System monitoring program. The best free system resource monitors
The previous article compiled a list of 80 monitoring tools Linux systems. It also made sense to make a selection of tools for the Windows system. The following is a list that serves as a starting point only, there is no ranking.
1.Task Manager
Well-known dispatcher Windows tasks- utility for displaying a list running processes and the resources they consume. But do you know how to use its full potential? As a rule, it is used to monitor the state of the processor and memory, but you can go much further. This app is pre-made for everyone operating systems ah Microsoft.
2. Resource Monitor
A great tool to estimate CPU usage, random access memory, network and disks in Windows. It allows you to quickly obtain all the necessary information about the status of critical servers.
3.Performance Monitor
The main tool for managing performance counters in Windows. Performance Monitor, more earlier versions Windows is known to us as System Monitor. The utility has several display modes, displays performance counters in real time, and saves data to log files for later study.
4.Reliability Monitor
Reliability Monitor - System stability monitor, allows you to monitor any changes in computer performance, you can find the stability monitor in Windows 7, in Windows 8: Control Panel > System and Security > Action Center. Using Reliability Monitor, you can keep track of changes and failures on your computer; the data will be displayed in a convenient graphical form, which will allow you to track which application and when caused an error or froze, and track the appearance of a blue screen death of Windows, the reason for its appearance (another Windows update or installing a program).
5.Microsoft SysInternals
SysInternals is a complete set of programs for administering and monitoring computers running Windows OS. You can download them for yourself for free on the Microsoft website. Service programs Sysinternals help manage, troubleshoot, and diagnose applications and operating systems Windows systems.
6. SCOM (part of Microsoft System Center)
System Center is a complete set of tools for managing IT infrastructure, with which you can manage, deploy, monitor, configure Microsoft software (Windows, IIS, SQLServer, Exchange, and so on). Unfortunately, MSC is not free. SCOM is used for proactive monitoring of key IT infrastructure objects.
Monitoring Windows servers using the Nagios family
7. Nagios
Nagios has been the most popular infrastructure monitoring tool for several years (for Linux and Windows). If you are considering Nagios for Windows, then install and configure the agent on Windows server. NSClient++ monitors the system in real time and provides outputs with remote server monitoring and more.
8. Cacti
Typically used in conjunction with Nagios, it provides the user with a convenient web interface to the RRDTool utility, designed to work with Round Robin Databases, which are used to store information about changes in one or more quantities over a certain period of time. Statistics on network devices are presented in the form of a tree, the structure of which is specified by the user; you can plot channel usage, HDD partition usage, display resource latency, etc.
9. Shinken
Flexible, scalable monitoring system with open source code, based on the Nagios core written in Python. It is 5 times faster than Nagios. Shinken is compatible with Nagios, you can use its plugins and configurations without making adjustments or additional configuration.
10. Icinga
Another popular open monitoring system that checks hosts and services and reports their status to the administrator. As a fork of Nagios, Icinga is compatible with it and they have a lot in common.
11. OpsView
OpsView was originally free. Now, unfortunately, users of this monitoring system have to shell out money.
Op5 is another open source monitoring system. Plotting, storing and collecting data.
Alternatives to Nagios
13. ZabbixOpen software for monitoring and tracking the status of various computer network services, servers and network equipment, is used to obtain data about CPU load, network usage, disk space and the like.
14. Munin
A good monitoring system that collects data from several servers simultaneously and displays everything in the form of graphs, with which you can track all past events on the server.
15.Zenoss
Written on Python language using Zope application server, data is stored in MySQL. With Zenoss you can
monitor network services, system resources,device performance,Zenoss core analyzes the environment. This makes it possible to quickly understand a large number of specific devices.
16. Observium
Monitoring and surveillance system network devices and servers, although the list of supported devices is huge and is not limited only to network devices; the device must support SNMP.
17. Centreon
A comprehensive monitoring system allows you to monitor the entire infrastructure and applications containing system information. Free alternative Nagios.
