Best Monitoring Tools for Self-Hosted Infrastructure

Why Self-Hosted Infrastructure Needs Different Monitoring

Self-hosted infrastructure—whether bare metal, on-premise VMs, or self-managed cloud—has specific monitoring requirements:

• Network topology: Your servers might be behind firewalls, NAT, or VPNs
• Control: You want to own your monitoring data
• No vendor dependency: If the monitoring vendor has issues, your monitoring shouldn't fail
• Custom environments: Non-standard setups that cloud tools don't handle well
• Cost at scale: Self-hosted can be cheaper for large deployments

Two Approaches: Self-Hosted Monitoring vs Cloud Agents

Self-Hosted Monitoring

Run the monitoring infrastructure yourself.

Pros:

• Full control over data
• No ongoing subscription
• Works in air-gapped environments
• No data leaving your network

Cons:

• You maintain it
• Monitoring can go down with infrastructure
• Requires expertise

Cloud Monitoring with Agents

Use a cloud service that installs agents on your servers.

Pros:

• No infrastructure to maintain
• External perspective catches issues
• Professional management
• Scales easily

Cons:

• Data leaves your network
• Subscription costs
• Vendor dependency

Many teams use both: self-hosted for internal visibility, cloud for external checks.

Best Self-Hosted Monitoring Tools

1. Prometheus + Grafana

Best for: Teams wanting the industry standard

The most popular open-source monitoring stack. Prometheus collects metrics, Grafana visualizes them.

Why it works for self-hosted:

• Runs entirely in your environment
• Pull-based (Prometheus scrapes targets)
• Massive ecosystem of exporters
• Battle-tested at scale

Setup complexity: Medium-High

What you get:

• Time-series metrics
• Powerful query language (PromQL)
• Extensive alerting
• Thousands of pre-built dashboards

Best for: Teams with ops experience who want flexibility.

2. Netdata

Best for: Beautiful monitoring with minimal setup

Netdata provides incredible out-of-the-box monitoring. Install it, and it auto-discovers everything.

Why it works for self-hosted:

• Single binary installation
• Auto-configures for your system
• Real-time, per-second metrics
• Minimal resource overhead

Setup complexity: Low

What you get:

• Instant visibility into everything
• Anomaly detection
• Health monitoring and alerts
• Parent-child streaming for central view

Best for: Teams wanting quick results without configuration.

3. Zabbix

Best for: Enterprise-grade self-hosted monitoring

Zabbix is a full-featured monitoring solution used by large enterprises worldwide.

Why it works for self-hosted:

• Proven at massive scale
• Agent and agentless options
• Network device monitoring
• Extensive template library

Setup complexity: High

What you get:

• Complete monitoring platform
• Network discovery
• Distributed monitoring
• Maps and topology views

Best for: Larger environments with complex requirements.

4. Checkmk

Best for: IT infrastructure monitoring

Checkmk evolved from Nagios and provides comprehensive infrastructure monitoring.

Why it works for self-hosted:

• Raw Edition is open source
• Automatic service discovery
• Good for mixed environments
• Enterprise features available

Setup complexity: Medium

What you get:

• Server monitoring
• Network monitoring
• Application monitoring
• Business intelligence views

Best for: Traditional IT environments with diverse infrastructure.

5. Uptime Kuma

Best for: Simple uptime monitoring, self-hosted

If you primarily need uptime/availability monitoring, Uptime Kuma is refreshingly simple.

Why it works for self-hosted:

• Single Docker container
• Beautiful, simple interface
• Status pages included
• Active community

Setup complexity: Very Low

What you get:

• HTTP/TCP/Ping monitoring
• Status pages
• Notifications
• Basic dashboards

Best for: Teams who need uptime checks without complexity.

Best Cloud Tools for Self-Hosted Servers

1. Wakestack

Best for: Simple agent-based monitoring from the cloud

Install an agent on your self-hosted servers, see metrics in the cloud. Simple, focused, affordable.

Why it works for self-hosted:

• Agent works anywhere with internet
• No infrastructure to maintain
• External perspective on availability
• Combined server + uptime monitoring

What you get:

• Server metrics (CPU, memory, disk, network)
• Uptime monitoring
• Status pages
• Alerting

Pricing: Scales with hosts

2. Grafana Cloud

Best for: Managed Prometheus without self-hosting

Get the Prometheus/Grafana stack without running it yourself.

Why it works for self-hosted:

• Agents push to cloud
• No Prometheus server to maintain
• Free tier available
• Full Grafana features

What you get:

• Metrics, logs, traces storage
• Grafana dashboards
• Alerting
• Synthetic monitoring

Pricing: Free tier, then usage-based

3. Datadog

Best for: Comprehensive monitoring (if budget allows)

Datadog agents work on any server. Excellent product, enterprise pricing.

Why it works for self-hosted:

• Agent installs anywhere
• Extensive integrations
• Strong container/Kubernetes support
• Unified metrics, logs, traces

What you get:

• Full observability platform
• 500+ integrations
• Advanced analytics

Pricing: Per-host, can be expensive

Comparison Matrix

Architecture Considerations

Internal vs External Monitoring

Internal monitoring (self-hosted):

• Sees inside your network
• Monitors internal services
• No external dependencies
• Can fail with infrastructure

External monitoring (cloud):

• User perspective
• Verifies external accessibility
• Independent of your infrastructure
• Can't see internal services

Recommendation: Use both. Internal for depth, external for availability.

Agent Communication

For self-hosted servers with cloud monitoring:

Agent pulls (e.g., Prometheus):

• Monitoring server initiates connection
• Works when monitoring server can reach targets
• Harder through firewalls

Agent pushes (e.g., most cloud tools):

• Agent initiates outbound connection
• Works through firewalls/NAT
• Agent needs internet access

For self-hosted servers behind firewalls, push-based agents are easier.

High Availability

Self-hosted monitoring should be more reliable than what it monitors:

• Run monitoring on separate infrastructure
• Consider redundant monitoring servers
• Always have external checks as backup

Implementation Recommendations

Minimal Self-Hosted Setup

If you want self-hosted monitoring quickly:

1. Install Netdata on each server
2. Configure parent node for central view
3. Set up alerts to Slack/email
4. Add Uptime Kuma for external checks

Total setup time: 1-2 hours.

Production Self-Hosted Setup

For more robust monitoring:

1. Deploy Prometheus (or Victoria Metrics)
2. Install node_exporter on servers
3. Set up Grafana for visualization
4. Configure Alertmanager
5. Add Uptime Kuma or cloud uptime monitoring

Total setup time: 4-8 hours.

Hybrid Approach

Best of both worlds:

1. Self-hosted: Prometheus + Grafana for internal metrics
2. Cloud: Wakestack or Better Stack for external uptime
3. Benefit: Internal depth + external verification

Summary

For self-hosted infrastructure:

Self-hosted monitoring tools:

• Prometheus + Grafana: Industry standard, flexible
• Netdata: Quick setup, beautiful dashboards
• Zabbix: Enterprise scale
• Uptime Kuma: Simple uptime monitoring

Cloud monitoring for self-hosted servers:

• Wakestack: Simple, affordable server + uptime
• Grafana Cloud: Managed Prometheus
• Datadog: Comprehensive (expensive)

Best approach: Combine internal monitoring (depth) with external monitoring (availability). Self-hosted tools give you control; cloud tools give you external perspective.

The goal is reliable visibility into your infrastructure—choose the approach that your team can maintain.