A feature rich alternative to monitoring solutions

The general feeling that Pandora FMS transmits is of robustness, at no time do you have the feeling that something is missing or that some module can do something else. It is a highly flexible and multiplatform solution that offers the possibility of monitoring a wide type of systems. If for any reason the element you need to monitor does not have a predefined module or plugin in Pandora you can always create a custom and specific script for what you need and through the “DataServer” process the responses to generate alerts and notifications without losing any of the functionalities that the web console offers. Additionally, the incorporation of Tentacle as transfer protocol simplifies the deployment process, while ensuring a transparent, fast and secure transfer of the information generated from and to the “Software Agents”. On the other hand, by implementing the solution from ISO based on Centos we will have preconfigured Cron Jobs that will be in charge of keeping our database in optimal conditions, ensuring the maximum performance of the solution. That for me is a great plus because it is not usual and if your knowledge in database management is not the most remarkable you don’t have to worry about this task. Being a solution running on Linux gives us an excellent relationship between hardware requirements and the number of agents that can be managed effectively, which can be up to 2000 agents using only 4GB of RAM, which today is a fairly modest amount.

Pros

User Experience: The interface is clean and friendly, also the separation between regular users and administrators is well defined without giving the sensation of missing tools or features. On the contrary, there is always some additional tool.

Cons

The definition of local Software Agents in the OpenSource version can become tedious during the initial deployment in multiple Agents. However, the Enterprise version covers this detail, allowing centralized administration and deployment from the web console.

PandoraFMS in a proactive environment

I've spent a lot of time working with and discussing our needs for monitoring, functionality and reporting with support and development, we've always been able to add to the software functionality to meet our needs whilst keeping the functionality useful to all. Support and Development have been very keen to discuss needs.

Pros

As our business grew, we took on a number of products to allow us to monitor, report and alert on the devices we supply and manage. over time we have outgrown each. when we looked at PandoraFMS we were impressed that we could deploy many servers in layers with a common central dashboard, making management easy. We also recognised that 'out of the box' monitoring didn't always meet our needs, in a lot of cases systems monitor many things that are irrelevant to us which ties up resource and storage to collect and keep this data that never gets looked at. PandoraFMS allows us to select the items we want to monitor and keep the data focused to our needs.

Cons

Deployment was very manual, however once we'd gone through setting this up for our needs using plugin server, it allows us to keep adding more and more monitored devices, each the same as the last.

Very easy to use.

That's what helped us improve our monitoring of VIP servers and computers on our clients.

Pros

Both its use, implementation and customization are very simple. And it doesn't need very robust hardware to run, which makes it cheaper to implement.

Cons

We had difficulties to integrate with some IOS equipment.

review

The best thing about working with pandora FMS is the amazing support. if there ever is a game breaking bug introduced. or a feature not working as expected the support team is able to make a hot-fix within hours of filing the bug. Most of the time the fix is pushed within 2 hours.

Pros

in comparison with most monitoring software the software is incredibly easy to use. It does 95 % of what we want it to and the remainder is currently waiting on new features which have been added to the road map.

Cons

The software has a tendency to introduce tiny bugs each release. None of them are breaking in any way. but it feels like there is always 1 tiny thing which is not working as expected. most of them are fixed within 1 release which takes about 3 weeks.

Metrics and alerts with PANDORAFMS

The experience has been fantastic from the first moment, easy to contact the manufacturer, open dialogues. Software that does what it says. Clear documentation from the manufacturer.

Pros

The most important thing is the amount of options available for customizing the product and the amount of measurements you can do. Possibility of taking the same measurements in different ways. Possibility of issuing alerts to different people according to the number of error measures taken.

Cons

Very slow learning curve, it is difficult to get hold of the environment. Many very messy options, with similar names. Difficulty doing some tasks. Impossibility of making synthetic measures from politics.

Excellent monitoring tool

This tool has been of great help because we can manage faster solutions with the problems in our network, it helped us reduce our response time.

Pros

Auto discovery and automatic detection of the network topology and network monitoring

Cons

So far the tool has what it takes to meet our needs.

