Since the Dude has been comatose for the last three years and Mikrotik doesn’t really give any evident plans for reviving it, I think it really is time to move on.
However, what is there to move on to?
I know there are plenty of network monitoring software package available, but which one to choose?
We have several customers that are willing to pay us for monitoring their network, comprised of distributed networks of RB hardware.
However we don’t feel comfortable using the Dude for all the apparent reasons.
Has anybody got experience with alternative monitoring suites used on a Routerboard network?
There is a lot of systems - But the best systems, is really expensive. Like solarwinds, etc. I cannot find a problem using the dude With all the benefits and proporitary mikrotik/routeros stuff in dude.
From what i see in the demo of Observium it seems nice. But I don’t see myself switching from The Dude soon.
Yes there are no updates, but it does everything I need and it just works without any issues. And for more tasks I also use smokeping and cacti.
at home I have installed TheDUDE on a Windows Home Server 2011, PRTG and now
the SoftEther VPN Server all together it would be reaching for my home network.
In business network we are using the PRTG together with the Kentix sensor solution,
it is able to send alarms over Email and SMS.
But for MikroTik based networks TheDUDE would be unreachable!
So a real alternative is not out there as I am think of this.
We use http://www.cloudviewnms.com as alternative. It is called CloudView and handles any network size. We used PRTG in the past, but it is expensive with unlimited probes. Now we find that CloudView GUI is also easier
Forgot to add that CloudView also sends emails. As for situations like you described they have optional agent which can be installed on any OS. The agent works as client, so it can reach CloudView server from behind Firewall/VPN/NAT Address , etc…
So the alternative is there… Hope this helps
I’m in the same boat. Dude service is crashing several times a day and restarting. Rather than jack with it I’m thinking about moving on. So far I’ve tried cacti, was not remotely impressed. Tried spiceworks, what the hell is that one good for? And right now trying zabbix and it sucks. Reached about 500 devices and it started crashing. I think you get what you pay for. Whats the best paid monitoring software? Oh wait never mind that will exceed my budget!
Might have to try some of the ones mentioned in this thread.
Yes, exactly our story. I recommended CloudView NMS above . They claim it can monitor thousands … The price is just $295 . We have about 750 devices (IP and SNMP). No issues so far. Does not hurt to try - they have free trial.
Has anyone tested netxms in a large(r) environment? It’s not very clear to me how I can create a structure/hierarchy with all servers and network components.
I had a play around with Intermapper for a while on a trial licence. It seems to do everything that I am doing with The Dude. Plus it has some other features which would be handy as well. It is almost as intuitive and simple to set up as The Dude. Unfortunately we did not have any budget for a new monitoring system so I am still using The Dude for now.
Thnx for all your replies.
We played around a bit with a few suggestions but ended up with Zabbix.
Its a pain to get the hang of (especially if your not a linux users) but once you get confident it offers loads of oppertunities.
Now we are running two full blown zabbix servers, with a dozen proxies, covering about 1500 hosts.
There are a few drawbacks like the poor options in maps, but overall we are very happy with it, and best of all its free
Thanks. Do you use an agent for those Windows servers? I was hoping to find a way to monitor disk space and memory usage through snmp but that’s been more difficult than expected.
