What is Agentless Network Monitoring?

By CIOReview | Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Network monitoring is necessary for running any business smoothly. It involves checking the network’s performance, usage and identifies slow or failing systems and enhances security, troubleshooting capabilities, planning ahead to make necessary changes in the server or network, saves time and resources.

The Agentless approach is easier to manage when compared to agent-based monitoring because Agentless monitoring collects performance metrics from the infrastructure without the need of installing any agent software on the servers which are being monitored.

The term “Agentless” is a misnomer. All management tools require software and an agent running on a device. The term Agentless means the agent is built into the Network performance Monitors (NPM) to allow the monitoring program to perform all required tasks.

Most companies prefer Agentless network monitoring since for the following advantages

Less deployment time

With no agents involved, only the monitoring server needs to be configured. So, deploying an Agentless network monitoring tool is an easy process. Network monitoring infrastructure can be deployed soon without going to through complex setup processes.

Reduced Management Overhead

The Agentless network monitoring infrastructure easier to maintain as most of the Agentless Network Monitoring Tools have self-monitoring features which makes the whole process very simple and less time-consuming.

Easy to upgrade

In Agentless monitoring, the monitoring of devices is not affected by external factors.

But in case of an Agent-based network monitoring infrastructure, whenever the monitoring tool or a component is upgraded, all the agents in the network also have to be upgraded.

An Agentless network monitoring system gives developers the best flexibility in determining which information should be exchanged between the monitoring tool and the monitoring system.