18. Ganglia
Ganglia - scalable distributed system monitoring, used in high-performance computing systems, such as clusters and grids. Monitors statistics and computation history in real time for each of the monitored nodes.
19. Pandora FMS
Monitoring system, good productivity and scalability, one monitoring server can monitor the work of several thousand hosts.
20. NetXMS
Software with open source for monitoring computer systems and networks.
21.OpenNMS
OpenNMS monitoring platform. Unlike Nagios, it supports SNMP, WMI and JMX.
22. HypericHQ
A component of the VMware vRealize Operations suite, it is used to monitor OS, middleware and applications in physical, virtual and cloud environments. Displays availability, performance, usage, events, logs, and changes at every level of the virtualization stack (from the vSphere hypervisor to guest OSes).
23. Bosun
Open source monitoring and alert system from StackExchange. Bosun has a well-thought-out data design, as well as a powerful language for processing it.
24. Sensu
Sensu is an open source alert system similar to Nagios. There is a simple dashboard, you can see a list of clients, checks and triggered alerts. The framework provides the mechanisms needed to collect and accumulate server operation statistics. Each server runs a Sensu agent (client), which uses a set of scripts to check the functionality of services, their status and collect any other information.
25. CollectM
CollectM collects statistics about system resource usage every 10 seconds. It can collect statistics for several hosts and send it to the server, the information is displayed using graphs.
28. Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool
34. Total Network Monitor
This is a program for continuous monitoring of work local network individual computers, network and system services. Total Network Monitor generates a report and notifies you about errors that have occurred. You can check any aspect of the service, server or file system: FTP, POP/SMTP, HTTP, IMAP, Registry, Event Log, Service State and others.
35. PRTG
38.Idera
Supports multiple operating systems and virtualization technologies. There are many free tools that you can use to monitor your system.
39. PowerAdmin
PowerAdmin is a commercial monitoring solution.
40. ELM Enterprise Manager
ELM Enterprise Manager - complete monitoring from “what happened” to “what is happening” in real time. Monitoring tools in ELM include - Event Collector, Performance Monitor, Service Monitor, Process Monitor, File Monitor, PING Monitor.
41.EventsEntry
42. Veeam ONE
An effective solution for monitoring, reporting and scheduling resources in VMware, Hyper-V and Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure, monitors the health of your IT infrastructure and diagnoses problems before they interfere with user experience.
43. CA Unified Infrastructure Management (formerly CA Nimsoft Monitor, Unicenter)
Monitors performance and availability Windows resources server.
44. HP Operations Manager
This infrastructure monitoring software performs proactive root cause analysis, reducing recovery time and reducing operations management costs. The solution is ideal for automated monitoring.
45.Dell OpenManage
OpenManage (now Dell Enterprise Systems Management) is an all-in-one monitoring product.
46. Halcyon Windows Server Manager
Management and monitoring of networks, applications and infrastructure.
Below is a list of (most popular) network monitoring tools
54.Ntop
55.NeDi
Nedi is an open source network monitoring tool.
54. The Dude
System Dude monitoring, although free, but according to experts, it is in no way inferior commercial products, monitors individual servers, networks and network services.
55.BandwidthD
Open source program.
56. NagVis
An extension for Nagios that allows you to create infrastructure maps and display their status. NagVis supports a large number of various widgets, icon sets.
57. Proc Net Monitor
A free monitoring application that allows you to track all active processes and, if necessary, quickly stop them to reduce the load on the processor.
58. PingPlotter
Used to diagnose IP networks, allowing you to determine where losses and delays occur network packets.
Small but useful tools
The list wouldn't be complete without mentioning a few hardware monitoring options.60. Glint Computer Activity Monitor
61.RealTemp
Temperature monitoring utility Intel processors, it does not require installation, monitors the current, minimum and maximum temperature values for each core and the start of throttling.
