ABSTRACT

Now a days IT industry is on boom. As the complexity of IT infrastructure increases it is difficult for IT/Network Administrators to manage IT infrastructure. It is inevitable to avoid network failure or service failure during the peak times. For the smooth functionality of various services and network devices it is necessary to keep an eye on network devices and services. Network monitoring system provide a way to network operator in understanding the current state of network . Before selecting a monitoring system every organization take note on the expenditure on the monitoring system. Every organization cannot afford an expensive or yearly subscription of monitoring system.
In this research study, the three popular open-source monitoring systems (Cacti, Nagios Core, Zabbix) have been installed and tested in real world environment. These monitoring systems supports different plugins to collect and display network data according to organization needs. It is easy for organizations to select these open-source monitoring systems according to their requirements against the feature sets provided by those monitoring systems. According to the results, Zabbix (features wise) is the most suitable NMS for modern ICT environment. Nagios Core consumes less hardware resources than Zabbix and Cacti, but Cacti is easiest to install. However Cacti has the fastest poller than Zabbix and Nagios Core.

Keywords: Network monitoring system, Cacti, Nagios Core, Zabbix, Open source