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Does PRTG run on a Hyper-V Server 2012 (on Windows 2012 without GUI)?

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I have a Hyper-V Windows 2012 server or a Windows 2012 Server without graphical user interface.

Does PRTG run on such a system?

2012 gui hyper-v server windows

Created on May 8, 2013 9:09:11 AM by Daniel Zobel [Product Manager]

Last change on May 8, 2013 11:19:09 AM by Daniel Zobel [Product Manager]



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Accepted Answer

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This article applies to PRTG Network Monitor 13 or later

PRTG Can Run Without GUI

We successfully installed PRTG on a Hyper-V Server 2012.

In order to do so, we started the setup file from the command line. Once installed, you can access the Enterprise Console and the PRTG Administration Tool by executing them from the command line. And, of course, the web server is available on the machine!

However, as a Hyper-V Server 2012 is intended as a host for Hyper-V virtual machines only, we do not recommend installing PRTG on such a system: An automatic software update of PRTG can trigger an automatic server restart, which would interrupt access to all other systems running on the server.

So, we recommend installing PRTG not on the host system itself, but rather in a virtual machine running on that host. For installations with more than 1,000 sensors we general recommend running PRTG directly on dedicated real hardware.

Note: Windows Server 2012 in Core mode and the Minimal Server Interface are not officially supported.

Created on May 8, 2013 11:17:27 AM by Daniel Zobel [Product Manager]

Last change on Feb 18, 2015 1:49:47 PM by Gerald Schoch [Paessler Support]



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Indeed, like an ESXi is intended to host vm's, Hyper-V server is intended to host VM's. I see PRTG as an application, and that should never run on a VMware or Hyper-V Server itself.

In my opinion a server restart which is self-triggered is not recommended. The automatic software update of PRTG is nice in a DTA environment, but not in an P environment. What if the update doesn't work that well ? And auto update is uncontrolled.

The recommendation to run PRTG on dedicated hardware: is that a truly good recommendation ? The market goes to a software defined data center, and services of the biggest vendors go virtual. Software defined storage and software defined networking. Why should a monitoring tool then be physical ?

We have 13,515 sensors in a virtual environment. A dedicated virtual master and failover cluster node. In the datacenter 4 remote probes for physical equipment, our core application, Citrix, and miscellaneous. On every location (23) we have one standalone ESXi, with a virtual remote probe, a virtual domain controller and virtual deployment server.

I more prefer that you guys give good recommendations regarding the workload of a sensor. Do not use auto-discovery but really think what you really want to monitor in big environments. Really think about what the impact on the systems are on a high scanning interval.

My colleagues implemented PRTG and done a great job. I implemented PRTGplugins. I'm fascinated by the possibilities and how to optimize PRTG, and hope a lot of PRTG clients will share there experience to do some knowledge sharing. My intention is to share some cool ways of monitoring, and maybe a reader has optimization recommendations for that.

Created on May 8, 2013 11:49:53 AM



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Hi Pieter, it is possible to run PRTG with thousands of sensors on vms, yes. But very few people (including us) have the knowledge necessary to set up the host, the vm and PRTG to make this happen in all situations. There are a lot of people who did not run into problems. But those who have, ran into serious problems.

Our recommendation to run PRTG on hardware avoids that our customers run into problems with our software that are not actually triggered by our software, but by problems with the virtualization. So the easier way to get a reliable monitoring is to run it on hardware, especially for installations with thousands of sensors.

We have compiled our recommendations in this KB article:

https://www.paessler.com/knowledgebase/en/topic/49193-i-run-prtg-on-vmware-how-can-i-obtain-best-performance.

If you have more recommendations we would be happy to post them there!

Created on May 8, 2013 2:30:48 PM by Dirk Paessler [Founder Paessler AG] (11,025) ●3 ●6



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Dirk, thank you for your answer.

I will think about the recommendations, and post it later on after having some thoughts. Having a good and tuned hardware setup is important.

Created on May 8, 2013 3:05:42 PM




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