The swiss-army knife of monitoring solutions

Pros

Its flexibility to adapt to new technologies: we've found no application, server or cloud provider that couldn't be monitored.

Cons

It's not as out-of-the-box as they say. This solution requires proper training to get the 100% out of it.

Great to control everything that is online

We can detect every posible problem before it happens

Pros

It is easy and covers a full range of rules

Cons

Sometimes it can be a bit overfunctional

Software Español en la vanguardia de la monitoriz acción

Pros

Muy flexible y personalizable. Código fuente abierto

Cons

Posiblemente hay áreas que deberían ser más fáciles de configurar

Pandora FM(ye)S Please!!

Started with the virtual appliance which made testing the product easy for evaluation. Once the decision was made it was decided to build as per the easy to follow instructions on the website for a CentOS distribution. It has been a solid experience backed with support by Pandora FMS team and the community. Customization was simple with the module library.

Pros

Pandora FMS allows our company to accurately maintain an up to the minute easy to digest visual on inventory and security through out our network for certain industry compliance of workstations and servers. We are a multi OS environment and Pandora FMS fits nicely as it supports all our Operating Systems with provided modules.

Cons

Better support for custom themes would be greatly appreciated. Ability to have a dashboard with all assets displayed with quick hover over status. Think at-a-glance style view of all assets on one page. Would make it easy for Data center admins to get an overall picture.

Pandora : The monitoring tool

The software is great, and with some configuration associated with scripts, allows to monitor dedicated things very deeply. It's a great tool of monitoring after a small time of configuration.

Pros

The Pandora is available in community version (Free) or Enterprise version (paid). The configuration and default interface in the free version allows to monitor easily our systems, with great function, like tree view, alerts, e-mail sending, history and configuration options.

Cons

The software is in "neglish" and still need improvement to be in "French". The right configuration is a bit "poor" and don't allow to hide easily the menu not used.

Excelent for monitoring my lan

I did very well to monitor my network infrastructure. Quickly see the status of all my printers, switch, computers, virtual machines to know if any system has fallen. I recommend this software for all systems administrator.

Keeping it flexible and looking good.

Recently, as a self taught programmer, I've been dabbing into the thought of setting up a personal server, and sooner or later starting to monitor my (ever-growing) infrastructure. During my research on the software side of things for this process, I've come across many monitoring solutions. The one that has most drawn my attention would probably be Pandora FMS. Firstly because they offer the chance to decide wether you'll need to pay for their Enterprise Edition, or if you'll stick with the open source Community Edition. That to me is a big factor since my infrastructure doesn't have the size and doesn't generate the need to pay in order to keep it monitored for now. In this sense, Pandora FMS has a very large edge over others. Furthermore, the fact that the developers are from Spain, and although I know English, make any possible language barrier in general easier to surpass for me,considering I'm from Perú. I know this may sound as a silly thing to rescue on a product review, but being able to receive support in your own language is always something that I'm very grateful for. Don't get me wrong, their support mainly replies and communicates in English, but in case you're a Spanish speaker, this might appeal to you as well.

Financial software

none

Pros

Very good, because I need it every day, it helps me a lot, I like it very much.

Cons

The only drawback is that it is not smooth enough, and the rest can be

Pandora FMS and how is necessary to be informed about your machines

Really cool, makes me grow in my knowledge with a lot of topics all necessary for Local Area Network administration (and remote too).

Pros

The "Recon Server" makes a quick and clean work; after a week the "Prediction Server" takes advantage!

Cons

For Debian/Ubuntu maybe a little tricky; the configuration interface maybe hard at glance because is for general purpose along all the program.

Amazing software for small businesses

I was able to obtain interesting information about machines and mobile devices. I am impressed

Pros

Amazing software for small businesses. I am a consultant dedicated to install Lync and Skype for Business over large companies. But this product has nothing to envy over those big names companies. Performance is seriously good specially when you discover that it can run even over a VM. I highly recommend the use of this product for small businesses. SOme of the features are not even available on other more expensive products.

Cons

Support for old versions is not the best. And the life cycle seems to be very short. But you get what you pay.

