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20+ Most Popular DevOps Monitoring Tools for 2024

devops monitoring tools

Effective monitoring of deployed apps and services is crucial for DevOps teams. Unless systems are observable, you can’t identify the causes of errors and performance problems.

Setting up comprehensive monitoring can be daunting, but it gets easier with the right tools. In this article, we’ll share over 20 of the best options for instrumenting your apps, observing your infrastructure, and analyzing collected data.

The DevOps monitoring tools on this list have been selected because they’re popular ecosystem choices that can be integrated with each other and have good community support. However, remember that this is just a small slice of the broader DevOps monitoring landscape.

What is DevOps monitoring?

DevOps monitoring is the process of collecting data from your infrastructure and applications. A robust monitoring strategy provides actionable real-time data that allows you to understand how  your DevOps process is performing.

A successful DevOps monitoring implementation should answer specific questions about your operations, such as the average response time, rate of failure, and why a slowdown occurred on a particular day. You can use this data to inform future improvements to workflows and systems, and then assess whether changes are producing their intended effects.

The three main monitoring strands are:

  • Metrics — Metrics are numerical values such as CPU usage, latency, and error rates; when tracked over time, they reveal changes in a system’s performance.
  • Logs — Logs provide a chronological description of system activity, such as incoming requests and error messages. Apps engineered to write detailed log files are easier to observe.
  • Traces — Traces augment logs by capturing the full sequence of events preceding a particular point. They let you see the code paths a particular transaction took, providing vital context to inform root cause analysis.

Capturing and utilizing data spanning all three areas requires dedicated tools designed to accommodate the large number of data points you’ll accumulate. Continuous monitoring tools in DevOps also need to support efficient patterns for data querying and analysis, including integration with other systems that enable broader trends to be identified.

Types of monitoring in DevOps

Here are the primary types of monitoring in DevOps:

  • Infrastructure monitoring – Focuses on the health and performance of servers, networks, databases, and other infrastructure components
  • Application performance monitoring (APM) – Monitors the performance and behavior of applications to ensure they are running smoothly
  • Log monitoring – Analyzes logs generated by applications, servers, and network devices to identify issues and trends
  • Network monitoring – Monitors data traffic across networks to detect bottlenecks, uptime issues, and overall network health, ensuring smooth data flow and connectivity
  • Security monitoring – Focuses on detecting security threats and vulnerabilities within the infrastructure and applications
  • User Experience monitoring – Simulates user interactions with the application to monitor performance from the end-user perspective
  • End-to-end monitoring – Provides a holistic view of the application’s performance, user experience, and infrastructure health, allowing teams to detect subtle issues that may arise at any stage of the process 
  • Container and orchestration monitoring – Focuses on monitoring containerized environments and orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.
  • Cost monitoring – Focuses on tracking resource usage and associated costs, allowing teams to forecast expenses and optimize resource allocation effectively
  • Database monitoring – Ensures databases are functioning optimally and efficiently

23 best DevOps monitoring tools

Let’s dive into our tools round-up. The top DevOps monitoring tools include:

  1. Spacelift
  2. Prometheus
  3. Grafana
  4. Elasticsearch
  5. Logstash
  6. Kibana
  7. InfluxDB
  8. New Relic
  9. Kubecost
  10. Splunk
  11. Sensu
  12. Datadog
  13. Pagerduty
  14. Dynatrace
  15. Sysdig
  16. Zabbix
  17. Collectd
  18. Perses
  19. Netdata
  20. Sentry
  21. SolarWinds
  22. Nagios
  23. AppDynamics

The tools span all major monitoring themes and are not listed in order of preference. As there are plenty of other great tools available, this is a guide to what’s available, not a head-to-head comparison.

1. Spacelift

tools spacelift

Spacelift is not exactly a DevOps monitoring tool, but it allows you to connect to and orchestrate all of your infrastructure tooling, including infrastructure as code, version control systems, observability tools, control and governance solutions, and cloud providers. 

