Network monitoring tools

Canonical overview pages. Each links to relevant how-to guides and config examples.

Prometheus open-source

Prometheus Network Monitoring

A practical guide to using Prometheus with snmp_exporter and Grafana as an open-source network monitoring stack — scrape model, PromQL patterns, Grafana dashboards, and fit guidance.

Zabbix open-source

Zabbix

Zabbix is a self-hosted, open-source platform for monitoring networks, servers, applications, and cloud. How its items, triggers, templates, and low-level discovery work, and how it compares to SolarWinds NPM and Prometheus.

SolarWinds commercial

SolarWinds Platform (Orion): Network Monitoring Overview

What SolarWinds Orion is, what NPM/NCM/NTA actually do, how SWQL fits in, and where it makes sense versus the alternatives.

Splunk enterprise

Splunk: Log Management & SIEM Overview

How Splunk ingests, indexes and searches machine data, what SPL is, and how Enterprise, Cloud and the free tier differ.