monitoring, Nagios is the tool to go to. Nagios is Linux-based and highly customizable, as it offers free SNMP plugins and add-ons to extend basic SNMP monitoring capabilities. This is quite a benefit for IT System Administrators who like to have their network monitoring exactly tailored to their needs. However, this can also be a drawback, as the configuration can take a lot of time and often requires specialized know-how.

With Nagios, System Administrators can manage SNMP traps by configuring the tool as both an SNMP trap receiver and, as a plus, an SNMP trap sender. Nagios can read the SNMP traps it receives from monitored devices and create alerts in case of a problem. It can also be used to send SNMP traps to other network management systems for processing.

Nagios supports monitoring via SNMP in their free product Nagios Core, but documentation for setting up SNMP monitoring, expert support, as well as wizards for the configuration of SNMP monitoring are only available for the commercial product Nagios XI, which starts at around $2,000. Keep in mind that Nagios XI only runs on Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS Stream, Debian, or Ubuntu).

Kaseya VSA

Kaseya VSA is a Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) solution for endpoint and network management that also offers SNMP monitoring for network devices such as routers, switches, and printers.

What’s great is VSA’s “zero configuration” approach for SNMP monitoring, as you just need to enable a checkbox to use this functionality. The solution then automatically discovers the corresponding network devices and sets up monitoring via SNMP using predefined thresholds.

As an RMM software, the network monitoring functions of Kaseya VSA are very limited in scope. However, if you already use the solution for remote endpoint management, the easy configuration of its SNMP monitoring feature, the clear visualization in network topology maps, and the simple but efficient alerting system are a nice plus.

Pricing for Kaseya VSA is based on the number of managed endpoints, and you’ll need to get a custom quote for your infrastructure. A demo is available upon request. Download

Site 24×7

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.

Site24x7 can automatically discover SNMP devices by connecting to its MIB (Management Information Base) and start monitoring bandwidth, interface, memory, CPU, and other metrics. You can add over 100 performance counters and display graphs of key stats, with customizable reports and alerts about downtime.

Like Datadog, Site24x7 is SaaS and uses a monitoring agent that 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, RedHat, Mandriva, Fedora, SuSE, Amazon Linux, Gentoo, CoreOS, and RancherOS), Docker, FreeBSD (9 or above) and macOS (10 “Yosemite” or above).

Pricing starts at US$ 35/month for the All-In-One Pro Plan, but there are many add-ons (like log management and network configuration) that may cause costs to add up quickly. There is a 30-day free trial available.

Conclusion

Among all these, our favorite SNMP 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 SNMP infrastructure, but also your network, services, servers,