Everything you need to monitor MQTT and more
Avoid malfunctions or failures during the production process
Combined overview of your IT systems & your operational technology systems
Identify bottlenecks in your production, large infrastructure or building automation
PRTG: the all-in-one monitoring solution for MQTT
Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is a simple lightweight protocol for transporting messages between devices. It has become one of the most important protocols in the IIoT and IoT making it indispensable for many companies. This importance makes it a key component of your monitoring solution! This is where PRTG Network Monitor comes into play.
PRTG offers IT admins a monitoring solution for all the systems, devices, traffic, and applications in your IT infrastructure. Additionally, PRTG combines the IT and OT world. Among other sensors, PRTG offers 3 native MQTT sensors allowing you to monitor everything that communicates via MQTT:
MQTT Round Trip sensor
MQTT Statistics sensor
MQTT Subscribe Custom sensor
MQTT Notifications sensor
Get an overview of OT network components in your supervisory and control systems
You want the FULL overview of your OT environment in your supervisory and control systems – including the network components like routers, switches, firewalls, and more. Paessler PRTG OPC UA Server brings monitoring data from your OT network and the IIoT into your control overview to give you centralized monitoring and alarms. See everything in one place.
The advantages of MQTT Monitoring with PRTG
PRTG Network Monitor's ability to monitor MQTT means that it is an all-in-one monitoring
solution that can combine the IT and OT world in one single overview.
One overview
MQTT is widely used to communicate with IoT and IIoT devices, and these devices are becoming more a part of IT infrastructure than ever before. With MQTT integration in PRTG Network Monitor, you can have a combined overview of your IT and MQTT devices...all in one place.
Monitor OT and IT
In industrial IT environments, many OT devices cannot be monitored with traditional IT monitoring methods or protocols, such as Programmable Logic Controllers. However, using a combination of PRTG Network Monitor, MQTT, and smart industrial gateways, you have more options to bring OT data into your IT monitoring concept.
Future proof
Digitalization of industrial IT has brought about an increase in the number of IIoT devices in production environments, from smart gateways through to devices for measuring humidity and temperature. This trend will continue, and MQTT will become more important for accessing data all across the factory – from the production line, through to facility management.
Get your free white papers
White paper I
In modern industrial IT, the right teams need the right data. Our guide shows how to implement holistic monitoring that brings elements from IT, OT and IIoT into your dashboards.
White paper II
Our second guide gives you inspiration and ideas for dashboards that feature IT, OT and IIoT data – all in one place. We show you what truly convergent industrial dashboards look like!
IT/OT convergence with PRTG Network Monitor
PRTG Network Monitor is a world leading IT monitoring solution that combines a broad feature set with outstanding usability and maximum flexibility. Beyond out-of-the-box support for all classic IT standards, PRTG offers a RESTful API, JSON and MQTT support as well as a OPC UA and SCADA integration to easily integrate shop floors, IoT devices for monitoring environmental parameters, and other IT devices and applications that don't use common standards.
MQTT – how does it work?
Devices are able to send messages to each other via:
- Topics. These are a way of categorizing the types of messages that might be sent. For example: if a sensor measures temperature, the topic might be defined as “TEMP”, and the sensor sends messages out labeled as “TEMP”.
- Publishers. Devices can be configured to send out messages containing data. Using the temperature example, the sensor measuring temperature publishes this data.
- Subscribers. Devices or systems can be configured to receive only messages of a specific topic. They can also subscribe to multiple topics.
- Broker. This is the server that is at the center of it all, which transmits the published messages to servers or clients that have subscribed to specific topics.
What is MQTT?
MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) is a lightweight messaging protocol. It is used in cases where a small code footprint is needed while bandwidth resources are limited. It is primarily used for machine-to-machine (M2M) communication or Internet of Things types of connections.
Watch this short video or read more ...
The MQTT sensors and what they monitor
How PRTG defines sensors
In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, e.g. the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, the free space of a disk drive. On average you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.
MQTT Round Trip
Most importantly, your devices have to be available and transmit data. The broker is the central element within the MQTT communication and should therefore be monitored. With the MQTT Round Trip sensor, PRTG can fully monitor the MQTT broker. In the future, you won't have to worry whether a connection to the broker can be established or if it accepts messages or forwards them to a matching subscriber. The sensor monitors the message round-trip time (RTT), round trip status, publisher connection time and subscriber connection time. Take a look at the PRTG Manual for more details.
MQTT Statistics sensor
Are your devices and the broker sending messages? This sensor knows best and monitors MQTT topics whilst displaying relevant statistics of the broker, like the number of incoming messages from a subscribed topic and the received payload. You can find more details in the PRTG Manual.
MQTT Subscribe Custom sensor
Use this sensor if you want to monitor numerical values returned by received JSON data.
The sensor subscribes to an MQTT topic and monitors up to five numerical values from the received JSON data. The values in the channels can easily be configured according to your needs. Check out the PRTG Manual for more details.
MQTT Notifications sensor
Use the MQTT Notifications Sensor to forward alerts, warnings or any other information to a system of interest like any system in the cloud or any other system which can basically subscribe to MQTT topics.
This video displays how to add this sensor to PRTG.
PRTG sensors for everything else
Bandwidth monitoring, specific datasets from your database, applications, cloud computing services, all types of servers, and many more... Everything is included in PRTG!
This is how it works
Watch these short videos and learn all about the MQTT sensors,
how to set them up and how to use them.
How to set up the MQTT Round Trip sensor
by Johannes Liegert, Product Owner
In this video, you’ll get a close look at the MQTT Round Trip sensor (beta) which is there to monitor your MQTT infrastructure regarding your broker. You will be able to monitor if clients can connect to the broker and whether they can subscribe and publish through your broker infrastructure.
How to set up the MQTT Statistics sensor
by Johannes Liegert, Product Owner
In this video, we'll show you the MQTT Statistics sensor (beta) which not only helps you to monitor if your devices send messages to your broker, but also the number of messages and their payload size.
How to set up the MQTT Subscribe Custom sensor
by Johannes Liegert, Product Owner
In this video, we'll show you how to monitor values from MQTT messages sent by your IoT & IIoT devices or other systems using the MQTT Subscribe Custom sensor.
Get more industry specific information here!
Would you like to discover more about industrial IT monitoring?
Then be sure to check out our blog posts and webinars.
A brief history of MQTT
Learn about the origins of MQTT, its purpose and advantages, as well as its adoption. This is the story of how it became one of the most important aspects in IoT today...
Why MQTT Is Everywhere, and the Security Issues It Faces
Read this article to unterstand why MQTT has become an industrial standard and the security issues it faces.
Great industrial content at a glance
For more insight and information about PRTG in industry, take a look at our industrial resource center. Find out about use cases, sensors, latest trends and much more!