62. SpeedFan
A utility that allows you to control the temperature and fan speeds in the system, monitors sensor readings motherboard, video cards and hard drives.
63.OpenHardwareMonitor
Even the most modern motherboards have imperfect heat dissipation systems. It depends too much on the serviceability of the mechanics (fans), the quality of the thermal paste, and the timeliness of cleaning the PC from dust. To ensure the correct functioning of the system, you have to periodically monitor changes in the temperature of the processor, video, RAM, and hard drive.
In our opinion, utilities are best suited for this Core Temp And Open Hardware Monitor in combination. The first will protect the CPU from overheating and notify about problems, the second will provide comprehensive information from other sensors. If you want to try to reduce noise or optimize cooling, try SpeedFan.
Multifunctional utility HWmonitor Pro, monitors the temperature of the PC using the firmware built into the hardware. Roughly speaking, it takes information from Bios, S.M.A.R.T disk, etc. That is why her data is always accurate and reliable.
AIDA And CPU-Z recommended for testing iron. Their tests are recognized as the best among analogues and provide truly truthful information about the condition. For overlockers, we can recommend MSI AfterBurner. This video card checker provides comprehensive information. If you are confident in your abilities and are not afraid of premature “death” of the component, install and try to overclock!
For those who do not like complex fancy programs, we also have options. For example, minimalist Real Temp And CPU Thermometer. They contain only one function and do an excellent job with it - they measure the temperature of the computer in real time.
And if you need to monitor hdd or ssd temperature readings, use a special meter - CrystalDiskInfo, HD Tune, HDDlife. In this article, we did not consider the above tools in detail, since they are the least convenient and informative among their popular analogues.
You can also view the processor temperature using the Powershell console program built into the OS or track it through Temp Taskbar, CCleaner and other universal software, or simply look at the data in the BIOS / UEFI menu while starting the PC. To do this, hold down DEL or F2 after the beep sounds and the motherboard manufacturer's logo appears. The main screen called PC Health Status displays the current and acceptable temperature - it is updated in real time. Often here you can configure the critical parameters at which the machine turns off. Sometimes you need to go to a special tab to do this. To save changes, press F10 and then Enter. Next, the computer reboots with the new settings.
Don't forget that monitoring the processor temperature is the most important thing, not only for those who increase clock frequency CPU up to entering it into throttling mode. Under the same summer heat conditions, a significant increase in heat generation can be observed + the t value depends on the load on the machine. If you do not clean the radiator in a timely manner, or forget to replace the thermal paste at least once every couple of years, the computer will begin to heat up excessively and overheat, which promises failure of components and loss of functionality of the entire system. When standard methods maintenance does not help, on stationary devices they simply remove the side cover; on netbooks and laptops, you can achieve a decrease in performance when performing resource-intensive tasks using a special cooling pad with fans or its budget version - four boxes of matches. Simply place them under the feet on the bottom of the laptop to increase the distance to the desk and provide better air circulation.
Programs for monitoring the operation of a computer and individual objects.
↓ New in the "Monitoring" category:
Free
SpeedFan 4.46 is an application that allows you to control the temperature and speed of the system fans. The SpeedFan application supports work with almost any of the monitoring chips, and also makes it possible to dynamically change the speed that characterizes the rotation of the fans, based on data on the temperature inside the computer case.
Free 
S&M 1.9.1 is an application that checks for RAM, CPU stability, and hard drives. In addition, the S&M application will help you monitor the voltages of the motherboard and display a window with the results of the test.
Free 
RAM Saver Pro 11.11 is an application that allows you to perform professional monitoring, cleaning and optimization for RAM. The RAM Saver Pro application will help improve the performance of the entire operating system, and also free up RAM from drivers or unnecessary running processes.
Free 
Notebook Hardware Control 2.4.3 is an application that manages hardware components in laptop computers. The Notebook Hardware Control application will help increase the service life of batteries, as well as cool the system, using control of the voltage on the processor and the frequency of the video card, for which ATI utilities Clock Control and CPU Voltage Control.
