hardware monitoring
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A system monitor is a hardware or
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...
component used to monitor
system resources In computing, a system resource, or simple resource, is any physical or virtual component of limited availability within a computer system. All connected devices and internal system components are resources. Virtual system resources include fi ...
and performance in a computer system. Among the management issues regarding use of system monitoring tools are resource usage and privacy.


Overview

Software monitors occur more commonly, sometimes as a part of a
widget engine A software widget is a relatively simple and easy-to-use software application or component made for one or more different software platforms. A desk accessory or applet is an example of a simple, stand-alone user interface, in contrast with a ...
. These monitoring systems are often used to keep track of system resources, such as
CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...
usage and frequency, or the amount of free
RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...
. They are also used to display items such as free space on one or more hard drives, the temperature of the CPU and other important components, and networking information including the system
IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...
and current rates of upload and download. Other possible displays may include the date and time, system uptime, computer name, username, hard drive S.M.A.R.T. data, fan speeds, and the voltages being provided by the power supply. Less common are hardware-based systems monitoring similar information. Customarily these occupy one or more
drive bay A drive bay is a standard-sized area for adding hardware to a computer. Most drive bays are fixed to the inside of a case, but some can be removed. Over the years since the introduction of the IBM PC, it and its compatibles have had many form f ...
s on the front of the
computer case A computer case, also known as a computer chassis, is the enclosure that contains most of the hardware of a personal computer. The components housed inside the case (such as the CPU, motherboard, memory, mass storage devices, power supply unit a ...
, and either interface directly with the system hardware or connect to a software data-collection system via USB. With either approach to gathering data, the monitoring system displays information on a small LCD panel or on series of small analog or LED numeric displays. Some hardware-based system monitors also allow direct control of fan speeds, allowing the user to quickly customize the cooling in the system. A few very high-end models of hardware system monitor are designed to interface with only a specific model of
motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...
. These systems directly utilize the sensors built into the system, providing more detailed and accurate information than less-expensive monitoring systems customarily provide.


Software monitoring

Software monitoring tools operate within the device they're monitoring.


Hardware monitoring

Unlike software monitoring tools, hardware measurement tools can either located within the device being measure, or they can be attached and operate from an external location. A hardware monitor is a common component of modern
motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...
s, which can either come as a separate chip, often interfaced through I2C or
SMBus The System Management Bus (abbreviated to SMBus or SMB) is a single-ended simple two-wire bus for the purpose of lightweight communication. Most commonly it is found in computer motherboards for communication with the power source for ON/OFF instru ...
, or as part of a
Super I/O Super I/O is a class of I/O controller integrated circuits that began to be used on personal computer motherboards in the late 1980s, originally as add-in cards, later embedded on the motherboards. A super I/O chip combines interfaces for a vari ...
solution, often interfaced through Low Pin Count (LPC). These devices make it possible to monitor temperature in the
chassis A chassis (, ; plural ''chassis'' from French châssis ) is the load-bearing framework of an artificial object, which structurally supports the object in its construction and function. An example of a chassis is a vehicle frame, the underpar ...
, voltage supplied to the motherboard by the
power supply unit A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, current, and frequency to power the load. As a res ...
and the speed of the
computer fan A computer fan is any fan inside, or attached to, a computer case used for active cooling. Fans are used to draw cooler air into the case from the outside, expel warm air from inside and move air across a heat sink to cool a particular compon ...
s that are connected directly to one of the fan headers on the motherboard. Many of these hardware monitors also have fan controlling capabilities. System monitoring software like SpeedFan on Windows, lm_sensors on Linux, envstat on NetBSD, and sysctl hw.sensors on OpenBSD and DragonFly can interface with these chips to relay this environmental
sensor A sensor is a device that produces an output signal for the purpose of sensing a physical phenomenon. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a device, module, machine, or subsystem that detects events or changes in its environment and sends ...
information to the user.


Privacy

When an individual user is measuring the performance of a
single-user system Multi-user software is computer software that allows access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leavin ...
, whether it is a standalone box or a
virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized h ...
on a
multi-user system Multi-user software is computer software that allows access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leavin ...
, access does not impede the
privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of ...
of others. Privacy becomes an issue when someone other than the end-user, such as a system manager, has legitimate need to access data about other users.


