Cloudmon Probes are the agentless monitoring engine of the platform. Deployed within a network segment, each probe actively collects performance, availability, and visibility data from local devices and forwards it to the Cloudmon Controller.
A Cloudmon Probe sits inside a network segment and polls the devices within it using the appropriate protocol for each device type. Because the probe performs monitoring at the network level rather than on the device itself, no software needs to be installed on monitored devices. The probe collects all data locally and pushes it to the Cloudmon Controller at regular intervals for processing, storage, and presentation. A separate probe is required for each distinct network segment, and in MSP deployments, a separate probe is required for each customer environment.
A probe monitors a broad range of device types and infrastructure components from a single deployment point. Network devices such as routers, switches, and firewalls are monitored via SNMP, giving full visibility into availability, interface status, traffic utilisation, and system metrics. Windows servers that do not have a Cloudmon Agent installed can be monitored via WMI, collecting CPU, memory, disk, and process data without requiring any installation on the target machine.
Beyond individual devices, a probe also handles host and port availability checks across any IP-reachable target, website and DNS monitoring, and network traffic analysis through NetFlow and IPFIX data received from flow-enabled devices. VMware environments are monitored through the VMware API, covering Virtual Machines, Clusters, vCenters, Datastores, and ESXi hosts. For network configuration management, the probe connects to devices via SSH or Telnet to retrieve and back up running configurations. AWS and Azure cloud resources are also monitored through their respective provider APIs, all routed through the probe.
The probe uses a different protocol depending on the type of device or data being collected. SNMP is used for network device monitoring and Layer 2 topology discovery via LLDP and CDP. ICMP and TCP are used for host availability and port monitoring, as well as network discovery scans. WMI is used for agentless Windows device monitoring. HTTP and HTTPS are used for website monitoring, and DNS queries are used for DNS monitoring. Syslog messages are received on UDP port 514, SNMP Traps on UDP port 162, and NetFlow and IPFIX flow data on UDP port 2055. VMware monitoring uses the VMware API, and cloud monitoring for AWS and Azure uses the respective cloud provider APIs.
Because monitoring is performed at the network level, the probe can monitor any IP-reachable device regardless of its operating system or vendor, with no need to install or maintain software on individual devices. This makes it well suited for environments with a large number of network devices, legacy systems, or infrastructure where agent installation is not practical.
Deploying a probe close to the devices it monitors ensures that data collection is not affected by WAN latency or connectivity issues between sites. In distributed environments, each probe operates independently so that a failure or connectivity loss at one site does not affect monitoring data from other locations. All data from every probe is consolidated into the Cloudmon Controller, giving a unified view of the entire environment regardless of how many sites or network segments are in use.