Highly recommendable monitoring solution

I just recently discovered Pandora FMS a few years back and am surprised how far its come along in terms of development and integrations. In its latest version we can see how its ease of use and general development have been improved upon largely. It's always been about pure flexibility and customisation, and it just keeps growing in that aspect. You're never going to have to see information about your infrastructure that you consider you don't need. As an IT consultant for medium and large businesses I always recommend it as a less costly alternative to Zabbix or Nagios, since it provides the same features and more at a much lesser price. Apart from this, I'm very glad to have had the chance to be in touch with the team behind this software and now that they are very willing to help make a company's work as easy as possible with their product. Apart from that, their general customer service is very efficient and has a very special way with customers which always proves to be helpful.

A really complete toolkit

As a self employed sysadmin, I manage infrastructures for third parties on a daily basis. After trying to monitor efficiently with other solutions, I have come to the conclusion that in terms of price and practicality, Pandora FMS just has very little competition. Basically they're offering a better service and more customisation options than any other monitoring solution out there, for basically a fraction of the price. Plus they still offer their Open Source Community Edition, which is great to just explore the software or use it on medium sized infrastructures. Really, even if it's open source it's quite powerful. I personally use the Enterprise Edition because of some additional features it has compared to the Community version, but I'd still recommend any of both as solutions for your everyday monitoring. Pandora FMS helps me keep a more organised dashboard configuration for each of my customers, and makes me be more efficient when completing processes for them.

Managing Pandora FMS

I prefer used this tools because its to good for initiators in this world of monitoring servers,routers,etc and it is easy to notification with chats online (slack)

Pros

Interface web is really good, not requiered too many knowledge to get report and graphs

Cons

I think that way to get and add agents its little difficult in comparison with other toosl (prtg)

Pandora FMS

Pros

What I liked most about this software was that I can motorize all kinds of elements. What is better is that only with one tool you can do all kinds of things: as a network motorization, service-oriented motorization, application motorization and many other things, but for me the best are those three.

Cons

At the moment nothing bad has come up because what I have been using has not given me problems so I am satisfied

Pandora FMS for monitor my entire network

Pros

What I liked most about this software was its ease of use and implementation.

Cons

Lacks support for some major manufacturers

Great class example and even better find!

As a teacher at an University I use Pandora as part of a group of software examples when explaining networks and their monitoring. I'm really glad to be able to use this software, it's one of the rare few monitoring solutions that doesn't resort to being based on Nagios code and actually proposes a lot of new things to challenge students with. As a personal user, I agree that it's a great monitoring solution in general it includes a more than decent amount of features and integrations, even in its community edition. In general, I would recommend it for large infrastructures because of the possibilities it offers.

Pandora FMS made my day

I was looking for a monitoring solution to monitor more than 50 databases (different brands such as Mysql and Oracle), after a while I found a complete solution to add to the same dashboard every single application (CRM, Ticketing System, ...) of the infrastructure along with key performance indicator like RAM, CPU, Disk memory, bandwidth, etc It took me one day to handle the product and start adding other components to the monitoring dashboard. Quite flexible and easy to adapt. Cons: I miss some templates by default to start monitoring as soon as possible

Use Pandora FMS

Pros

very easy to use and intuitive. Very easy to start monitoring.

Cons

Its difficult to add agent to console and migrate to upper version

Good Dashboard

Dashboards for monitoring issues are really reliable assuming you have them set up correctly

Pros

I like that it is open source and thus anyone using it can improve the software

Cons

The monitoring services within can be a bit non-user friendly

Use the software for monitoring internal networks.

Allows me to see potential future issues with the network.

Pros

Pandora FMS is a flexible and highly scalable monitoring system ready for big environments. It doesn't matter what network you are using.

Cons

The software tends to overwork the system and overload the core. In doing so it slows the network and operating systems of the computers being monitored.

Monitoring Software

Pros

This product seems really thorough. I would definitely want to implement if I had more money to do so.

Cons

It is expensive. You can start off with a trial, but their NMS & Enterprise licenses are in the 1000’s.