NetCrunch 16 has reached Release Candidate status and is now available to customers who want to explore the next major NetCrunch release.
This version is an important milestone for the product. It introduces substantial backend changes, expands distributed monitoring capabilities, and continues the modernization of the NetCrunch user interface.
The final NetCrunch 16 release is expected within the next few weeks.
A New Foundation for Events and Alerts
One of the most important changes in NetCrunch 16 is the new PostgreSQL-based Event Database.
It stores event and alert history using a simplified, partitioned schema designed for larger data volumes and more predictable performance. Depending on the workload, it can operate up to ten times faster than the previous event database.
Existing event history is migrated automatically after an upgrade. New events remain available while migration runs in the background, although older historical data may be temporarily unavailable until the process is complete.
This database transition is also one of the main reasons NetCrunch 16 is being released first as a Release Candidate.
Distributed Flow Monitoring
NetCrunch 16 introduces a completely new PostgreSQL-based Flow Server.
Flow servers can now be installed in multiple network locations and connected through NetCrunch probes. Traffic can therefore be collected and processed closer to its source while remaining accessible from the central NetCrunch console.
Default flow-data retention has been extended to 24 hours. Flow Server Pro installations can retain data according to the available storage capacity.
The redesigned Flow Analyzer can work with multiple flow servers and provides 15 analysis views, improved sFlow processing, country classification, longer time ranges, per-interface traffic analysis, and more flexible filtering.
Broader and More Resilient Monitoring
NetCrunch 16 expands monitoring coverage with support for Proxmox VE hosts, virtual machines, containers, storage, and clusters.
It also adds monitoring for Windows DHCP, Cisco Meraki organizations, and browser-based web transactions. The new Web Transaction Monitor can record and replay user actions, verify text or images, work with Shadow DOM content, and simulate mobile page layouts.
Distributed probes also gain several important improvements:
- Automatic load balancing
- Failover between probes
- Automatic probe updates
- Offline monitoring with later data replication
- Better support for remote and isolated locations
These changes make probe-based monitoring more resilient and better suited to distributed environments.
A Faster and More Capable Console
NetCrunch 16 includes extensive user-interface changes across monitoring, configuration, dashboards, and everyday navigation.
Many generic third-party controls have been replaced with components developed specifically for NetCrunch. This gives us greater control over performance, large data grids, live updates, grouping, filtering, dashboards, and touch interaction.
The release includes a new Home screen, synchronized graphical dashboards, improved grids, a mobile PWA console, and a redesigned Help panel with AI-assisted documentation search.
New node-synchronized dashboards can share one selected node across all widgets. They can also appear directly in Node Status for matching nodes, making them useful for dashboards focused on an operating system, service, application, or sensor type.
Other major improvements include:
- Predictive thresholds and forecasting
- Data Objects for structured external data
- Centralized monitoring credential management
- Master Password protection
- MFA for the Desktop Console
- ServiceNow and Rootly integrations
- Expanded composite statuses
- Business Service views
- An MCP Server for compatible automation and AI tools
Why We Are Releasing a Release Candidate
NetCrunch 16 RC is intended for evaluation, upgrade testing, and migration validation before the final release.
The new Event Database introduces a significant change to how historical events and alerts are stored. Real customer installations vary greatly in database size, retention period, hardware performance, and monitoring configuration. The Release Candidate gives us additional time to validate these migrations across a broader range of environments.
We encourage customers to install the RC in a test environment, explore the new features, and test upgrades using a copy of their existing NetCrunch configuration and data.
The Release Candidate should not yet replace a production installation. Production systems should remain on their current supported version until the final NetCrunch 16 release becomes available.
Feedback from RC installations will help us resolve migration-specific issues and complete final validation before general availability.
What Comes Next
NetCrunch 16 establishes a stronger foundation for the next stage of product development.
Our direction is toward shorter release cycles, more frequent user-interface improvements, and continued modernization of the underlying architecture. This should allow meaningful changes to reach customers more regularly instead of being concentrated mainly in large version upgrades.
AI will also become part of more NetCrunch workflows, but only where it provides a clear and practical benefit. We do not intend to add AI merely as a label or replace reliable monitoring logic with unpredictable behavior.
We also recognize that many NetCrunch customers operate private, restricted, or completely air-gapped environments. Future AI-related features must take these deployment models into account rather than assuming that every monitored system can communicate with an external cloud service.
NetCrunch 16 is therefore both a major release and a technical foundation for what follows: faster development, a more capable interface, broader monitoring, and carefully selected automation where it genuinely improves the product.
