This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Michael Cote. Original Post: Some Bullshit on Agentless Monitoring Feed Title: Cote's Weblog: Coding, Austin, etc. Feed URL: https://cote.io/feed/ Feed Description: Using Java to get to the ideal state. Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Michael Cote Latest Posts From Cote's Weblog: Coding, Austin, etc.

Agentless typically provides lightweight monitoring, with limited depth of data gathering or monitoring capabilities. In addition, without code or management intelligence installed on the system, the opportunities for management are little to none. The advantage is the ease of deployment - there is no need to deploy the agents - as well as the ease of maintenance. Despite its limitations, if the agentless monitoring provides all that you need for a specific device, then it is probably the right choice for you.

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In addition, the agent-based approaches can deliver management capabilities through the interaction of the agents and the management servers. In short, the agent-based products offer more robust management (including monitoring) capabilities than the agentless varieties.

Yeah, that's a bunch of bullshit. Agentless monitoring will get you exactly what you want, in any depth or amount of robustness about 95% of the time. I can guarantee that statement 'cause, having worked on an agentless system for some years, I'm one of the people who write the code.

The fact that there's an image that agent-full monitoring is "beefier" is due to only two things: (1.) legacy and (2.) agentless people's strong desire to keep things as simple as possible.

I say "legacy" because agent-based monitoring has a conceptual first-mover advantage. So many monitoring systems that have been around for a decade or more were originally coded to be agent based, putting it people's minds that if you're going to monitor something, hard-core and all, you need an agent. People just don't think otherwise. But, now-a-days, you can get pretty much anything you want remotely without the need to install anything on the target machine -- except maybe a username and password so you can access the box (which the agent system would need to get installed).

And, by simplicity I mean that (at least those I know) agentless people tend to prefer having 5-10 really good monitoring metrics over 10-50 everything-you'd-ever-want metrics that agent systems tend to have. Put another way, just because you're monitoring more metrics doesn't mean you're monitoring more quality metrics.

So, if someone comes up to you and tries to tell you that agentless monitoring isn't going to cut the mustard, be sure they know what they're talking about. Sometimes it'll be true, but in more cases than not, they'll be wrong.

(Of course, none of this should matter to you if the systems management system does exactly what you want, and TCO's equal to, or less than, what you want to pay. Agent vs. agentless is a distraction if your needs are taken care at a good overall price.)