System Overview
Discover all of NetCrunch capabilities, concepts, and components.
NetCrunch employs unique concepts for data organization and monitoring settings management to monitor today's complex networks.
In this chapter
- System RequirementsThe basic requirements are a 64-bit Windows Server, 2 processors, and 3.5 GB of RAM—an SSD driver is also welcome. NetCrunch is designed to run efficiently on both virtual and physical server machines.
- Architecture and ConceptsOverview of NetCrunch Server architecture. Learn more about Monitoring Engines, NetCrunch Consoles, databases, additional tools, and critical concepts of advanced network visualization.
- What Is a Node in NetCrunch?This topic explains the definition of a Node in NetCrunch. It clarifies why a Node is treated as a service endpoint rather than a physical device, and how this distinction improves monitoring accuracy for modern infrastructure.
- Monitoring ArchitectureNetCrunch supports multiple types of monitoring techniques, each suited to different levels of control, flexibility, and scale. This topic explains the key architectural types — **network services**, **monitors**, and **sensors** — and clarifies when to use each for best results.
- What can I monitor?NetCrunch can monitor nearly anything: devices, applications, systems, databases, and files. The program can be extended using scripts; data from various sources can be sent to NetCrunch or polled from files, databases, or websites.
- NetCrunch Monitoring ObjectsEverything NetCrunch monitors is an object with a state - nodes, interfaces, services, sensors, alerts, and the statuses calculated from them. Knowing which object you are looking at tells you what you can alert on, put on a dashboard, and roll up into a service status.
- Automatic Monitoring and OrganizingYou don't have to set up views and maps by hand or node by node. NetCrunch handles these tasks automatically.
- Extending and CustomizingYou can customize NetCrunch to suit your needs. Consider adding more MIBs and counters, creating views, and incorporating new device types, node fields, and node icons. Think about adding new background images for views, modifying notification message formats, defining new calculated counters, extending the node database, and developing alert action scripts.
- Integrating NetCrunch with other NMSYou can easily integrate NetCrunch with existing management systems to extend its capabilities.
- Active Directory IntegrationIt makes agentless Windows monitoring much easier.
- Distributed MonitoringLearn about monitoring probes that expand on-premises monitoring into distributed environments across multiple sites and address spaces
- NetCrunch ConnectionsLearn how clients and remote components connect to the NetCrunch Server — locally, through HTTPS, or via the NetCrunch Connection Cloud (NCC). Understand supported protocols, security levels, and available connection types.
- NetCrunch Connection Cloud (NCC VPN)A resilient, secure platform for zero-configuration access to NetCrunch from any location — ideal for modern, zero-trust environments.
- NetCrunch LicensingNetCrunch licensing is node-based and allows monitoring of switch port interfaces, with a maximum of nodes.
- Probe Offline Monitoring ModeA monitoring probe can keep monitoring while it is disconnected from the NetCrunch Server, buffering results locally and synchronizing them once the connection returns.
- Site Monitoring ModesA site with more than one monitoring probe can either assign nodes to probes explicitly, or spread the monitoring load across all of its probes automatically.
- Migrating from PRTGNetCrunch can read an existing PRTG installation and rebuild its devices and monitoring in the NetCrunch atlas, so a migration starts from your real environment rather than an empty one.
- NetCrunch Security FeaturesHow NetCrunch protects access to the console and the credentials it holds — multi-factor authentication, a master key for stored secrets, encrypted backups, and restricted access to the data folder.
- Hardening the NetCrunch ServerHow to deploy NetCrunch so that the server itself is a small target — what the server should and should not do, which account it runs under, and why monitoring belongs on a probe rather than on the server.
- Secure Configuration ReferenceEvery security-relevant control in one place - what it defaults to, where to change it, and what it protects. Written for security reviews, audits, and hardening checklists.
- NetCrunch as an Inventory DatabaseNetCrunch is an inventory database as well as a monitoring system. Everything it monitors, it also records — hardware, installed software, hotfixes and your own asset data — and because it keeps looking, it tells you when any of it changes.
- Documenting Your NetworkA description of how your network is actually put together — topology, addressing, grouping and dependencies — assembled by the monitoring rather than maintained by hand.
- End-of-Life MonitoringNetCrunch tracks when the operating systems it monitors stop being supported, alerts a chosen number of months ahead, and shows the state of every Windows and ESXi host in one grid.