Monitoring large IT environments
IT teams in large IT environments with thousands of devices and systems across multiple locations
need an easy way to gain visibility and control of their increasingly complex infrastructures.
PRTG Network Monitor keeps monitoring simple, while ensuring performance, clarity, and ease of use.
Main challenges of monitoring
large IT infrastructures
Performance
Larger setups often create higher loads on monitoring solutions. Performance problems can lead to falsified monitoring results and annoyed users, which may increase the risk of failures and outages. PRTG is built to deal with these kinds of loads and offers best practices to avoid performance issues.
Compatibility
A monitoring solution is a central component of most IT environments. This means that compatibility with other vendors is essential. PRTG is vendor-agnostic and its flexible API gives you the power to build custom solutions that meet your exact needs.
Distributed environments
Few large IT environments run a single network but are made up of multiple closed networks instead. PRTG offers an easy, affordable way to manage distributed monitoring along with configuration support to ensure you still have a complete overview and avoid responsibility conflicts.
Main issues of established monitoring solutions
Limited monitoring scope
Many IT monitoring providers that focus on the middle market have solutions to monitor single aspects of the IT environment like servers or network performance, which are available individually or as a suite.
Complex and expensive
To have an overview of all IT systems, you need monitoring suites that consist of multiple tools. This increases the complexity for IT teams and makes licensing complicated and expensive.
Reduced feature set
Other solutions reduce features to a minimum and avoid functionality that affects performance.
The larger the IT environment, the more complex it is to manage.
PRTG keeps monitoring simple and gives you
insight into your IT systems in a matter of minutes.
Monitoring with PRTG is simply different
Ease of use
PRTG provides the best user experience possible. This is visible in the user-friendly interface as well as in the simple licensing structure. The initial setup is straightforward and you get instant feedback from the system.
Feature set
PRTG includes all functionality in every license. This includes everything from IT infrastructure and xFlow-based traffic monitoring, to monitoring of virtual, cloud, and hybrid environments, including IoT.
Licensing
The licensing structure of PRTG is as easy as PRTG is to use. Each PRTG license includes the entire feature set, no modules, and no add-ons. PRTG offers two licensing models for larger installations: the perpetual PRTG XL license and the PRTG Enterprise Monitor subscription license.
Integration
PRTG integrates with most analysis tools using an API and predefined templates. It acts as a data collector and early warning system, helping to identify failures and to show where further analysis is needed.
Close partnerships with leading IT vendors and with established players in the ITOM market ensure seamless integration.
PRTG is best practice for large monitoring setups
Monitoring distributed environments
IT teams in medium-sized or large enterprises are often distributed across multiple datacenters, offices, legal entities, business units, or areas of responsiblity, each with their own team.
Implementing a single monitoring solution has advantages:
- Consistent company-wide monitoring solution
- Option to have a centralized overview
- Cost saving and easy licensing
Each team manages its own, independent infrastructure running one or more PRTG servers exclusively for their environment. With the remote probe feature, each single PRTG installation can monitor multiple sites or segments. Distributed monitoring is not an additional feature. It is part of the extensive feature set of every PRTG license.
For a centralized overview, there are two options:
- PRTG Desktop for a detailed overview
- ITOps Board (part of Paessler PRTG Enterprise Monitor) for a more sophisticated service-level overview, incorporating data from other ITOps tools, and with SLA reporting and troubleshooting using automated incident workflows.
Centralized monitoring for large environments
Monitoring large IT environments with a centralized monitoring solution requires a clear strategy.
We advise customers to segment their monitoring in a way that fits the organization and to scale horizontally, for example in terms of geography or functional teams. This improves performance by balancing the workload and gives teams more autonomy with their own dedicated monitoring server. It also avoids complex setups and the need for roles and rights management.
Advanced overview with ITOps Board
PRTG Enterprise Monitor includes ITOps Board, which provides a service-level, central overview of all single installations. ITOps Board gathers information from multiple PRTG servers, categorizes them by business services, adds automated alert management, and provides SLA monitoring and reporting.
Learn more about ITOps Board in PRTG Enterprise Monitor.
PRTG licenses for large environments
Paessler offers two alternatives for monitoring large environments.
PRTG XL – perpetual license – unlimited sensors
The PRTG XL license is a perpetual license. It limits the number of PRTG servers but not the number of sensors*.
Theoretically, you could run unlimited sensors on one PRTG server but there are physical limitations**.
- Perpetual licensing
- Licensing based on the number of PRTG servers
- No sensor limitation by license; however, there are physical limitations
PRTG Enterprise Monitor – subscription license – unlimited PRTG servers – ITOps Board
PRTG Enterprise Monitor is subscription-based. There is no limitation on the number of PRTG servers; rather, you pay for the sensors you need.
PRTG Enterprise Monitor is a good fit for very large setups or if the scenario requires multiple PRTG server installations, like for distributed or heavily segmented environments.
- Includes the exclusive ITOps Board
- Subscription licensing
- Unlimited PRTG server installations
- Licensed by number of sensors*
* Sensors are the basic monitoring elements of PRTG. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network such as the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space of a disk drive.
On average, you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.
** Depending on many factors, the official recommendation is about 10,000 sensors per PRTG server.
“As an international company, PRTG is ideal for us. If something went down half way across the world, we wouldn’t be woken up – we can rely on PRTG to identify the problem and alert us before it occurs – enabling the right person, in the right time zone to resolve the problem.”
Barry Kelly, Systems Engineer at Skyscanner
