Reduce downtime in your network and uncover hidden issues affecting bandwidth. Effectively monitor your entire hybrid IT infrastructure and identify problematic trends with powerful, customizable dashboards.
Ensure peak network infrastructure performance
Monitor everything
Monitor your hybrid IT infrastructure out-of-the-box with our leading library of more than 2,000 vendor-maintained monitoring plug-ins
Highly automated
With its auto-discovery, auto-configuration via a REST API, and built-in agent management, Checkmk takes manual work off your hands
Massively scalable
Monitor hundreds of thousands of hosts and millions of services across the globe, thanks to a high-performance distributed architecture
Extensible
Customize or extend the open source code of Checkmk. Use the Check-API to write your own monitoring plug-ins or extend existing ones
Customers
One of the standout features of Checkmk that I appreciate the most is its remarkable flexibility. As a network monitoring solution, Checkmk excels at adapting to different environments and requirements, making it a versatile tool for IT operations of all sizes.
Try an easy to set-up, holistic network monitoring software
Your whole business depends on an efficiently-functioning network infrastructure. However, even networks in small companies can get hugely complicated over time and it is easy to lose the overview and have difficulty keeping an eye on everything. A good network monitoring software can help to handle these issues.
Checkmk, as a network monitoring tool, can help you quickly monitor your entire network, and it doesn’t cover only the major devices, but also a broad range of vendors — even those outside the mainstream. And this all without complicated configurations and endless alarms. With a few clicks, you will be able with this network monitoring tool to monitor all your network devices, e.g.:
- Switches & Routers — Monitor packet rates, error rates, the state and bandwidth of ports, error rates, CPU utilization, fans, power supply, temperature and more. Supported devices for network monitoring include, e.g. Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Brocade, Dell, Enterasys, Extreme Networks, Huawei, Intel, Juniper, TP-Link.
- Wireless — Also monitor your wireless networks, e.g. state of access points, signal strength and connected devices for Aerohive, Aruba Networks, CBL, MikroTik, Netgear, Fritz!Box, etc., devices.
- Firewalls — Ensure the security of your network by monitoring the health, VPN tunnel state, high availability state and more of your BlueCat, Checkpoint, F5, FireEye, FortiGate, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, etc., devices.
Ultra efficient network monitoring
Checkmk uses a rules-based concept for configuring your network monitoring. This becomes especially powerful when monitoring a large number of similar devices, in contrast to a template-based approach, in which you need to configure each 'sensor'.
With just a couple of rules you can configure your entire network monitoring, e.g. monitoring only the error rate for access ports. Routers and switches can have several hundred SNMP messages – it is important to monitor only what really matters. Checkmk knows what data matters, and filters the data for you so that you get to see the data you actually need in your network monitoring.
For small networks and ISPs
- Powerful analysis tools
- Network topology maps and insightful graphs
- Insights into switch port usage
Quickly identify the roots of issues with the powerful graphing and network topology maps of Checkmk. Learn which of your ports are actually in use with the switch port statistics. With Checkmk you monitor small networks and large environments - our monitoring solution is flexible and scalable.
Understanding switch port usage
Have you ever stood in front of a switch and wondered which ports are actually being used, and which not, or that someone hasn't simply removed a cable? Have you ever unplugged your CEO from the internet because the port looked as if it was not in use, but he was in fact just on a business trip?
Checkmk combines real-time data and historic data in its network monitoring to understand which of a switch's ports are in use. With the switch port statistics feature, you can see immediately which port is up/down/free, the speed, whether it is currently being used, and the last time when it was in use.
Avoiding bottlenecks with bandwidth network monitoring
Checkmk not only monitors all network interfaces in an IT infrastructure but also the bandwidth consumption at each port. Bandwidth network monitoring with Checkmk enables you to:
- Monitor all ports and the bandwidth usage for each port.
- Set thresholds for individual ports to receive alerts when bandwidth consumption is high.
- Quickly identify bandwidth-related peaks and patterns with powerful time series graphs.
- Set the assumed input and output speed on Internet and WAN ports for improved alerting.
- Measure network and internet performance by integrating Speedtest or iperf into Checkmk via plugins.
Network flow monitoring
In addition to comprehensive network monitoring, Checkmk starting from version 2.0 optionally supports monitoring of network flows. Checkmk is able to integrate network flow data provided by ntop and allows you to get an even more detailed monitoring of your network. You can analyze your network traffic in-depth without having to leave the Checkmk interface.
By analyzing flow data, you can learn which hosts, applications, or protocols are communicating with each other. This allows you to break down network usage per host, destination address, protocol, or application to see what the top talkers and top listeners are on your network. In addition, network flow monitoring helps you detect bottlenecks or anomalies in your network infrastructure.
With Checkmk you have all the data in your Checkmk main dashboard. Checkmk gets all the information from ntop. Furthermore, you can view all flow information and analyze all flow-specific alarms via the alert dashboard. In addition, the flow data provides you with supplementary information on each host, such as traffic packets, ports, peers and applications.
