Lead Image © tarokichi, 123RF.com

Infrastructure monitoring with Bloonix

Guardian

Bloonix [1] is a user-friendly environment for monitoring tasks; it is capable of monitoring all of your IT assets, assuming they are accessible over a network connection. You do need to install special plugins to query certain network components – but more on that later. The web-based, modular Bloonix environment comes with modules for a massive crop of popular hardware and software components and is fundamentally based on the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), although it can also use other protocols for monitoring.

The first lines of code for Bloonix, developed by the company of the same name based in Germany, date back to 2006. The project is available under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3), which allows users to run, modify, and share software while ensuring that any modified versions are also made available to the public.

According to the developers, Bloonix's server software is highly available and highly scalable and can be operated on multiple servers for load balancing. For monitoring tasks, the tool primarily relies on agents that are available for popular operating systems. It has no packages for desktop systems – not even for macOS. Bloonix is available as a managed server and as a self-hosted environment [2]. You can gain an initial impression of the environment in the online demo [3]. Free support is provided by the community [4], although the extent of this support is limited. Professional support is also available (see the "Commercial Services" box).