Spacelift enables powerful CI/CD workflows for OpenTofu, Terraform, Pulumi, Kubernetes, and more. It also supports observability integrations with Prometheus and Datadog, letting you monitor the activity in your Spacelift stacks precisely.

Key features

  • Multi-IaC workflow
  • Stack dependencies: You can create dependencies between stacks and pass outputs from one to another to build an environment promotion pipeline more easily.
  • Unlimited policies and integrations: Spacelift allows you to implement any type of guardrails and integrate with any tool you want. You can control how many approvals you need for a run, which resources can be created, which parameters those resources can have, what happens when a pull request is open, and where to send your notifications data.
  • High flexibility: You can customize what happens before and after runner phases, bring your own image, and even modify the default workflow commands.
  • Self-service infrastructure via Blueprints: You can define infrastructure templates that are easily deployed. These templates can have policies/integrations/contexts/drift detection embedded inside them for reliable deployment.
  • Drift detection & remediation: Ensure the reliability of your infrastructure by detecting and remediating drift.

Pro: Seamlessly integrates with popular tools

Con: Can have a steep learning curve for new users

Website: https://spacelift.io 

2. Prometheus

Prometheus is a time series database that’s specifically designed as a metrics monitoring solution. You can use it to store metrics values collected from your infrastructure and apps, then query them using a powerful expressive language.

Prometheus has become a key component of the observability ecosystem. It integrates well with many other tools, apps, and platforms and offers official instrumentation support for ten different programming languages. An alerting system is also included to ensure you’re informed when metrics change.

Key features

  • Time-series database for metrics
  • Powerful query language (PromQL)
  • Built-in alerting

Pro: Highly scalable and open-source

Con: Can be complex to manage at scale without additional tools

Website: https://prometheus.io 

See example: Prometheus Monitoring for Kubernetes Cluster

3. Grafana

Grafana is an observability solution focused on creating visual dashboards that display metrics from your data sources. Grafana supports a wide array of connectors to link your metrics and logs, but it’s most commonly used alongside Prometheus.

Dashboards are accessed via a web app. They can include charts, graphs, and other customizable panels that display the results of querying your data sources. Grafana can also produce PDF reports and governance insights that are ideal for periodically informing stakeholders of changes to KPIs.

Key features

  • Visualizes metrics from various sources
  • Customizable dashboards
  • Extensive plugin ecosystem

Pro: Versatile and integrates with numerous data sources

Con: May require additional configuration for advanced use cases

Website: https://grafana.com

4. Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is a search engine and query API that’s optimized for deep analysis of textual data. In the context of observability, it’s most commonly used to index logs and traces. Elasticsearch is fast, scalable, and capable of ingesting large amounts of data in real time, allowing you to efficiently query your logs and identify meaningful content.

devops monitoring tools elastic

Key features

  • Distributed and scalable search capabilities that can operate across a cluster of servers
  • Full-text search support for multiple languages
  • Real-time data analysis

Pro: Highly scalable and fast search capabilities

Con: Resource-intensive, especially with large datasets

Website: https://www.elastic.co/elasticsearch 

5. Logstash

Logstash is part of the Elastic Stack and is used in conjunction with Elasticsearch. Whereas Elasticsearch indexes data and makes it searchable, Logstash implements a processing pipeline that ingests, transforms, and filters data before it’s sent to its final storage location.

devops monitoring tools logstash

As the name implies, Logstash is commonly used for logs and traces. It can extract key details such as severity, timestamp, and IP address from incoming messages, making logs more useful and accessible. The output data can then be saved in an Elasticsearch cluster, ready for long-term retention.