VPN and remote workplace monitoring
Avoid capacity bottlenecks, bandwidth and performance issues, or configuration errors from slowing down your VPN and remote workplace architecture. This is the only way to ensure that your employees can easily access the tools and applications they need from home or wherever they work.
With Checkmk as your network monitoring software, you are able to monitor the status and the number of your active VPN tunnels and the number of bytes being transferred via VPN, so that you can detect problems early and guarantee secure remote access to your company infrastructure at any time.
Prevent your VPN gateway from becoming a bottleneck in your remote architecture by easily monitoring device CPU usage with Checkmk. In this way Checkmk helps you to react to possible bottlenecks at an early stage.
With remote workplaces, it is useful to monitor several parameters simultaneously to ensure smooth operation. Here, too, you should always keep an eye on the performance utilization of your gateway. Checkmk also helps you to keep an eye on the resource capacities of your virtual platform. Only if sufficient CPU, RAM or Storage IO are available, can a smooth operation and a possible scaling of the virtual workstations be guaranteed.
Monitor with a glance. Resolve with a click
Deploy flexibly in every environment
Frequently asked questions about the trial
Curious about Checkmk Cloud, Pro, or Ultimate? Head to our pricing page to pick the edition that fits your needs and start your trial. 30-day trial is completely free, allowing you to test the full feature set of our commercial editions without any restrictions.
Checkmk offers several flexible deployment options to fit your specific infrastructure needs:
- Linux Server Installation
The most common deployment method. You can install Checkmk directly on a Linux server, whether physical or virtual. Supported Linux distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) based systems, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), Debian, and Ubuntu. - Cloud Infrastructure
Host your own Checkmk instance on AWS or Microsoft Azure. For the fastest setup, Checkmk Ultimate is available as pre-configured virtual machine images in the AWS and Azure Marketplaces, allowing you to bypass manual installation steps. - SaaS (Software as a Service)
Enjoy hassle-free setup and maintenance-free experience with Checkmk Cloud. Learn more about our SaaS platform. - Docker Containers
Checkmk can be deployed as a Docker container using official images for both Community and commercial editions. The lightweight, self-contained container environment allows for easy deployment and portability. View Docker documentation. - Virtual Appliance
A ready-to-use solution for hypervisors like VMware ESXi, Hyper-V, Proxmox, or VirtualBox. The appliance includes a hardened Debian-based OS and a dedicated web interface for easy, command-free configuration and management. Check virtual appliance details. - Physical Appliance
For a turnkey hardware solution, Checkmk offers physical appliances with pre-installed and optimized software, ready for deployment in data centers. These appliances support high-availability clustering and come in various models with different maintenance levels to ensure 24/7 monitoring uptime. See available devices.
No, you do not have to install Checkmk to get hands-on.
Checkmk provides a sandbox instance that lets you get familiar with the Checkmk GUI, explore core Checkmk functionalities, and view prebuilt dashboards — all without deploying a single package locally. This is an easy way to evaluate the look, feel, and capabilities of Checkmk before deciding on a deployment option.
Ready for a test-drive? Play with Checkmk.
Once the 30-day trial of a self-hosted Checkmk edition ends, you can either license your site with a paid subscription or continue using it for free as long as you want. The free version allows up to 750 monitored services on a single site and does not support distributed monitoring.
For Checkmk Cloud (SaaS), you must activate a paid subscription before the 30-day trial period ends to keep your monitoring active. Otherwise, your trial instance and its configuration will be automatically deleted
You can purchase a Checkmk license online or by requesting a quote from our sales team. Once you have your subscription, you simply enter your license credentials directly into your existing trial site.
The Checkmk server is not supported on Windows. However, you can monitor Windows hosts using the Checkmk agent.
For the server itself, we suggest starting a Checkmk Cloud trial — our SaaS edition that runs entirely on our cloud infrastructure.
The easiest way to get started with a PoC is to start a trial, create a new site, and use the 30-day trial period. If you need more than 30 days to build your PoC, please contact our sales team, and we will be happy to issue an extended PoC license.
By using one of the self-hosted Checkmk editions you are in control of your monitoring data, which never leaves your infrastructure. The data for processing your account and subscription is securely stored and processed exclusively within the European Union. In the case of the Checkmk Cloud edition (SaaS), you can choose where to keep all your data between the US (Virginia) and the EU (Frankfurt). In the latter case, your sensitive information never leaves EU borders.
Yes, Checkmk ensures full compliance with GDPR and other stringent EU regulations. Our robust security measures and transparent data processing practices are designed to safeguard your data and provide full confidence. You can read more on how we process data on the Privacy Policy page.
Ready to explore the Checkmk monitoring platform?
No credit card required. No upfront commitment. Unlimited free use for 30 days.
Simply download Checkmk and start monitoring. After the trial period, you can continue monitoring up to 750 services at no cost, or choose a pricing plan with monthly payments based solely on the number of services you need to monitor.