Free 
MotherBoard Monitor 5.3.7.0 is a monitoring application for motherboard. The MotherBoard Monitor application will help you obtain information regarding the temperatures of the installed motherboard or your processor, as well as voltages that can be measured at test points or fan speeds.
Free 
HWMonitor 1.19 is an application that monitors indicators for various computer components. The HWMonitor app checks the temperature, as well as fan speed or voltage.
Free 
Filemon 7.04 is an application that monitors and displays all file system activity on your computer. Filemon has advanced filtering and search capabilities that make it a powerful tool for conducting system investigations, monitoring which programs are using DLLs and files, or monitoring problems in application or system configurations.
Free 
EVEREST Ultimate Edition 5.50 is a diagnostic, testing and tuning application optimal performance hardware and software computer.
Free 
CPUCooL 8.1.0 is an application that provides capabilities for monitoring voltages and temperatures for the computer power supply, as well as monitoring and adjusting the rotation speed for fans on most motherboards that are built on SIS, ALI, AMD, NVIDIA, Intel or VIA chipsets .
Free 
ClockGen 1.0.5.3 is an application that allows you to dynamically overclock your system. The ClockGen application will allow you to change such unique parameters as processor frequency, memory, frequency PCI bus– PCI, AGP and Express.
Free 
ASUS SmartDoctor 5.57 is an application from ASUS that works with video cards based on ATI or NVIDIA graphics chipsets. Smart app Doctor will help you monitor the condition of your video card, report any malfunctions that occur due to overheating, stopping fans or other problems, as well as the temperature of the chipset, memory, fan speed, and so on.
Free 
ASUS PC Probe II 1.04.92 is an application designed to monitor PC hardware. The ASUS PC Probe application will display the voltage generated by the power supply, the temperature of the motherboard or processor, and the fan speed.
In the previous article, a list of 80 tools for monitoring Linux systems was compiled. It also made sense to make a selection of tools for the Windows system. The following is a list that serves as a starting point only, there is no ranking.
1.Task Manager
The well-known Windows Task Manager is a utility for displaying a list of running processes and the resources they consume. But do you know how to use its full potential? As a rule, it is used to monitor the state of the processor and memory, but you can go much further. This application is pre-installed on all Microsoft operating systems.
2. Resource Monitor
A great tool to estimate CPU, RAM, network and disk usage in Windows. It allows you to quickly obtain all the necessary information about the status of critical servers.
3.Performance Monitor
The main tool for managing performance counters in Windows. Performance Monitor, in earlier Windows versions known to us as System Monitor. The utility has several display modes, displays performance counters in real time, and saves data to log files for later study.
4.Reliability Monitor
Reliability Monitor - System stability monitor, allows you to monitor any changes in computer performance, you can find the stability monitor in Windows 7, in Windows 8: Control Panel > System and Security > Action Center. Using Reliability Monitor, you can keep a record of changes and failures on your computer, the data will be displayed in a convenient graphical form, which will allow you to track which application and when caused an error or froze, track the appearance of the Windows blue screen of death, the reason for its appearance (the next Windows update or program installation).
5.Microsoft SysInternals
SysInternals is a complete set of programs for administering and monitoring computers running Windows OS. You can download them for yourself for free on the Microsoft website. Sysinternals utilities help manage, troubleshoot, and diagnose Windows applications and operating systems.
6. SCOM (part of Microsoft System Center)
System Center is a complete set of tools for managing IT infrastructure, with which you can manage, deploy, monitor, configure Microsoft software (Windows, IIS, SQLServer, Exchange, and so on). Unfortunately, MSC is not free. SCOM is used for proactive monitoring of key IT infrastructure objects.