Key features

  • Data processing pipeline for logging
  • Supports various input and output plugins
  • Real-time data transformation

Pro: Flexible data ingestion from multiple sources

Con: High memory usage under heavy loads

Website: https://www.elastic.co/logstash 

6. Kibana

Kibana is the analytics visualization solution within the Elastic Stack. Similarly to Grafana, it focuses on enabling the creation of detailed visual dashboards that reveal the meaning within your data. Although it’s commonly used in conjunction with Elasticsearch and Logstash, Kibana can be connected to any data source to aggregate insights from across your entire application inventory.

devops monitoring tools kibana

Key features

  • Data visualization tool for Elasticsearch
  • Interactive dashboards and reports
  • Real-time search and filtering

Pro: Powerful visualization for Elasticsearch data

Con: Does not natively support direct integration with other databases or data sources outside Elasticsearch

Website: https://www.elastic.co/kibana 

7. InfluxDB

InfluxDB is a time series database that emphasizes event-logging. It’s designed to capture records of real-time events with high storage efficiency, fast writes, and low latency querying. These qualities make it particularly well-suited to monitoring edge devices, such as IoT workloads that generate large event volumes. 

InfluxDB also supports SQL queries, potentially making it more approachable for database developers who don’t want to learn a new language.

Key features

  • Time-series database for high-write loads
  • SQL-like query language (InfluxQL)
  • Built-in support for downsampling and data retention

Pro: Optimized for time-series data with high performance

Con: Can become costly with large-scale data storage

Website: https://www.influxdata.com 

8. New Relic

New Relic is a DevOps monitoring tool that provides a comprehensive suite of observability solutions designed to fulfill all your monitoring requirements. Its platform incorporates metrics, logs, and trace analysis alongside error tracking, performance profiling, and automated anomaly detection, allowing you to monitor your entire stack in one place. New Relic is a commercial service where you pay for what you use.

devops monitoring tools new relic

Key features

  • Application performance monitoring (APM)
  • Distributed tracing
  • Incident alerting

Pro: Comprehensive monitoring across multiple environments.

Con: Pricing can be high for extensive usage.

Website: https://newrelic.com 

9. Kubecost

It’s important to monitor cloud costs to detect waste and identify savings opportunities. Kubecost and the open-source OpenCost platform it’s built upon provide automated cost monitoring for Kubernetes clusters, letting you track the spending associated with their resources. The tool includes alerts, multicloud data aggregation, and automated recommendations on how to reduce costs by optimizing your infrastructure.

devops monitoring tools kubecost

Key features

  • Cost monitoring for Kubernetes
  • Resource usage analysis
  • Real-time cost allocation and alerts

Pro: Helps optimize Kubernetes resource spending

Con: Limited functionality outside Kubernetes environments

Website: https://www.kubecost.com 

Learn more: What is Kubecost & How to Use It?

10. Splunk

Splunk, owned by Cisco, is a DevOps monitoring platform that focuses on providing the data to enable resilient incident response. You can track metrics with real-time alerts, and then take action to resolve problems as they occur.

Splunk incorporates AI-powered tools capable of immediately spotting anomalies and security vulnerabilities, providing more support to DevOps teams by exposing the broader context surrounding problems.

devops monitoring tools splunk

Key features

  • Log management and analysis
  • Real-time event monitoring
  • Search Processing Language (SPL) and visualization of machine data

Pro: Powerful for large-scale log analysis

Con: High cost, especially for large data volumes

Website: https://www.splunk.com 

11. Sensu

Sensu is an “observability pipeline” that aims to deliver robust monitoring via an as-code strategy. It consolidates your other observability tools and augments them with service-based auto-discoverable agents that can be deployed to any endpoint. Sensu is also self-healing, supports custom integrations, and works with a wide selection of alerting systems and incident management platforms.

Key features

  • Monitoring and observability pipeline
  • Scalable event processing
  • Extensive plugin support

Pro: Flexible and scalable with a strong community

Con: Can be complex to configure for large environments

Website: https://sensu.io 

12. Datadog

Datadog is a complete DevOps observability solution that supports infrastructure, application metrics, security analysis, and log auditing. A commercial SaaS solution, it emphasizes real-time monitoring and the ability to create customized dashboards that clearly show critical values.

devops monitoring tools datadog

Datadog also includes integrated container and serverless monitoring capabilities, making it a compelling option for teams building cloud-native systems. The platform is supported by a comprehensive API, a catalog of third-party integrations, and IDE plugins that give developers vital performance data as they work.

