Server monitoring

Keep an Eye on Your Servers with Icinga

With server monitoring, you can keep an eye on the CPU, RAM, hard drives, processes, and services on your Linux and Windows servers. Trends and thresholds help you identify bottlenecks before they lead to an outage.

Warned in time

You can tell from the graph when a partition is nearing its limit. It’s not just about a fixed cutoff point that takes effect too late or too early for you.

Appropriate Threshold Values

Your database requires different thresholds than your web server. We adjust them to match what is normal for each server.

Services at a Glance

After a restart or a crash, you’ll see right away if an important service is running again. Not just when a user contacts us.

Alarms That Make Sense

You’ll only receive notifications that are truly important. Prioritize sending it to the right person instead of sending a group email.

Open Source

Icinga runs as open-source software, with no licensing pitfalls. You retain full control over configuration and checks.

Operations can be outsourced

If you’d like, MyEngineer can handle day-to-day operations for you. All you see now is the dashboard.

What is server monitoring?

Server monitoring means keeping track of operating system resources (CPU, RAM, swap, hard drives), running processes and services, and software such as databases or web servers. It doesn’t matter whether your server is physical, virtual, or a container. Here’s how to identify bottlenecks before they affect your users.

To clarify: Network monitoring checks the infrastructure between your servers (switches, routers, firewalls). Log management analyzes events. Server Monitoring checks the status of each individual system. Together with the network, everything is consolidated in your central IT monitoring system, which includes a dashboard and alerting for both.

Common Problems Without Server Monitoring

The Silent Space-Eater

If your RAM is running out of space, the kernel decides on its own which process to terminate.

Full partition

Your partition for logs or backups is slowly filling up. It starts to show signs days in advance, and without monitoring, you’ll notice it too late.

Failed Job

Your backup job has been failing silently for days. This often doesn’t become apparent until a restore is performed—or, in the worst-case scenario, during an emergency.

Do any of these problems sound familiar to you?

Schedule a quick conversation and find out where your biggest blind spots are.

Here’s how we work with you

Four steps, the same for every NETWAYS solution. From analyzing your infrastructure to reliable monitoring during operation.

Step 1

Analysis & Concept

Show us your servers. Together, we'll determine what role each server plays. That's because your database server needs different thresholds than your web server.

→ You'll get: a checklist tailored to your server roles.

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Step 2

Setup & Integration

You'll get the appropriate Icinga checks for CPU, RAM, swap, disk I/O, processes, and services. Grafana shows you the trends, while InfluxDB stores the raw data.

→ Thresholds based on your actual data.

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Step 3

Commissioning & Threshold Values

Your server monitoring is going live. During the first few weeks, we'll adjust the thresholds to match your actual load.

→ Alarms that actually mean something, not just background noise.

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Step 4

Support & Operations

It's up to you: MyEngineer handles operations—including overnight support—or your team learns how to manage checks, downtime, and escalation rules.

→ This gives you a monitoring solution that scales with your server environment.

What Your Server Monitoring Covers

Whether it’s a single server or an entire environment, the components can be implemented individually or in combination.

Resource Monitoring

System & Resources

CPU, RAM, swap, and hard drives with trend graphs—via SSH for Linux and via NSClient++ for Windows.

Result: Bottlenecks are identified before they become critical.

Process Monitoring

Processes & Services

Running services and scheduled jobs, including success monitoring, on Linux and Windows systems.

Result: Service outages and silent job errors are immediately noticeable.

Database Monitoring

Databases

Connections, Replication, and Storage Growth in MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, and Oracle.

Effect: Performance issues become apparent before the application starts to slow down.

Virtualization Monitoring

Virtualization

vSphere resources, snapshot age, and container host metrics, regardless of server type.

Effect: Monitoring, whether physical, virtual, or containerized.

Here’s what you can achieve with server monitoring

Only Genuine Alerts · Overview by Server · Detect Issues Early

Fewer Alarms

Your thresholds match the actual load on each server. That’s why you’ll only receive notifications about what really matters.

Clear Overview

You can view resource usage trends broken down by database, web, and file servers, rather than as an average across the entire fleet.

Quiet operation

Full partitions, frozen services, and failed backups are things you notice during the day—not as a phone call at three in the morning.

What is your solution built with?

Tried-and-true open-source components, operated in-house or through NETWAYS Managed Services. You decide what you’ll do yourself and what NETWAYS will handle.

Icinga

At its core: scalable open-source monitoring for hosts, services, and networks—with checks, dependencies, and alerting. The NETWAYS Core Project.

Grafana

Dashboards and reports that provide visibility into the state of IT for operations and management. This way, you can see all the performance data at a glance.

Prometheus

Prometheus is the de facto standard for metrics-based monitoring in cloud-native environments. It collects and stores time series data from all your services.

OpenTelemetry

Vendor-neutral standard for metrics, logs, and traces: uniform instrumentation that paves the way for end-to-end observability in distributed environments.

We’ll integrate what you’re already using with

Icinga monitors virtually anything that has an interface: via a plugin, agent, or SNMP. Here is a selection of what we typically integrate.

Servers & Systems

Linux
Windows
SSH / Agents
Processes & Services
Container

Applications & Services

HTTP / HTTPS
Databases
TLS Certificates
APIs

Server Manufacturers

Dell (iDRAC)
HPE (iLO)
Lenovo
Cisco
Fujitsu

Network & Hardware

Switches & Routers
Firewalls
SNMP
IPMI
UPS / Sensors

Software

SAP
Oracle Database
Microsoft SQL Server
VMware vSphere
Exchange / Active Directory

Network Hardware

Cisco
Juniper
Aruba (HPE)
Fortinet
MikroTik

Expertise in Monitoring

Want to dig deeper? You might find these blog posts on monitoring interesting.

Questions & Answers

Frequently Asked Questions About This Solution

What does server monitoring involve?

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Server monitoring includes operating system resources such as CPU, RAM, swap space, and hard drives; running processes and services; and software such as databases and web servers. We tailor the selection to your server roles; a database server requires different checks than a dedicated web server.

How can I tell if my hard drive is getting full before it's actually full?

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You can tell when a hard drive is filling up by looking at the trend, not just by a sudden threshold. Icinga shows you the trend over days and weeks, so you can take action while there's still time, rather than waiting until the alarm goes off at midnight.

Why do you need different thresholds for your database server than for your web server?

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You need different thresholds for your database server than for your web server because they have different levels of load and respond differently. A value that is normal for the database may already be a warning sign for the web server. We therefore adjust the thresholds to match the respective server role.

What is the difference between server monitoring and network monitoring?

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The difference between server monitoring and network monitoring lies in the perspective. Server monitoring checks the status of each individual system, including resources, processes, and services. Network monitoring checks the infrastructure in between, such as switches, routers, and firewalls.

Is server monitoring also available as a managed service?

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Yes, server monitoring is also available as a managed service. If you'd like, our team can handle day-to-day operations, including responding to alarms at night; all you'll see is the dashboard.

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