Resource usage

When events occur faster than a monitor can record them, a workaround is needed, such as replacing event recording with simple counting. Another consideration is not having major impact on the CPU and storage available for useful work. While a hardware monitor will usually have less impact than a software monitor, there are data items, such as "some descriptive information, such as program names" that must involve software. A further consideration is that a bug in this domain can have severe impact: an extreme case would be "cause the OS to
crash Crash or CRASH may refer to: Common meanings * Collision, an impact between two or more objects * Crash (computing), a condition where a program ceases to respond * Cardiac arrest, a medical condition in which the heart stops beating * Couch ...
."


List of software monitors

Single system: * Activity Monitor *
AIDA64 AIDA64 is a system information, diagnostics, and auditing application developed by FinalWire Ltd (a Hungarian company) that runs on Windows, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Tizen, ChromeOS and Sailfish OS operating systems. It displays detailed in ...
*
CPU-Z CPU-Z is a freeware system profiling and monitoring application for Microsoft Windows and Android that detects the central processing unit, RAM, motherboard chip-set, and other hardware features of a modern personal computer or Android device. ...
* GPU-Z * Conky *
htop htop is an interactive system-monitor process-viewer and process-manager. It is designed as an alternative to the Unix program top. System monitor It shows a frequently updated list of the processes running on a computer, normally ordered by ...
* hw.sensors on OpenBSD and DragonFly BSD *
iftop Iftop is a free software command-line system monitor tool that produces a frequently updated list of network connections. By default, the connections are ordered by bandwidth usage, with only the "top" bandwidth consumers shown. It is analogous ...
*
iostat iostat (''input/output statistics'') is a computer system monitor tool used to collect and show operating system storage input and output statistics. It is often used to identify performance issues with storage devices, including local disks, or ...
* KDE System Guard (KSysguard) * lm_sensors * monit *
Monitorix Monitorix is a computer network monitoring tool that periodically collects system data and uses the web interface to show the information as graphs. Monitorix allows monitoring of overall system performance, and can help detect bottlenecks, failure ...
*
Motherboard Monitor Motherboard Monitor is a utility designed by Alexander Van Kaam for Microsoft Windows. It provides live information about the state of a motherboard and other hardware, including temperatures, voltages, fan speeds, and more. On July 6, 2004, it wa ...
*
Netdata Netdata is an open source tool designed to collect real-time metrics, such as CPU usage, disk activity, bandwidth usage, website visits, etc., and then display them in live, easy-to-interpret charts. The tool is designed to visualize activity i ...
*
nmon nmon (''Nigel's Monitor'') is a computer performance system monitor tool for the AIX and Linux operating systems. The nmon tool has two modes a) displays the performance stats on-screen in a condensed format or b) the same stats are saved to a co ...
*
ntop ntop is computer software that probes a computer network to show network use in a way similar to what the program top does for processes. Software In interactive mode, it displays the network status on the user's terminal. In Web mode, it act ...
*
Process Explorer Process Explorer is a freeware task manager and system monitor for Microsoft Windows created by SysInternals, which has been acquired by Microsoft and re-branded as Windows Sysinternals. It provides the functionality of Windows Task Manager along ...
*
Resource Monitor Resource Monitor, a utility in Windows Vista and later, displays information about the use of hardware (CPU, memory, disk, and network) and software (file handles and modules) resources in real time. Users can launch Resource Monitor by executin ...
(resmon) * Samurize *
Sar in UNIX System Activity Report (sar) is a Unix System V-derived system monitor command used to report on various system loads, including CPU activity, memory/paging, interrupts, device load, network and swap space utilization. Sar uses /proc filesyst ...
* SpeedFan * sysmon/
envsys The envsys framework is a kernel-level hardware monitoring sensors framework in NetBSD. , the framework is used by close to 85 device drivers to export various environmental monitoring sensors, as evidenced by references of the sysmon_envsys_ ...
on NetBSD * systat *
System Monitor A system monitor is a hardware or software component used to monitor system resources and performance in a computer system. Among the management issues regarding use of system monitoring tools are resource usage and privacy. Overview Software ...
(sysmon) * top * Vigilo NMS (Community Edition) *
vmstat vmstat (''virtual memory statistics'') is a computer system monitoring tool that collects and displays summary information about operating system memory, processes, interrupts, paging and block I/O. Users of vmstat can specify a sampling inte ...
*
Windows Desktop Gadgets Windows Desktop Gadgets (called Windows Sidebar in Windows Vista) is a discontinued widget engine for Microsoft Gadgets. Desktop Gadgets have been replaced by Windows 10 Taskbar Widgets. It was introduced with Windows Vista, in which it features ...
*
Windows Task Manager Task Manager, previously known as Windows Task Manager, is a task manager, system monitor, and startup manager included with Microsoft Windows systems. It provides information about computer performance and running software, including name of ...
Distributed: *
Argus (monitoring software) Argus is a systems and network monitoring application. It is designed to monitor the status of network services, servers, and other network hardware. It will send alerts when it detects problems. It is open-source software originally written ent ...
*
Collectd collectd is a Unix daemon that collects, transfers and stores performance data of computers and network equipment. The acquired data is meant to help system administrators maintain an overview over available resources to detect existing or loomi ...
*
Ganglia A ganglion is a group of neuron cell bodies in the peripheral nervous system. In the somatic nervous system this includes dorsal root ganglia and trigeminal ganglia among a few others. In the autonomic nervous system there are both sympathe ...
*
GKrellM GNU Krell Monitors (GKrellM)''Krell'' is a reference to an extraterrestrial race in the science fiction movie '' Forbidden Planet''. See Retrieved 6 January 2008. Archived frothe original/ref> is a system monitor software based on the GTK+ toolki ...
* HP SiteScope * monit (paid version M/monit) * NMIS * Munin *
Nagios Nagios Core , formerly known as Nagios, is a free and open-source computer-software application that monitors systems, networks and infrastructure. Nagios offers monitoring and alerting services for servers, switches, applications and services ...
* NetCrunch * Opmantek * Pandora FMS *
Performance Monitor Performance Monitor (known as System Monitor in Windows 9x, Windows 2000 and Windows XP) is a system monitoring program introduced in Windows NT 3.1. It monitors various activities on a computer such as CPU or memory usage. This type of applic ...
(perfmon) *
Prometheus (software) Prometheus is a free software application used for event monitoring and alerting. It records real-time metrics in a time series database (allowing for high dimensionality) built using a HTTP pull model, with flexible queries and real-time ale ...
* symon * Vigilo NMS (Enterprise Editions) *
Zenoss Core The company Zenoss, Inc. was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company develops hybrid IT monitoring and analytics software. Zenoss Community Edition was a free and open-source application, server, and network management ...


