Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Checkmk Cloud

Netdata is an open-source, agent-based observability platform that collects, stores, and visualizes per-second metrics across infrastructure and applications. It combines a lightweight edge agent, a tiered time-series store, and optional centralized Cloud/Parent components for unified views and collaboration. (netdata.cloud)

Key Features

• Per-second, real-time metrics collection with millisecond responsiveness and auto-generated dashboards. (raw.githubusercontent.com)
• Edge-based machine learning: unsupervised anomaly detection and per-metric ML models running on the agent. (raw.githubusercontent.com)
• Tiered, high-efficiency time-series storage (compact samples, ZSTD compression) with configurable retention and archiving. (raw.githubusercontent.com)
• Distributed Parent–Child streaming pipeline for horizontal scaling, multi-node aggregation, and long-term retention. (raw.githubusercontent.com)
• Broad integrations (800+ collectors) and export/archival targets including Prometheus, InfluxDB, OpenTSDB, and Graphite. (raw.githubusercontent.com)
• Low resource footprint (designed for minimal CPU/RAM impact) and zero-configuration auto-discovery on supported platforms. (raw.githubusercontent.com)

Use Cases

• Infrastructure and system monitoring: per-second visibility into CPU, memory, disks, network, sensors, and kernel metrics. (raw.githubusercontent.com)
• Container and Kubernetes observability: native containerd/Docker and Kubernetes integrations for pod, node, and cluster troubleshooting. (raw.githubusercontent.com)
• Incident troubleshooting and AIOps: anomaly detection, root-cause analysis, blast-radius identification, and automated reporting to accelerate incident resolution. (netdata.cloud)

Limitations and Considerations

• The Netdata UI and Netdata Cloud components are delivered as closed-source offerings while the Agent is open-source; organizations requiring fully open-source stacks should evaluate this split. (raw.githubusercontent.com)
• OpenTelemetry support is noted as "coming soon" in documentation; users relying heavily on OpenTelemetry may need to plan integrations or use exporters. (raw.githubusercontent.com)
• Feature parity varies by platform (Linux has the most comprehensive coverage); some platform-specific collectors or deep kernel metrics are not available everywhere. (raw.githubusercontent.com)

Netdata offers a high-resolution, low-overhead approach to full-stack monitoring with built-in ML and flexible scaling via Parents and Netdata Cloud. It is well-suited for teams needing real-time troubleshooting, container/Kubernetes visibility, and efficient time-series retention while weighing the tradeoffs of closed-source UI/cloud components.

Zabbix is an enterprise-class, open-source distributed monitoring and observability solution for tracking performance and availability across IT and OT environments. It collects metrics from agents and agentless sources and provides centralized visibility, alerting, and reporting.

Key Features

• Agent-based and agentless metric collection for servers, network devices, services, and applications
• Automatic discovery and template-based monitoring for rapid onboarding
• Real-time problem detection, correlation, and root-cause analysis workflows
• Flexible alerting and notifications with multiple delivery channels and integrations
• Dashboards and visualizations including graphs, maps, and topology views
• Distributed monitoring for remote sites and large environments, including multi-tenant use
• Built-in reporting, auditing, SLA calculations, and HTTP-based data streaming

Use Cases

• Infrastructure monitoring for networks, servers, virtual machines, and container platforms
• Application and service monitoring with proactive alerting and SLA tracking
• Centralized observability for multi-site or managed service provider environments

Zabbix is a mature, scalable platform suited for organizations that need deep visibility across diverse systems with strong alerting and flexible data collection options. It can serve as a unified monitoring backbone for both small deployments and large, distributed environments.

Dashdot is a modern server dashboard designed for smaller private servers. It provides a real-time overview of host metrics and system status via a polished glassy UI.

Key Features

• Real-time system metrics including CPU, memory, disk, and network usage presented in a responsive dashboard
• Web-based UI built with React and Node.js, designed for easy self-hosted deployment
• Docker-based quick-install with multi-architecture images (AMD64 and ARM)
• Lightweight, glassmorphism design with customizable widgets
• Comprehensive installation and configuration options documented on the official site
• Live demo available for exploration in the project’s official repository's demo

Use Cases

• Monitoring small private servers and home labs
• Observability of multiple VPS or private servers from a single dashboard
• Quick on-boarding for admins needing at-a-glance status of disks, networks, memory, and CPU

Limitations and Considerations

• The speed test feature can consume significant bandwidth; you can reduce impact by adjusting the speed test interval via an environment variable as described in the installation docs

Conclusion

Dashdot provides real-time server metrics through a modern, self-hosted dashboard. It can be deployed via Docker and explored via a live demo; official docs cover installation and configuration.