Nagios XI vs Observium: What are the differences?

# Introduction
Nagios XI and Observium are popular network monitoring tools used by many organizations to maintain visibility and control over their network infrastructure. While both tools serve the purpose of monitoring, there are key differences between Nagios XI and Observium that are important to understand before choosing one over the other.

1. **Architecture**: Nagios XI follows a client-server architecture where the monitoring is done centrally from the Nagios XI server, while Observium uses a distributed polling model where multiple pollers can collect data and report back to the main Observium server. This difference in architecture can impact scalability and performance based on the size of the network being monitored.

2. **Features**: Nagios XI is known for its extensive plugin ecosystem, allowing users to easily extend its functionality by integrating various plugins for monitoring different services and applications. On the other hand, Observium focuses more on providing in-depth network analysis and visualization tools, making it a preferred choice for network performance monitoring and troubleshooting.

3. **User Interface**: Nagios XI offers a web-based GUI that is highly customizable, allowing users to create dashboards and reports tailored to their specific needs. Observium, on the other hand, provides a sleek and intuitive interface that emphasizes network visualization and real-time data representation, making it easier for users to quickly identify and address network issues.

4. **Licensing**: Nagios XI follows a commercial licensing model, offering different tiers of licenses with varying features and support options. Observium, on the other hand, is open-source with a free community version and a paid professional version that includes additional features and support.

5. **Community Support**: Nagios XI has a large and active user community with extensive documentation and resources available online for troubleshooting and customization. Observium, while also having a dedicated user base, may have limited community support compared to Nagios XI, especially for more advanced configurations and use cases.

6. **Scalability**: Nagios XI is highly scalable and can monitor thousands of devices through its distributed monitoring capabilities and load balancing. Observium, while also scalable, may have limitations in handling extremely large networks due to its architecture and polling mechanisms.

In Summary, Nagios XI offers a robust and extensible monitoring platform with a focus on service monitoring and customization, while Observium provides comprehensive network performance monitoring and visualization tools with a sleek user interface and distributed polling architecture.