11 Best Windows Server Monitoring Tools in 2023

On an intranet or the Internet, it is very common for unauthorized access to mission-critical or production servers. This can lead to the leakage of confidential business information, remote control of servers, hacking of critical databases, and much more.

According to the Global Stats Counter According to the report, Windows Server's market share as of December 2021 was 31.44%, the highest of any operating system in the world.

Due to the huge penetration of Windows servers in enterprises and companies, maintenance activities including maintenance, monitoring, security, etc. are becoming more and more of a problem. In this section, we will look at the best Windows server monitoring software to keep your server secure and prevent major outages.

Why is monitoring Windows Server necessary?

By monitoring Windows servers, administrators can proactively monitor and respond to errors, problems, and downtime, and these steps will help prevent major outages and outages, as well as avoid SLA (Service Level Agreement) violations.

When monitoring software is not used, administrators respond and respond to issues after an incident occurs and then look for bottlenecks to find solutions to fix them.

In some situations, critical incidents occur when Windows servers are not monitored in real time. For example, if an unknown IP address tries to access a server and gains unauthorized access, all domain and network security can be compromised, resulting in huge losses for small businesses compared to large enterprises.

Windows server monitoring is of great importance for problem management and incident management, but it actually helps in the overall management of project operations. It also helps businesses and businesses meet their SLA obligations and avoid heavy fines and loss of trust.

In a nutshell, the benefits of Windows monitoring are as follows:

  • Monitor server health to reduce crashes and downtime
  • Increasing the availability of servers, applications and related services
  • Rapid identification and correction of errors, failed services and processes
  • Help maintain business continuity to increase trust in a company/product or service

In this post, we'll take a look at widely used platforms for monitoring Windows servers to prevent major incidents and maintain a reliable infrastructure.

system

system server monitoring software helps to monitor and access all hardware resources used to run windows server. It is one of the easiest programs to organize, monitor and view reports and take action when needed.

A user-friendly dashboard helps simplify the operation and management of Windows servers by identifying common use cases and bottlenecks. Preconfigured metrics help you instantly turn on and initiate monitoring, and you can even customize counters to suit your infrastructure needs.

This is a client-server model where the server package is installed on the server and the metrics can be accessed from any system on the network through the client interface software.

The client interface helps you set up server monitor counters, set up email notifications for any threshold violations, monitor performance with various reports, and more.

System administrators can monitor up to 200 resource counters on Windows servers, including memory usage, disk activity, network activity, processor threads, and TCP/IP protocol. Along with these resources, you can monitor the NAS (network server), SQL Server, and the IIS server.

Its reporting engine offers various types of notifications and reports, including audio error notifications, emails, Excel reports, PDF reports, and more.

For an early track record of Windows servers, consider purchasing the easy-to-manage Sysguage Server software, available for $125 with 1 year support.

PAESSLER

PAESSLER is one of the oldest companies since 1997 and offers monitoring solutions for all companies and industries of any size. This software is trusted by 5 million users worldwide.

PAESSLER AG Network Monitor is a comprehensive software, one of the functions of which is to monitor Windows servers.

PRTG uses several technologies such as WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), Windows performance counters, SNMP, packet sniffing, and Netflow to collect and present Windows server monitoring metrics in its centralized dashboard.

It is a comprehensive software that helps monitor the entire range of servers, including database, email, web servers and virtual servers, as well as their critical parameters such as uptime, CPU and memory usage, disk activity, traffic bandwidth and etc.

It monitors Windows server hardware resources and assists in basic troubleshooting activities such as tracking server patches and updates and warning about pending updates, and its built-in alerts send notifications when resources exceed thresholds, etc.

It is one of the fastest monitoring software as administrators need to enter a range of IP addresses to monitor and its built-in auto-discovery and pre-defined sensors will start auto-discovery. Industry-standard sensors will instantly start tracking your servers.

Functions

  • Remote monitoring via mobile app
  • Event log monitoring. Monitor Windows applications and system logs and trigger alerts when errors occur.
  • Customizable metrics/measures to meet specific infrastructure needs
  • Historical charts for the previous 365 days

The full version of the PRTG software can be installed and used free of charge for 30 days, after which the software automatically reverts to the free limited version. The paid version has a permanent license and subscription. Its price starts at $1,750 for monitoring 500 aspects and 50 devices.

Engine management

Engine Management Application Monitoring Software has won over 120 awards for various IT management software, including the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for application performance monitoring. Windows server monitoring is one of the functions of the ManageEngine Application Monitoring software.

Application monitoring software is a wide-ranging monitoring software that monitors the hardware and software resources of Windows servers, Windows clusters, SQL, web servers, virtual servers, website statistics and more.

Hardware Component Monitor provides detailed performance counters for critical factors such as CPU fan speed, individual CPU core temperature and load, disk I/O statistics, and more.

The software performs basic troubleshooting activities such as threshold alarms, email or SMS notifications of Windows events related to applications, system, security, file replication services, DNS server, server restart, disk space issues, and more. others.

In terms of reporting, a variety of reports are available from the dashboard, including capacity planning reports that help predict server overutilization and underutilization to prevent server overload or failure.