Monitoring Windows servers using the Nagios family
7. Nagios
Nagios has been the most popular infrastructure monitoring tool for several years (for Linux and Windows). If you are considering Nagios for Windows, then install and configure the agent on the Windows server. NSClient++ monitors the system in real time and provides outputs from a remote monitoring server and more.
8. Cacti
Typically used in conjunction with Nagios, it provides the user with a convenient web interface to the RRDTool utility, designed to work with Round Robin Databases, which are used to store information about changes in one or more quantities over a certain period of time. Statistics on network devices are presented in the form of a tree, the structure of which is specified by the user; you can plot channel usage, HDD partition usage, display resource latency, etc.
9. Shinken
A flexible, scalable, open source monitoring system based on the Nagios core written in Python. It is 5 times faster than Nagios. Shinken is compatible with Nagios, you can use its plugins and configurations without making adjustments or additional configuration.
10. Icinga
Another popular open monitoring system that checks hosts and services and reports their status to the administrator. As a fork of Nagios, Icinga is compatible with it and they have a lot in common.
11. OpsView
OpsView was originally free. Now, unfortunately, users of this monitoring system have to shell out money.
Op5 is another open source monitoring system. Plotting, storing and collecting data.
Alternatives to Nagios
13. ZabbixOpen source software for monitoring and tracking the status of various computer network services, servers and network equipment, used to obtain data on processor load, network usage, disk space and the like.
14. Munin
A good monitoring system that collects data from several servers simultaneously and displays everything in the form of graphs, with which you can track all past events on the server.
15.Zenoss
Written in Python using the Zope application server, data is stored in MySQL. With Zenoss you can
monitor network services, system resources, device performance, the Zenoss kernel analyzes the environment. This makes it possible to quickly understand a large number of specific devices.
16. Observium
A monitoring and surveillance system for network devices and servers, although the list of supported devices is huge and is not limited to network devices; the device must support SNMP.
17. Centreon
A comprehensive monitoring system allows you to monitor the entire infrastructure and applications containing system information. Free alternative to Nagios.
18. Ganglia
Ganglia is a scalable distributed monitoring system used in high-performance computing systems such as clusters and grids. Monitors statistics and computation history in real time for each of the monitored nodes.
19. Pandora FMS
Monitoring system, good productivity and scalability, one monitoring server can monitor the work of several thousand hosts.
20. NetXMS
Open source software for monitoring computer systems and networks.
21.OpenNMS
OpenNMS monitoring platform. Unlike Nagios, it supports SNMP, WMI and JMX.
22. HypericHQ
A component of the VMware vRealize Operations suite, it is used to monitor OS, middleware and applications in physical, virtual and cloud environments. Displays availability, performance, usage, events, logs, and changes at every level of the virtualization stack (from the vSphere hypervisor to guest OSes).
23. Bosun
Open source monitoring and alert system from StackExchange. Bosun has a well-thought-out data design, as well as a powerful language for processing it.
24. Sensu
Sensu is an open source alert system similar to Nagios. There is a simple dashboard, you can see a list of clients, checks and triggered alerts. The framework provides the mechanisms needed to collect and accumulate server operation statistics. Each server runs a Sensu agent (client), which uses a set of scripts to check the functionality of services, their status and collect any other information.
25. CollectM
CollectM collects statistics about system resource usage every 10 seconds. It can collect statistics for several hosts and send it to the server, the information is displayed using graphs.
28. Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool
34. Total Network Monitor
This is a program for constantly monitoring the operation of a local network of individual computers, network and system services. Total Network Monitor generates a report and notifies you about errors that have occurred. You can check any aspect of the operation of a service, server or file system: FTP, POP/SMTP, HTTP, IMAP, Registry, Event Log, Service State and others.
35. PRTG
38.Idera
Supports multiple operating systems and virtualization technologies. There are many free tools that you can use to monitor your system.
39. PowerAdmin
PowerAdmin is a commercial monitoring solution.
