If you’re running a business with less than ten computers, chances are system management is not on top of your agenda. However, beyond this number, it really is something that you should consider, if you haven’t already done so.

System management covers a range of tasks and processes involved with, well, managing your computers. This includes inventory (how many computers you have, their corresponding components, part numbers, the software installed on them), performance (memory, disk space, and CPU usage), monitoring (which systems are up and which ones are down), alerts (which one went down right now), backup / restore, installation / upgrade, remote control, and reporting.

Commercial products which come to mind comprise the Big Four of systems management: IBM Tivoli, Computer Associates, HP, and BMC Software. What these companies offer are frameworks of products that interoperate with each other; they’re big and scalable, but they’re also expensive.

So what about open source systems management software? In an article Open Platforms in Systems Management, consultant Michael Coté identified what he called the Little Four: Zenoss, Hyperic, GroundWorks, and openQRM. (Unfortunately, as of this writing, openQRM has been discontinued).

Zenoss is a dual-licensed product that does a fairly complete job of the entire systems management life cycle. Its coverage includes network, servers, and applications for which it does inventory, configuration, availability, performance, and events. There is a free community version and different grades of its commercial version.

Hyperic offers two products: the free Hyperic HQ, and the commercial Hyperic HQ Enterprise. HQ’s strengths lie in autodiscovery of systems and resources and management of these metrics. It also boasts of reporting tools to help you track at which point your system could use improvement.

GroundWork Monitor is a compilation of 15 other open source projects such as Nagios, rrdtool and nmap. It combines the these projects into a single system. It evaluates the status, events and performance of monitored devices and presents these results in a web front end. As with Zenoss and Hyperic, it also has community and commercial editions.

More coverage on these products in the future.