Functions

  • Windows Scheduled Tasks can be monitored to optimize performance.
  • Event log monitoring to detect network anomalies, data leaks and network disturbances
  • Collects network performance statistics such as incoming traffic, outgoing traffic, network errors, speed
  • Predict usage trends based on server usage and performance

This software is available in two editions: Professional and Enterprise. Users can use the license in both subscription and perpetual versions. Subscription licenses start at $395. This software is free to use for 30 days. There is also a free version with limited features.

solar winds

Solar Winds Microsoft Monitoring covers all Microsoft products and services such as Windows Server, SQL-DB, Hyper-V, Azure and more.

Extensive platforms such as Azure Monitor and AWS IaaS, PaaS and SaaS are controlled by Solarwind servers and application monitoring (SAM) software. SAM monitors the entire Microsoft IT stack, including performance, uptime, capacity, and resource usage.

SAM predictive indicators easily detect when server resources reach critical alerts and thresholds, which is one of the important criteria for taking precautions to avoid failures and crashes.

SAM monitors physical components and applications, including high CPU usage, disk usage, network load balancing, print services, remote desktop services, FTP services, and more. The software also monitors performance metrics related to page file usage, CPU time, pages per second, disk queues, and more.

One benefit for enterprises with heterogeneous environments is Solarwind software, which offers customizable server monitoring using APIs and close to 1200+ monitoring templates.

Basic troubleshooting, including detecting hardware errors, restarting the server, and monitoring server health, is done using SAM.

In a nutshell, Solarwinds SAM centralized console can closely monitor Windows Server, Active Directory, IIS, Exchange Server, Dynamics CRM, Skype for Business, SQL Server, SharePoint, DHCP, and DNS.

Functions

  • Help create an inventory of IT assets by identifying and collecting hardware and software assets.
  • Identifying and Resolving Active Directory Performance Issues
  • Monitor DNS for availability and performance issues
  • Server size assistance based on server capacity estimation and determination

SAM starts at $1,663 for an annual subscription. The software can be tested free of charge in your environment for 30 days.

Nagios XI

Nagios XI is enterprise server and network monitoring software trusted by millions of users, from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. It provides complete IT infrastructure monitoring with transparency, performance and ease of configuration.

The software covers all infrastructure components, including applications, services, operating systems, network protocols, system metrics, and network infrastructure.

The software also offers integration with hundreds of third-party add-ons to monitor virtually all applications, services, and internal systems, making it compatible with heterogeneous environments.

The software is built with four monitoring engines that provide the highest degree of server performance monitoring with high efficiency and scalability.

Nagios XI provides full real-time monitoring of critical Windows services such as system metrics, processes, performance counters, event logs, Internet Information Server (IIS), Active Directory, DHCP, Exchange Server, DNS and more.

The software monitors all complex server hardware including network statistics, hard disk usage, CPU usage trends and memory performance.

System administrators can also take advantage of advanced user management, easy setup, automatic discovery, capacity planning-based system upgrades, and more.

Functions

  • A centralized and dedicated dashboard that provides general information about network nodes, services, and devices.
  • Detailed performance data for Windows operating systems
  • Comprehensive monitoring of Windows processes from start to finish, including instances
  • Monitors network adapters for unexpected bandwidth over a period of time.

Nagios XI is available in standard and enterprise editions starting at $1995. This software does not have a subscription licensing model, but it is free to use for 30 days prior to purchase.

Zabbix

Zabbix is ​​a professionally designed open source software for monitoring and tracking any metrics from any source in the IT infrastructure. Zabbix software monitors the health and integrity of servers, virtual machines, network settings, applications, services, databases, websites, and the cloud.

The Zabbix agent must be installed for deep monitoring of Windows servers, while other infrastructure components can be monitored using protocols such as SNMP, TCP, ICMP, etc.

The software helps to control, monitor and present every detailed information about servers such as CPU, memory, file system, physical disk, etc. with XML-based performance measurement templates to efficiently manage server infrastructure.

Its email notifications allow you to quickly respond to server issues. This software provides the best results in terms of reporting and visualization of excellent capacity planning data.

Functions

  • Automatically set a baseline based on historical data to bypass manual thresholding.
  • Early prediction of problem thresholds for a proactive approach
  • Automatically detects bottlenecks in the incoming metrics stream
  • Export open issues in real time to third-party systems for further analysis.

Its web interface provides the ability to remotely monitor and maintain server health. Zabbix can be used by both small organizations and large companies and, importantly, for free. YES, Zabbix is ​​free. Its customer support is commercial.

Checkmk

Checkmk is a comprehensive software for monitoring not only servers, but also applications and networks. The software is easy to use as it was developed after years of research and customer feedback.

Its core engine has a scalable architecture that supports thousands of services, hundreds of websites, and millions of devices running in multiple locations.

The checkmk automation section is versatile and includes configuration automation using REST-APIs, automatic monitoring of ephemeral infrastructure, rule-based 1-to-N configuration that minimizes configuration in complex environments, and third-party application automation using APIs.

