September 19th, 2024

OpenNMS: Visualize and monitor everything on your local and distributed networks

OpenNMS is an open-source network monitoring solution that supports up to 350,000 data points per second, offering fault management, performance monitoring, and customizable dashboards for diverse network environments.

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OpenNMS: Visualize and monitor everything on your local and distributed networks

OpenNMS is an open-source network monitoring solution designed to visualize and manage local and remote networks. It provides comprehensive capabilities for fault, performance, and traffic monitoring, along with alarm generation. The platform is highly customizable and scalable, capable of integrating with core business applications. OpenNMS is utilized by major organizations across various sectors, including healthcare, technology, and finance, and can handle up to 350,000 data points per second. It offers two main distributions: Horizon (community) and Meridian (enterprise), along with additional components for enhanced functionality, such as distributed monitoring (Minion) and scalable data persistence (Newts). Key features include extensive network discovery, route monitoring, network traffic analysis, and customizable dashboards. OpenNMS supports various protocols and data collection methods, ensuring compatibility with diverse network environments. It also includes a robust notification system, event management capabilities, and integration with ticketing systems like Jira. The architecture is built using Java and supports both IPv4 and IPv6, making it suitable for modern network infrastructures.

- OpenNMS is an open-source solution for comprehensive network monitoring.

- It supports up to 350,000 data points per second and is scalable for large networks.

- The platform includes two distributions: Horizon for community use and Meridian for enterprise.

- Key features include fault management, performance monitoring, and customizable dashboards.

- OpenNMS integrates with various protocols and ticketing systems, enhancing its functionality.

Link Icon 15 comments
By @otterpro - 5 months
I recommend [librenms/librenms: Community-based GPL-licensed network monitoring system](https://github.com/librenms/librenms), which is Open source and free.
By @mikeocool - 5 months
This has been on the front page for several hours, and it appears to be a $12,000 network visualization tool, but the website fails to show any screenshots or really much beyond an enterprise sales pitch.

Would someone whose upvoting this mind sharing what is interesting or compelling about this? I haven't been able to figure it out clicking around the website and 'Visualizing and monitoring everything on your local and distributed networks' is something kinda up my alley.

By @swills - 5 months
Once years ago a coworker set this up with good intentions of evaluating it and it ended up setting up a default automation which sent SNMP queries to a networked photocopier which triggered it to print some diagnostic page repeatedly until it ran out of paper overnight while no one was around. Anecdotal, but amusing to me and it's still the first thing that comes to mind when I see this product.
By @ovation1357 - 5 months
I've been managing multiple instances of the free "Horizon" version of OpenNMS for nearly 10 years, even contributed a couple of bug fixes. It doesn't get much love from coworkers and it's an absolute beast to learn but it generally does the job. It's got a LOT of bells and whistles including support for all sorts of Comms and IT gear. It can be a tad clunky, pretty RAM and I/O intensive (Java) and the vast number of XML config files can be very daunting for new users. But it largely does what's needed including custom detection and status polling of services, recieving and processing SNMP traps and polling SNNP metrics. The built in graphs are useful but a bit old and ugly however it has Grafana integration and one day I'll look into trying that out.

It heavyweight and very "enterprise" - not necessarily going to cut it for home or small business use, but if you've got a huge sprawl of legacy systems and applications then it might be a decent fit for centralised monitoring.

By @TYPE_FASTER - 5 months
By @AbraKdabra - 5 months
I've been using LibreNMS since 2014 and I even contributed to a feature, I can say it's in the top 3 SNMP monitoring tools, excellent tool.
By @lukan - 5 months
Maybe it looks different on a desktop, but on my mobile the page does not show an actual visualisation, which I think would be helpful for me to determine its usefulness.
By @unsnap_biceps - 5 months
The pricing page shows the smallest plan is $12,000 a year. Given the lack of any screenshots or workflow info, I'm not going to reach out to their sales and demo this. It's way too much money for a complete unknown.
By @whalesalad - 5 months
Any tool that claims to visualize anything and does not show visualizations on the homepage is suspicious. So many product pages look like this these days. What does it actually do? What does it look like?
By @baq - 5 months
I'd like a proper (but not necessarily professional) network monitoring tool for a home network running on a rpi 4 alongside home assistant - is that it?
By @secabeen - 5 months
Network visualization tools have generally been a solution in search of a problem for me. At both work and home, my network is very stable and unchanging.
By @Refalm - 5 months
But I've already got Observium at home.
By @sleepybrett - 5 months
"open"
By @godisdad - 5 months
Five clicks in to a visualization tool’s website I don’t see any diagrams or screenshots makes it challenging to want to kick the tires on this
By @Carrok - 5 months
"Helps you visualize"

Doesn't have a single screenshot.