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How to Monitor Linux Servers Without Installing Anything

April 2026 · 4 min read

Most monitoring tools require you to install an agent on every server — Prometheus node_exporter, Datadog agent, Netdata. But what if you just want to check CPU usage on a VPS without installing anything? NexTerm does exactly that.

How it works

NexTerm connects to your server via SSH (which you already have) and runs standard Linux commands in the background:

top -bn1       → CPU usage
free -m        → Memory
df -h          → Disk space
ss -tunap      → Network connections
/proc/net/dev  → Bandwidth

It parses the output and displays it as real-time charts. No binary to install. No port to open. No configuration file. If you can SSH into it, you can monitor it.

What metrics do you get?

CPU — usage percentage, core count, load average. Real-time chart over the last 5 minutes.

Memory — total, used, free in MB. Progress bar and chart.

Disk — per-mount usage with percentage bars. Color-coded: green under 70%, yellow under 90%, red above.

Network — download/upload speed per interface. Total bytes transferred. Active connections with state (ESTABLISHED, LISTEN).

Processes — top processes sorted by CPU. PID, user, CPU%, MEM%, command. Click to kill.

Why agentless matters

Agents consume resources on the server. They need to be updated. They open security surface. For a $5 VPS running a small app, installing Prometheus + Grafana is overkill. NexTerm gives you 80% of the insight with 0% of the overhead.

When to use a full monitoring stack instead

If you need historical data over weeks, alerting rules, or monitoring 50+ servers, use Prometheus or Datadog. NexTerm is for real-time spot-checking: "is my server healthy right now?" — answered in one click.

Try it

NexTerm's monitoring is a Pro feature (€2.99/month). Connect to any Linux server, click Monitoring, hit Start. That's it.