The software database contains 1900 plugins so almost any software can be easily integrated. Relevant metrics can be tracked and tracked across heterogeneous environments such as easy incident management through integration with third party tools such as Jira, Slack, PagerDuty, etc. and VictorOps.

Checkmk is one of the best monitoring software suitable for both small and complex infrastructures. One of its unique features is that it uses advanced analytics based on observational algorithms that predict thresholds based on historical events.

Functions

  • Easily identify hosts to update with patches for outdated and vulnerable software versions.
  • Automatically detects relevant indicators and starts monitoring within minutes
  • Customizable dashboard based on admin requirements and can even be integrated with Grafana.
  • Smart alert engine to forward alerts to specific administrators instead of reloading all alerts

The software can be easily configured to monitor all hardware and software, troubleshoot, monitor logs, generate reports, integrate with ITOM/ITSM tools to streamline workflows, automate configuration, scalability, and more. Its price starts from 600 euros, and there is also a free version of the program that supports 25 hosts.

Opsview

Opsview can help you monitor, analyze, control, and automate complex IT services, applications, and solutions. Opsview supports databases, virtual environments (AWS, Azure), operating systems, networks, websites, and more.

Opsview Platform Monitoring provides comprehensive coverage of Windows and its related services and applications in one centralized dashboard, just to name a few:

  • Hardware Monitor: Monitor CPU, Disk Queue, Paging Files, Physical Memory, Windows Events, etc.
  • Event Log Monitoring: Application, System, and Security Logs
  • Services: Monitoring Active Directory, DNS, IIS, Exchange, SQL, Azure, Terminal Services, etc.

Whether you are an IT administrator or system administrator looking for a solution to monitor and manage your IT infrastructure, Opsview seamlessly integrates into your environment regardless of scale, type, product and depth. Prices vary by host and start at €4.5 (Enterprise Edition) per host per month.

cloud radar

Cloud Radar is a cloud-based platform for end-to-end monitoring, alerting, and troubleshooting Windows servers and their associated services and applications. Its cloud platform is redundant and has minimal latency as it has eight global data centers. It's easy to set up and manage, and you can start monitoring and tracking assets in minutes using predefined metrics. The platform provides a variety of notification systems including email, SMS, Slack, Pushover, Telegram, Whatsapp, so there is very little space to miss alerts.

Functions

  • Anticipate issues with proactive alerts and alerts
  • Detailed metrics for server hardware components such as CPU, memory, disk, bandwidth, etc.
  • Custom alerts and alerts for each server, service, or process.
  • Customizable automatic reports and charts to display performance metrics.

Cloudradar is the low cost software in this category at $1.70/month with unlimited metrics per host. It can be used for free for 15 days.

to Aisin

Aisinga Infrastructure Monitoring can monitor large and complex environments in multiple locations. The platform monitors network resources, alerts users of errors, and collects data for reporting.

It is a full-featured monitoring package that supports infrastructure monitoring, metrics and log files, monitoring automation, cloud monitoring, and more. You can watch a live demo at Aising 's demo link on the site.

The software monitors Linux, UNIX, Windows servers locally and in the cloud, immediately notifies administrators of errors and helps them fix them. A centralized dashboard helps you monitor your entire infrastructure by collecting and analyzing data for quick troubleshooting.

Its scalability model easily adapts to your current infrastructure and offers endless possibilities for customization, automation, scaling, and more. Icinga even interacts with DevOps tools to create custom monitoring solutions to suit your infrastructure needs.

Functions

  • Proactively notify errors before interrupts are made
  • Provides a starting point for proper RCA (root cause analysis)
  • Offers various plugins for easy integration with other services/products.
  • Administration and user management to control software usage for better management

Icinga can fit into a large heterogeneous environment. The software covers six key infrastructure areas, delivering valuable insights, alerts, visuals and analytics to support end-to-end coverage and improve business outcomes. Prices are available upon request for a quote.

Siskit

Siskit Monitor is a tool for monitoring and managing corporate servers. It is used to monitor virtual applications on Citrix, Share Point, SQL and Windows servers, RDP sessions and gateways.

Besides monitoring, the software also helps in auditing user activity. Key features include monitoring server performance in terms of CPU, memory and disk usage, SQL transactions, IIS connections, remote server connections, etc.

The software also tracks server usage in terms of access duration, concurrent connections, and usage efficiency. Syskit also tracks user activity related to server connections, user logins/logouts, etc.

This software is available free of charge for 30 days. Its price starts at $199 per server per year.

Output 👇

Monitoring Windows servers has become an important task for companies of all sizes and from all sectors.

Windows server monitoring is important to help organizations take proactive action to detect problems, prevent them before they happen, and avoid larger problems before high-priority incidents occur.

Windows monitoring software helps detect various server issues, including RAM (Random Access Memory) leaks, to resolve performance issues, prevent intruder access, block updates from untrusted resources, find bottlenecks easily, and most importantly, help in troubleshooting and get the server online faster.

Technology is evolving much faster so in today's world, automation is replacing manual tasks, so software or tools that help in automation can be a good substitute for manual actions, providing longer server uptime and therefore reliability of the entire server such as applications, services. , processes, etc. are improved to achieve the goals and objectives of the company.

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