See also

*
Application performance management In the fields of information technology and systems management, application performance management (APM) is the monitoring and management of the performance and availability of software applications. APM strives to detect and diagnose complex app ...
(APM) * Application service management (ASM) * I2C and
SMBus The System Management Bus (abbreviated to SMBus or SMB) is a single-ended simple two-wire bus for the purpose of lightweight communication. Most commonly it is found in computer motherboards for communication with the power source for ON/OFF instru ...
*
Network monitoring Network monitoring is the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator (via email, SMS or other alarms) in case of outages or other trouble. Network monito ...
*
Mean time between failures Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the predicted elapsed time between inherent failures of a mechanical or electronic system during normal system operation. MTBF can be calculated as the arithmetic mean (average) time between failures of a system ...
(MTBF) *
Intelligent Platform Management Interface The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is a set of computer interface specifications for an autonomous computer subsystem that provides management and monitoring capabilities independently of the host system's CPU, firmware (BIOS o ...
(IPMI) *
System profiler {{noref, date=September 2018 A system profiler is a program that can provide detailed information about the software installed and hardware attached to a computer. Typically workstations and personal computers have had system profilers as a comm ...
*
Website monitoring Website monitoring is the process of testing and verifying that end-users can interact with a website or web application as expected. Website monitoring are often used by businesses to ensure website uptime, performance, and functionality is as exp ...


References

{{reflist, refs= {{Cite conference , author= Constantine A. Murenin , date= 2007-04-17 , url = http://sensors.cnst.su/IEEE_ICNSC_2007 , title= Generalised Interfacing with Microprocessor System Hardware Monitors , conference= Proceedings of 2007 IEEE International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control, 15–17 April 2007. , location= London, United Kingdom , publisher=
IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...
, doi = 10.1109/ICNSC.2007.372901 , isbn = 978-1-4244-1076-7 , id = IEEE ICNSC 2007, pp. 901—906.


External links


Monitoring a Linux System with X11/Console/Web-Based Tools
Computer peripherals Liquid crystal displays System administration Utility software types