Key features

  • Cloud monitoring and security
  • Real-time dashboards and alerts
  • Integrated APM and log management

Pro: Unified monitoring solution for cloud-native environments

Con: Pricing can escalate with increased usage and features

Website: https://www.datadoghq.com

See example: How to manage Datadog with Terraform

13. PagerDuty

PagerDuty is an operations management platform that focuses on incident response. It provides contextually relevant information about incidents in real time, helping IT teams  build resolutions quickly. It’s most commonly used by operations teams managing production applications where downtime is critical.

PagerDuty lets you observe unplanned events with a high degree of automation. The platform can notify on-call team members, update a public status page, and utilize AI to highlight the most meaningful events and associated actions. In addition to an open API, it includes over 700 native integrations with other services, including other monitoring tools.

Key features

  • Incident response and on-call management.
  • Real-time alerting and escalation
  • Integration with multiple monitoring tools

Pro: Reliable for managing critical incidents

Con: Can be costly for smaller teams

Website: https://www.pagerduty.com 

14. Dynatrace

Dynatrace is a cloud observability and security platform that relies heavily on AI to provide precise answers about the state of your systems. 

In addition to features designed to offer end-to-end visibility of apps and infrastructure, Dynatrace also supports business leaders by providing detailed analytics and user experience session profiling. The platform can deeply integrate with your other cloud ecosystem components, via a process automation system that lets you automate key workflows.

devops monitoring tools dynatrace

Key features

  • AI-driven application performance monitoring
  • Full-stack observability
  • Automatic discovery and dependency mapping

Pro: Highly automated with AI insights

Con: Complex to configure for non-standard environments

Website: https://www.dynatrace.com 

15. Sysdig

Sysdig is oriented around security. It’s a cloud-native app protection platform (CNAPP) that delivers real-time visibility into threat activity in your cloud environments. Sysdig supports security and operations teams in detecting vulnerabilities, narrowing down the risk, and applying effective mitigations in response. This includes a detailed analysis of attack pathways and suspicious events with correlation across your cloud inventory.

Key features

  • Container and cloud-native security
  • Performance monitoring and troubleshooting
  • Real-time threat detection

Pro: Strong focus on Kubernetes security

Con: Limited support for non-containerized environments

Website: https://sysdig.com 

16. Zabbix

Zabbix is positioned as an all-in-one open-source DevOps monitoring tool that provides “single pane of glass” visibility for your entire stack. This extends from infrastructure components such as cloud resources right through to the operation of your APIs, web services, and IoT devices.

The suite offers high availability, strong scalability, and pre-built integrations with popular alerting, ticketing, and incident response solutions.

devops monitoring tools zabbix

Key features

  • Open-source network monitoring
  • Customizable alerting
  • Scalable to large environments

Pro: Free and highly configurable.

Con: The user interface can feel outdated and less intuitive

Website: https://sysdig.com 

17. Collectd

Collectd is a small daemon that collects performance metrics data from your systems and running apps. It’s lightweight and simple to configure but uses a powerful modular architecture that permits robust extensibility. Once metrics have been collected, they can either be stored on the system or made available over the network, ready for other platforms to consume. 

Collectd is a good option for teams that plan to develop their own observability tooling and don’t want to deploy heavier agents to their endpoints.

Key features

  • System and application performance metrics collection.
  • Extensible with plugins.
  • Supports a wide variety of output formats.

Pro: Lightweight and efficient

Con: Requires manual configuration for complex setups

Website: https://www.collectd.org 

18. Perses

Perses is a young project being developed as part of the CoreDash community — an effort to standardize how observability dashboards and other visualizations are defined. The Perses workflow revolves heavily around GitOps and declarative as-code configuration, with dashboards primarily created using either Go or the CUE templating language.

Although it’s still maturing, Perses is usable today as a lightweight alternative to Grafana. It can surface data natively from Prometheus clusters and supports plugins that let you add support for other data sources. 

The project might not be ready for prime time just yet, but it’s worth tracking if you’re fed up with having to recreate your dashboards each time you switch observability suite. If Perses achieves its aims, then its model could be the future standard in the visualization space.