40. ELM Enterprise Manager
ELM Enterprise Manager - complete monitoring from “what happened” to “what is happening” in real time. Monitoring tools in ELM include - Event Collector, Performance Monitor, Service Monitor, Process Monitor, File Monitor, PING Monitor.
41.EventsEntry
42. Veeam ONE
An effective solution for monitoring, reporting and scheduling resources in VMware, Hyper-V and Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure, monitors the health of your IT infrastructure and diagnoses problems before they interfere with user experience.
43. CA Unified Infrastructure Management (formerly CA Nimsoft Monitor, Unicenter)
Monitors the performance and availability of Windows server resources.
44. HP Operations Manager
This infrastructure monitoring software performs proactive root cause analysis, reducing recovery time and reducing operations management costs. The solution is ideal for automated monitoring.
45.Dell OpenManage
OpenManage (now Dell Enterprise Systems Management) is an all-in-one monitoring product.
46. Halcyon Windows Server Manager
Management and monitoring of networks, applications and infrastructure.
Below is a list of (most popular) network monitoring tools
54.Ntop
55.NeDi
Nedi is an open source network monitoring tool.
54. The Dude
The Dude monitoring system, although free, is, according to experts, in no way inferior to commercial products; it monitors individual servers, networks and network services.
55.BandwidthD
Open source program.
56. NagVis
An extension for Nagios that allows you to create infrastructure maps and display their status. NagVis supports a large number of different widgets and icon sets.
57. Proc Net Monitor
A free monitoring application that allows you to track all active processes and, if necessary, quickly stop them to reduce the load on the processor.
58. PingPlotter
Used to diagnose IP networks, it allows you to determine where losses and delays of network packets occur.
Small but useful tools
The list wouldn't be complete without mentioning a few hardware monitoring options.60. Glint Computer Activity Monitor
61.RealTemp
A utility for monitoring temperatures of Intel processors, it does not require installation; it tracks the current, minimum and maximum temperature values for each core and the start of throttling.
62. SpeedFan
A utility that allows you to control the temperature and fan speeds in the system, monitors the performance of sensors on the motherboard, video card and hard drives.
63.OpenHardwareMonitor
System Resource Monitor
Programs for measuring resources, or as they are also called resource monitors, display specific information indicators of the state of the system. And if a little simpler, then, basically, this is data on processor load, the amount of RAM used and disk space used. Such utilities allow you to find out the reasons for the loss of system performance and find out the current load of your computer. They are quite popular among users who often work with technology.
Some of these programs are more focused on diversity of information, i.e. allow a much clearer understanding of the state of the system. And, most likely, they will be more suitable for administrators whose tasks are more complex than just finding out how much memory your programs are eating. Other programs are more focused on the attractiveness of the interface and the ability to integrate into the standard system interface, for example, in the form of widgets. As you probably guessed, these programs are more suitable for ordinary users who under no circumstances will need information about the number of threads and processes, except to broaden their horizons.
In this review you will find both functional and stylized programs.
Review of Free System Resource Monitors
Rainmeter program complete control of system resources
Quick Guide (links to download free system resource monitors)
Rainmeter
| Stylization. Great amount modules and skins for display. Incredible flexible setup display. | ||
| Configuration via INI files (this will be very difficult for regular users). Some modules may not work correctly. |
Spotlight on Windows
| Professional. Attractive. Multifunctional. Remote monitoring. | ||
| Full screen mode only. Fonts cannot be changed. Fixed maximum values. Registration required. The license must be renewed every year. |
Sysmetrix
| Stylization. Wide variety of indicators. Easy setup. | ||
| Only one template for all indicators, cannot be divided into separate widgets. Displays only the total processor load. |
TinyResMeter
| Fast. Effective. Very small size. | ||
| Poor setting. Old GUI. |
StatBar
| Takes up little space on the screen. Setting up indicators. A number of additional controls (Winamp and others). | ||
| You can't change the font, which makes the program inconvenient for high-resolution screens. |