PRTG Manual: Recommended Sensors

With the Recommended Sensors Detection feature, PRTG can explore any device and check which sensors you have already created. If it finds useful sensors that you have not created yet, you see a list of recommended sensors for your device.

i_podYou cannot use this feature on the hosted probe of a PRTG Hosted Monitor instance. You can use this feature on remote probes.

i_round_blueThe recommended sensors detection does not apply to the user group setting Allowed Sensors. Therefore, read/write users can also add all recommended sensors.

Recommended Sensors on Device Overview Tab

Recommended Sensors on Device Overview Tab

Get Sensor Recommendations

By default, PRTG recommends sensors for any device that you add and shows the suggested sensors for the device on its Overview tab, as long as your installation includes less than 5,000 sensors in total. To add the recommended sensors, click Add These Sensors.

You can see the time that has passed since the last sensor recommendation in the page header bar on the Overview tab of a device.

If you want to manually start the recommended sensors detection on any device, follow the steps below.

Step 1: Select the Device

Open the Overview tab of the device that you want to analyze.

Step 2: Recommend Now

To start the analysis of your device, click Recommend Now or right-click the device and select Recommend Now from the context menu.

i_round_blueIf you do not see the Recommend Now option, make sure that the Recommended Sensors Detection in the Monitoring settings. Probe devices do not support this option.

Depending on the complexity of your device, it can take some time until you see the results of the analysis.

Recommended Sensors Investigation

Recommended Sensors Investigation

PRTG runs the recommended sensors detection with low priority in the background to prevent potential performance issues. Because of this, the recommended sensors detection can take more time than expected if PRTG needs resources to ensure the gapless monitoring of your network. By default, the recommended sensors detection starts automatically when you add a new device, when you do not have more than 5,000 sensors, or when the last analysis was executed more than 30 days ago. You can change these settings under Setup | System Administration | Monitoring, section Recommended Sensors Detection.

i_round_blueTo recommend Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) sensors for a device, the detection engine uses the SNMP version that you defined in the Credentials for SNMP Devices section of the device settings.

Step 3: Get the Results

After PRTG analyzed your device, it suggests a list of sensors that are useful for a more comprehensive monitoring.

List of Recommended Sensors

List of Recommended Sensors

The list of recommended sensors provides the following information.

Column Header

Description

Priority

Shows which priority the suggested sensors have when you add them. The recommended sensors table is sorted by priority, beginning with the top priority (i_priority_5) in the first row.

i_round_blueYou can manually change the priority of a sensor after you add it.

Sensors

Shows the suggested sensors and the number of sensors of one type that PRTG recommends for this device. For example, you might want to add an SNMP Traffic sensor multiple times for several network interfaces.

Total Sensors

Shows the total number of suggested sensors per table row. These sensors have the same priority.

Links

Displays an Add These Sensors button for every table row. Click to automatically add the sensors in this table row to the device.

i_round_blueThe recommended sensors detection checks if a certain sensor exists on your device and recommends that you add this sensor if it does not exist. If this sensor existed previously on the device, but you deleted it, PRTG suggests this sensor again. In this case, ignore the recommendation of this sensor or follow step 4.

Step 4: Add Recommended Sensors

Click Add These Sensors in a table row to add all sensors in this row to the analyzed device.

i_round_blueIf you want to add all suggested sensors regardless of their priority, click every Add These Sensors button in the Recommended Sensors table. If you want to add only some of the sensors of a certain priority, click Add These Sensors, then delete or pause the sensors you do not need afterward.

Settings for the Recommended Sensors Detection

You can also adjust the settings for the recommended sensors detection or disable it under Setup | System Administration | Monitoring.

Recommended Sensors Detection Settings

Recommended Sensors Detection Settings

If you use the Manage automatically based on sensor count (default) setting, PRTG uses an intelligent assistant to count the number of sensors you have and decides whether to start the detection of recommended sensors or not. The detection does not start if your PRTG installation includes 5,000 sensors or more to prevent performance issues. We recommend that you use this option so that you do not miss any important monitoring data about your network and so that you do not risk performance issues.

i_round_blueDisable the recommended sensors detection if you encounter performance issues or if you do not want to display this information on device Overview tabs.

Auto-discovery

You can also use the auto-discovery to find suitable sensors. You can start the auto-discovery when you add a new device, you can manually start it at any time, or you can choose if you want PRTG to analyze a whole section of your network, for example, devices that are covered by a certain IP address range.

i_round_blueThe auto-discovery has a higher priority than the detection of recommended sensors. If both are active, PRTG queues the sensor recommendation and executes the auto-discovery first.