Checkmk
UnclaimedComprehensive IT monitoring platform for cloud, hybrid, and data center infrastructures.
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What is Checkmk?
Checkmk is a monitoring tool. Checkmk is an IT monitoring platform designed to provide a complete view of an entire IT infrastructure, including public cloud providers, data centers, servers, networks, containers, and applications. It helps ITOps and DevOps teams run IT at peak performance by offering scalable, automated, and extensible monitoring capabilities. Key capabilities: High Performance Core for scalable monitoring, REST API for automation and host auto-registration, Granular access control, encryption, and 2FA for security, 2,000+ vendor-maintained monitoring plug-ins, Automated acquisition of health statuses and metrics. Checkmk ships a free plan plus paid tiers that unlock as usage grows. Buyers most often compare Checkmk against Icinga, Instana, Sentry.
TL;DR - Checkmk
- Monitors entire IT infrastructure: cloud, data center, servers, networks, containers, applications.
- Highly automated with auto-discovery, auto-configuration, and 2,000+ vendor-maintained plug-ins.
- Scalable to millions of services, with flexible alerting, dashboards, and self-healing capabilities.
Pricing: Free plan available
Best for: Growing teams
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Comprehensive monitoring across diverse IT environments (cloud, hybrid, data center)
- High degree of automation reduces manual work (auto-discovery, auto-configuration)
- Massively scalable architecture supports millions of services
- Extensible with open source code and custom plug-ins
- Rich feature set including advanced alerting, dashboards, and business intelligence
Cons
- Specific cons are not detailed in the provided text, but potential complexity for smaller teams could be inferred.
- The free 'Raw' edition is for mid-sized infrastructures, implying limitations for very small setups or advanced features.
Ratings Across the Web
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Key Features
High Performance Core for scalable monitoringREST API for automation and host auto-registrationGranular access control, encryption, and 2FA for security2,000+ vendor-maintained monitoring plug-insAutomated acquisition of health statuses and metricsPre-defined thresholds for out-of-the-box health assessmentBuilt-in time-series analysis and historical stats reviewGranular and automated alert configuration with escalation
Pricing Plans
Free TrialRaw
Free forever
- Monitor entire IT
- Auto-discover IT
- Monitor out-of-the-box with 2000+ plug-ins
- Auto-detect issues
- 100% Open Source
- Checkmk Community Support
Enterprise
$175/month
- Everything in Raw
- Accelerate and scale up monitoring
- Automate monitoring operations
- Monitor dynamic workloads
- Visualize IT
- Pro support included
Cloud
$250/month
- Everything in Enterprise
- Monitor cloud workloads
- Deploy from cloud marketplaces
- Auto-register any load
- Push and pull agents
- Visualize your cloud
- Pro support included
MSP
$275/month
- Everything in Cloud
- Multi-customer management & dashboards
- Data segregation
- Data loss protection, if customer connections fail
- White label branding
- Pro support included
Cloud SaaS
$240/month
- Monitoring for any cloud & server
- Quick & easy onboarding
- Maintenance-free monitoring
- Automation for dynamic infrastructures
- Built-in dashboards for cloud monitoring
- Hosted on AWS in both the EU and USA
- Support included
About Checkmk
By Toolradar Team·
Checkmk is an IT monitoring platform designed to provide a complete view of an entire IT infrastructure, including public cloud providers, data centers, servers, networks, containers, and applications. It helps ITOps and DevOps teams run IT at peak performance by offering scalable, automated, and extensible monitoring capabilities. The platform features a High Performance Core that can scale to millions of monitored services with a small footprint, and includes a REST API for automation and host auto-registration.
Checkmk offers an extensive library of over 2,000 vendor-maintained plug-ins for automated acquisition of health statuses and metrics. It provides out-of-the-box health assessment with pre-defined thresholds, time-series analysis, historical stats for forecasting, and granular alerting with integrations for third-party tools like ServiceNow and Jira. The platform also includes built-in and custom dashboards, Business Intelligence for process visibility, and custom self-healing actions, ensuring high availability and minimizing mean time to resolution.
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Checkmk FAQ
How does Checkmk handle scalability for large IT environments?
Checkmk is designed with a High Performance Core that allows it to scale up to millions of services monitored while maintaining a small footprint. Its architecture supports monitoring hundreds of thousands of hosts and millions of services across the globe through a high-performance distributed system.
What kind of integrations does Checkmk offer for alert management and incident resolution?
Checkmk integrates with third-party tools like ServiceNow and Jira for automatic ticket creation. It also supports traditional notifications via email, SMS, or Slack, and allows for granular configuration of alerts and automated escalation of issues.
Can Checkmk monitor cloud-specific workloads and environments?
Yes, the Cloud edition of Checkmk is specifically designed for cloud and hybrid infrastructures. It includes features for monitoring cloud workloads, auto-registering any load, and deploying from cloud marketplaces.
How does Checkmk facilitate custom monitoring solutions or extensions?
Checkmk is extensible, allowing users to customize or extend its open-source code. The Check-API enables users to write their own monitoring plug-ins or extend existing ones to fit specific needs.
What is the primary difference between the Raw and Enterprise editions of Checkmk?
The Raw edition is a free and open-source option for mid-sized infrastructures, offering auto-discovery and over 2000 plug-ins. The Enterprise edition includes all features of Raw, plus capabilities to accelerate and scale monitoring, automate operations, monitor dynamic workloads, and visualize IT, along with included support.
Does Checkmk provide a way to monitor business processes and their dependencies?
Yes, Checkmk includes Business Intelligence features that offer a bird's-eye view of the availability and performance of key business processes. This is achieved by mapping application dependencies and aggregating various services and hosts into a single state.
Source: checkmk.com