Key features

  • Open-source dashboarding tool
  • Supports Prometheus and other time-series databases
  • Focuses on scalability and ease of use

Pro: Scalable dashboarding for large datasets

Con: Limited to specific use cases, mainly time-series data

Website: https://perses.dev  

19. Netdata

Netdata is an open-source observability suite designed as an alternative to platforms including Datadog and Prometheus/Grafana. Supported by the CNCF, it offers hundreds of integrations with other monitoring platforms, cloud providers, container technologies, and popular applications. 

Netdata also promises sub-second monitoring latency, low resource consumption, and high resolution. It’s a compelling option for engineering teams seeking an open all-in-one solution.

devops monitoring tools netdata

Key features

  • Real-time performance monitoring
  • Detailed visualization with minimal setup
  • Distributed monitoring support

Pro: Highly detailed and real-time insights

Con: Can be overwhelming with too much data displayed

Website: https://www.netdata.cloud  

20. Sentry

Sentry is an error-tracking platform. It provides the error messages, stack traces, and surrounding context for problems happening in your apps in production. This allows you to efficiently respond to errors using relevant data, without having to wait for reports to come in from users.

devops monitoring tools sentry

Sentry has client libraries for all major programming languages, enabling straightforward integration with your apps. It also supports performance profiling, letting you investigate why operations are running slow. It integrates directly with code platforms such as GitHub and GitLab to map issues back to their source, making it an ideal tool for developers.

Key features

  • Error tracking and monitoring
  • Real-time crash reporting
  • User context for error events

Pro: Excellent for tracking and resolving application errors

Con: Limited to error monitoring, not full-stack observability

Website: https://sentry.io 

21. SolarWinds

SolarWinds is a stalwart in the observability space. It provides a full-stack monitoring platform that’s most commonly used in large enterprises needing visibility of multiple endpoints, including cloud and on-premises environments. 

SolarWinds also includes performance analysis capabilities for databases, networks, and applications, facilitating detailed investigations into user experience problems.

Key features

  • Network and infrastructure monitoring.
  • Automated performance management.
  • Scalability for large environments.

Pro: Comprehensive monitoring suite with a wide range of tools

Con: High cost and complexity in large deployments

Website: https://www.solarwinds.com 

22. Nagios

Nagios is a widely used open-source monitoring tool. Its suite of projects includes enterprise server and network monitoring, log aggregation, and centralized visibility functions. Nagios has risen to prominence as one of the leading open observability options, as well as for its ease of configuration and library of over 4,000 community plugins.

devops monitoring tools nagios

Key features

  • Server and network monitoring.
  • Alerting and incident management.
  • Extensible with plugins.

Pro: Highly customizable and open-source

Con: Configuration can be cumbersome and time-consuming

Website: https://www.nagios.org 

23. AppDynamics

Cisco’s AppDynamics is an integrated suite of observability tools designed to span the full IT stack. It includes capabilities for monitoring apps, infrastructure, networks, and security issues, with automatic correlation back to events observed by users and business leaders. This makes it an ideal option for enterprise teams requiring robust analytical capabilities that span their entire service inventory.

devops monitoring tools app dynamics

Key features

  • End-to-end application performance monitoring.
  • Real-time business transaction insights.
  • AI-powered analytics.

Pro: Strong focus on business impact analysis

Con: Expensive and complex to deploy fully

Website: https://www.appdynamics.com 

Key points

We’ve introduced some of the top tools in the DevOps continuous monitoring arena. Hopefully, you’ve found an observability solution that meets all your requirements. 

However, this might not necessarily be a single DevOps monitoring tool because so many on this list work best when used together. Whether you need Prometheus and Grafana for app metrics instrumentation or the ELK stack for log indexing, it’s likely that combining multiple options will give you the most success.

These monitoring tools for DevOps are a great way to learn what’s happening in your apps and infrastructure, but you still need a platform like Spacelift to manage your deployments. Create a free account today or book a demo with one of our engineers.

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