What is NetXMS?

NetXMS is an enterprise-grade, multi-platform, modular network management and monitoring system. It provides comprehensive event management, performance monitoring, alerting, reporting, and graphing for all layers of IT infrastructure — from network devices to the business application layer.

NetXMS is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

Features marked with EE badge require Enterprise Edition.

Key Features

  • Multi-platform support — server runs on Windows and Linux; agents available for Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, and AIX

  • Flexible data collection — collect metrics via NetXMS agents, SNMP, SSH, web services, Modbus, MQTT, OpenTelemetry (OTLP), and more

  • Log monitoring — watch log files, syslog, and Windows event logs, turning matched entries into events

  • Event-driven architecture — powerful event processing engine with customizable rules and automated actions

  • Alerting and notifications — flexible notification channels supporting email, SMS, messengers, and custom drivers

  • Incident tracking — built-in trouble tickets linked to alarms and monitored objects, with states, assignment, and comments

  • Network topology — automatic Layer 2/3 topology discovery and visualization

  • Distributed monitoring — zones for overlapping IP address spaces, proxy agents for remote sites, and agent tunnels through NAT and firewalls

  • Automation — automatic network discovery, template auto-apply, container auto-bind, and script-driven workflows minimize manual configuration

  • Built-in scripting — NXSL scripting language for custom logic and extending system behavior (see NXSL Reference)

  • AI assistant — integrated LLM-backed assistant that queries live monitoring data, analyzes incidents, and helps with administration tasks

  • Anomaly detection — AI-based detection profiles built from historical data flag abnormal metric behavior

  • Dashboards and visualization — customizable dashboards, network maps, and graphs

  • Business services and SLA — model services on top of monitored infrastructure and track availability against SLA targets

  • Asset management — inventory records with a configurable attribute schema, linked to monitored objects

  • Network device configuration backup EE — scheduled backup of network device configurations with change detection

  • High availability — active/standby server pairs with automatic failover

  • Built-in reporting — based on JasperReports or Carbone (xlsx only)

  • Integration-ready — REST API, Grafana plugin, helpdesk integration, and fanout drivers for streaming collected data to external systems

  • Scalable design — monitor from a handful of devices to hundreds of thousands of nodes

Components

NetXMS consists of several core components:

NetXMS Server

Central management server that stores configuration, collects data, processes events, and serves client connections. Requires a backend database (PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, or embedded SQLite for evaluation).

NetXMS Agent

Lightweight agent installed on monitored systems. Collects system metrics, executes actions, and securely communicates with the server. Supports subagents for extended functionality.

Management Client

Cross-platform desktop application and web-based interface for system administration and monitoring. Both provide the same core functionality.

Reporting Server

Optional component that generates scheduled and on-demand reports from JasperReports or Carbone templates. Connects to the NetXMS database and renders reports as PDF or XLSX (Carbone templates render XLSX only).

Who This Guide is For

This Administrator Guide is for system administrators who install, configure, and maintain NetXMS. For day-to-day operator tasks, see the User Guide. For scripting with NXSL, see the NXSL Reference.

Support and Community

Support is provided on best-effort basis. Priority support is available from Raden Solutions.

If you need help with a specific issue or feature request, please create an issue on the GitHub repository. You can also reach out to the community forums for assistance and discussion.