Nagios Core and Zabbix are open-source IT infrastructure monitoring solutions. Nagios Core is a mature solution that focuses on flexibility in customization, timely alerts, centralized dashboards, and plugin support for versatile monitoring solutions. Zabbix offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities, customizable alerting, user-friendly interface, and extensive reporting.
Comparing the features of Nagios Core and Zabbix:
Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core and Zabbix are free and open-source. Zabbix's user-friendly interface and web configuration might reduce setup and maintenance costs for some. Conversely, Nagios Core's large community and extensive plugin library could minimize the need for paid support. Ultimately, ROI depends on your technical expertise.
Room for Improvement: Nagios Core reviews highlight the need for a more modern UI and easier configuration options. Zabbix reviewers mention occasional scalability limitations for extremely large deployments.
Customer Support: With an open-source model, both rely on community support forums for free assistance. Paid support options are available for Nagios XI and Zabbix enterprise versions, offering faster response times and dedicated help. Reviews suggest a slight edge for Zabbix's community support due to its larger user base.
Deployment: Zabbix offers a more straightforward installation process with a web-based interface for configuration. Nagios Core requires manual configuration through text files, although a web interface is available with the paid Nagios XI version. Both have good documentation, but Zabbix's web interface might be easier for beginners.
The summary above is based on 58 interviews we conducted recently with Zabbix and Nagios Core users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"Other products are good but from the configuration point of view Nagios is really very lightweight. The price is really good in my opinion. Another important thing is that my Nagios engine still works with Dual core 8GB ram for the last 10 years."
"The notifications are definitely one of the most valuable features of Nagios Core. We know what to look for and what to expect when things are down."
"Dashboard provides monitor of total assets."
"What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services."
"Provides timely notifications."
"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."
"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."
"The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."
"We value the auto-host discovery, template import, bulk import/export features. Newer versions also add nice features, such as multi-IP per host."
"It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps."
"We use it to monitor and manage our servers."
"Health and communication links availability."
"We detect problems before the customer does and before it actually happens using the predictive functions in Zabbix."
"The features I found most valuable are the user interface and a wide range of network devices that are easy to configure."
"Zabbix is very easy to implement."
"It's a flexible solution."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."
"Would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."
"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."
"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."
"The tool needs to improve the integrations."
"Nagios Core is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers."
"They should open an SSH session from the web interface."
"Its UI needs to be improved a little bit more so that an end-user is also able to handle it. I can handle it, but others should also be able to handle it in a better way. It becomes complex when we are growing and need to add proxies. We need more scalability features and documentation for different use cases. A lot of articles are available, but they need to be in proper documentation. For example, when you have thousands of servers that have to be monitored in different regions of the world, there should be some kind of documentation to describe how you can create proxies and add them. Sometimes, when you are using the database, it can get overloaded. When the network is growing, the number of transactions becomes very high, and the database gets overloaded. There should be information about how to reduce the load on the MySQL database, which is what Zabbix is using. The market is growing a lot, and it should be enhanced for a lot more things. We are currently bringing enhancements at our end for different use cases. For example, when dockerization is going on, how can we check the logs inside the Dockers. We should also be able to monitor and check the number of logins and add features such as SSO login and two-factor authentication as a protocol. These are the security features and concerns that we have to deal with. Currently, we are developing modules to add features to Zabbix, but they should also work on these features."
"It could be more stable."
"Implementation is always tailored to the customer and the kind of information we need from the client to carry it out can make them very uncomfortable. Sometimes the clients are not ready to share it."
"There is a bit of a learning curve during installation."
"There's a small module of APM, however, it is not an enhanced version. People usually ask for a full-fledged APM solution."
"Zabbix isn't very good at automation just yet."
"I had problems using Zabbix when working with SUSE Enterprise; many companies use SUSE."
Nagios Core is ranked 7th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 46 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 1st in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 98 reviews. Nagios Core is rated 8.0, while Zabbix is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Nagios Core writes "An Open Source Fully Featured Data Centre Monitoring Tool". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zabbix writes "Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes". Nagios Core is most compared with Nagios XI, Centreon, Icinga, OP5 Monitor and LogicMonitor, whereas Zabbix is most compared with Centreon, Checkmk, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios XI and Amazon CloudWatch. See our Nagios Core vs. Zabbix report.
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