What is Glances?

Glances is a cross-platform system monitoring tool written in Python that presents a large amount of technical information in a compact format via a console or web interface. The solution displays CPU, memory, disk, network, sensor, filesystem, and process usage, making it suitable for rapid initial assessment of the state of a server or virtual machine.

The Glances monitoring functionality allows key metrics to be consolidated into a single view, enabling quick identification of resource shortages, process overload, or anomalies in system behavior. This format is particularly useful during initial performance diagnostics, when it is necessary to identify bottlenecks without deploying a dedicated observability platform.

Additionally, Glances can operate in a client-server mode, supports remote monitoring via terminal, web interface, and application programming interface (API), and enables exporting metrics to files and external systems, including InfluxDB, StatsD, Elasticsearch, and RabbitMQ. This makes the tool useful not only for local diagnostics but also for integration into broader telemetry and technical analysis workflows.