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Is the manual outdated? Win 10 compatibility?

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Hello, I'm new here. I am setting up a trial to evaluate the software. Being new to PRTG I have been studying the manual and only pages in I am finding information that is contradicting the website. I'm guessing the manual was written for 2008 possibly? We run mostly VMware and when I read I could only use 20 VMware sensors I was going to abandon the trial but then found on the webpage that running 2012 R2 can support up to 300. Then in the manual it also read that running it on VM was not recommended and if so it required 8 Gb of ram, then the website says I can run 3Gb on 2012 R2 in a virtual environment? Is there a newer manual available or updates that I am missing? I also have one more very important question, is Windows 10 still not supported? My whole department runs on Win10, we will be the ones monitoring it and we all have Win10 running. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Jeff

manual-remarks vmware-monitoring windows-10

Created on Apr 21, 2016 7:54:58 PM



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Accepted Answer

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Hello studs87,

Thank you for your question about our user manual!

The user manual is updated regularly, at least with every new stable version of PRTG. You can find the current manual here on our webpage or in your PRTG installation under <address of your PRTG server>/help.htm

  • Of course, PRTG supports Windows 10. You can find it here in the manual: Supported Operating Systems
  • PRTG also runs on a VM, it officially supports up to 5,000 sensors on virtual machines. You can find it here in the manual: Running PRTG on Virtual Machines
  • VMware sensors can have high impact on your system, so we do not recommend more than 50 sensors per probe for the VMware Virtual Machine sensor, for example (manual). You can still set up more remote probes to distribute load and add more VMware sensors. However, our tests on Windows 2012 R2 showed that you can use up to 300 sensors on a probe that runs on this operating system.

Could you please share links to the pages that you reference in your question? I would like to check where you found the outdated information.

Regards,

Created on Apr 22, 2016 10:26:31 AM by Gerald Schoch [Paessler Support]



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Certainly, thanks for the quick response.

On the supported operating systems page it does list Windows 10 but the asterisk is also on it:

Microsoft Windows 10**

The PRTG Enterprise Console is not fully compatible with Windows 10.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That is where I referenced the compatibility issues with Win 10, it is in the link you provided above. I am still learning PRTG so maybe I am misunderstanding the use of the enterprise console. Does the enterprise console not need to be run on the client?

After reading your response I went back into the manual and could not find where I referenced the 8Gb of ram section, I may have gotten that from the knowledge base in an old article. Maybe it would be helpful to archive outdated posts? I agree I could also be more vigilant on checking the dates of the posts as well.

I do have questions regarding VMware sensors. We are a smaller company that is growing (around 100 employees) and we keep most of our production servers on VMware. Majority of my monitoring will be taking place on VM servers and PRTG itself is currently running on a VM using 2012 R2 2 processor cores, 3Gb ram, I have it set to dynamic for RAM and HD space, which I will change. I see the manual states 50 VMware sensors for probes but your tests show 300. Is that 300 on a VM or physical machine? I understand the performance improvement of running 2012 R2 but unsure if that was on a VM or not. Another question I have, (this is a newb question) I see you can expand the number of sensors by adding additional probes. When you max out a probe, can you create another probe on the same machine? Is it the software that is at capacity or the hardware? Also if all my machines are running in a VM can I run SNMP and other lightweight sensors on the VM's to monitor them or do they qualify as one of the 300 available VMware sensors?

If something I am saying is not making sense it is likely that I am not fully understanding the deployment of PRTG and would appreciate any clarifications you may have to offer. My goal is impress with the 30 day trial so I can get funding for a license. Thanks for the assistance.

Created on Apr 22, 2016 9:57:01 PM



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studs87,

The Enterprise Console is a Windows application which you can use to connect to your PRTG server. It is an alternative to the web interface to show monitoring data. You do not have to install it on your clients and you do not have to even use it. The Enterprise Console has some issues on Win10 but monitoring works fine. We recommend that you access PRTG with the web interface using Google Chrome (or Firefox) to have full functionality, especially on Windows 10.

I think I know now what you mean with 8 GB RAM: this is our hardware recommendation for PRTG installations with 5,000 sensors. Please have a look at https://www.paessler.com/prtg/requirements where we provide recommendations for running PRTG. You will also find recommendations for VMs there, for example, that we do not recommend more than 2,500 sensors (ca. 250 monitored devices) if you run the PRTG server on a VM.

You are right, the manual says "50 VMware sensors" per probe. This holds for other operating systems than Win2012 R2 which shows massive performance improvements. This number is independent from where you run PRTG. "300 VMware sensors" means sensors of this type, for example, 300 VMware Virtual Machine (SOAP) sensors. Sensors which use SNMP or other protocols are independent from this number, there you have to follow the general recommendations (for example, max. 2,500 sensors in total if the PRTG server runs on a VM).

You can install remote probes on any computer with a supported Windows version, but not on the same machine. With several probes you can distribute the load on these machines. Please see this section in the manual for basics about distributed monitoring.

Please do not hesitate to contact us again if you need more information!

Created on Apr 25, 2016 2:30:38 PM by Gerald Schoch [Paessler Support]




Disclaimer: The information in the Paessler Knowledge Base comes without warranty of any kind. Use at your own risk. Before applying any instructions please exercise proper system administrator housekeeping. You must make sure that a proper backup of all your data is available.