ManageEngine OpManager

ManageEngine, a division of Zoho Corporation, offers a variety of products aimed squarely at IT professionals, including hardware, software, and physical as well as virtual infrastructure management. OpManager, the company's network monitoring suite starts at $245 for the Standard edition. But while the price is certainly nice, the rest of the product, though functional enough, lacked the pizzaz and more advanced features of our Editors' Choice winners in this category, Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold and Paessler PRTG Network Monitor. Still, both of those products will likely be more expensive than ManageEngine OpManager when all is said and done, so those looking for value would do well to start here.

Pricing and Installation

The above-mentioned Standard edition is cheap partially because it only lets you monitor 10 devices on a single network. Most small to midsized business (SMB) networks will need at least 50 devices, and that will cost you $1,095 for a perpetual license good for just two IT pro users. So while the per-device licensing will likely be somewhat cheaper than competitors like our Editors' Choice winners, it likely won't be drastically cheaper. A free edition that lets you monitor three devices is available on the ManageEngine website, but there is also a free 30 day trial for the standard edition. 

Installing OpManager is straightforward enough, though it's a local installation, just like both our Editors' Choice winners. Folks looking for cloud service convenience will have to look at products like Datadog. Still, local installation isn't overly difficult with the most time spent likely being on deciding which database you want to use for data storage and then selecting an optimal path.  Postgres is the default, but SQL Server is also supported provided you want to spring for the additional licensing bucks. After it’s loaded, you can launch the web console. While installing, I did have some issues with the product incorrectly being detected as a ransomware attack by my anti-virus application, so it’s probably necessary to add an exclusion if you have a particularly aggressive endpoint protection solution installed. 

After installation is complete, you’ll be able to access the application via the default port of 8060 (or some other port you've specified during the install) from your web browser.  If you need to access it remotely, you’ll need to have an appropriate VPN connection or forward the correct ports through the firewall after configuring SSL. The engine itself is based on Java, so you’ll also need to ensure that there are no restrictions in your environment for running Java.  Fortunately, because it’s Java, you can install it under Linux or Windows, which is a significant advantage over many other applications, like PRTG, that can only be installed on a Microsoft Windows Server machine.

Managing Devices

OpManager has a modern, though somewhat busy looking, browser-based interface. There are no fewer than 9 tabs available off the admin console. Realistically, this could be squeezed down to four or five, so finding your way around might be a bit tricky at the start since there is a glut of options to consider. Still, from a strictly visual perspective, I would consider this superior to a stodgy-looking product, like Nagios XI. The ability to custom design maps with drag-and-drop tools is very intuitive. Basically, if you’ve ever used Microsoft's Visio, you’ll be right at home.

Adding a single device is a snap. Under Inventory, select Add Device and feed it the IP address or device name as well as the appropriate credentials needed for access. While this will generally be SNMP, it could also be Windows or SSH credentials. After clicking Discover, the device is ready to monitor. Fortunately, detecting multiple devices is just as simple.  Under an adjacent menu, you can create what is called a Discovery Profile. This allows you to specify a range of IP addresses, credentials that you want to use, and which interfaces you want to consider.  Once detected, each discovered device can be enabled for monitoring.

One of the big draws for ManageEngine OpManager is that both the VMWare and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors are first class citizens when it comes to monitoring. Just adding the Hypervisor under the Virtualization section gives you a listing of all of the VMs under the Virtual Details subtab. Each of them can have monitoring enabled or disabled with a click, which makes tracking both virtual infrastructure and virtual networks very straightforward. Out of all the tools tested, we felt OpManager has the best system for managing virtualized environments.

Configuring Alerts

There are several alert types, known as alarms, in OpManager, and each has a unique purpose. Web Alarms, for instance notify users that are logged into OpManager by playing a selected alarm sound. Trap alarms are triggered entirely on SNMP traps (messages). There are also the standard event alarms and syslog alarms. In terms of targets, if you want to use it, OpManager probably has it.

Email, SMS, chat, kicking off another program, and even logging a ticket are all fair game as far as alarm responses go. Once you’ve chosen a path, you’ll need to select criteria for triggering alerts. While the rules can be complex, many of them are pre-configured for you, so you can likely find what you are looking for already. That being said, it might take you a while to hunt through the list, so it’s worth getting familiarized with it in advanced.

Reporting and Plug-Ins

Reports come as part of an add-on called the ManageEngine Applications Manager Plug-In. It’s a mystery as to why this is a separate application, and to make maters worse, it requires the use of Adobe Flash, which is a platform that's been flagged by most IT departments as unsafe. Still, once you get it installed it gets the job done. There are a wide range of reports that vary from trend analysis to even capacity planning for servers. Reports can also be saved as a PDF, printed, or emailed by using a quick link in the top right hand corner of the report page once generated.  All things considered, they look nice and the data was certainly operationally relevant on the reports I tested.

The need for add-ons is, however, something of a theme with ManageEngine. Several capabilities require the use of other ManageEngine products, including patch management and even traffic analysis and firewall log management. Again, that means you'll need to be careful when mapping OpManager's capabilities against its price tag.

If you're looking to write a custom plug-in, know that there's no easy way to write a true plug-in. OpManager does provide a thorough REST API for adding and fetching data from OpManager. This is the primary way that you can feed custom data into the system. Since REST is a language-independent protocol, there isn’t any restrictions on what languages you can use to develop a plug-in, but the downside of this model is that the plug-ins don’t actually integrate with the environment. Instead, they're have to run external to the primary application. This is different than Nagios XI where the plugins live as part of the overall environment and are called directly by the application. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, so while this sounds like a negative, it's really a matter of developer preference.

Overall, OpManager’s most attractive feature is likely the per-device pricing. However, you will be limited to monitoring a local network unless you decide to spring for the more expensive enterprise product. You’ll also have to pony up the horsepower to run it. However, this is the same as other on premises products, like Nagios XI or IPSwitch Whatsup Gold, which are among the best in class, so it’s not a deal breaker. That being said, if you need the enterprise features and are willing to pay a little more anyway,  IPSwich Whatsup Gold is a better value for the money.

ManageEngine OpManager Specs

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