Zabbix – a free monitoring tool for Linux

Frank Neugebauer writes “Zabbix is (free of cost) software that monitors numerous parameters of a network
and the servers on that network. Zabbix is a useful tool for monitoring the health
and integrity of servers. A flexible notification mechanism allows users to configure
e-mail based alerts for virtually any event, allowing fast reaction to server
problems. All monitored parameters are stored in a database. Zabbix offers excellent
reporting and data visualisation features based on the stored data, making Zabbix
useful for capacity planning. Zabbix supports both polling and trapping. All Zabbix
reports and statistics, as well as configuration parameters, are accessed through
a web-based frontend. The web-based front end means that the health of your servers
can be assessed from any location.Properly configured, Zabbix can play an important
role in monitoring IT infrastructure for companies with even hundreds of servers
to monitor.

Zabbix offers:

– support for both polling and trapping mechanisms
– agents (client software) for Linux (HP-UX, AIX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD) and Windows
2000, XP, NT
– server software for Linux and Unix
– secure user authorisation
– two user groups: “Administrators” and “Zabbix users”
– web-based interface for viewing and configuration
– flexible e-mail notification of predefined events

More information and screenshots
here.”