Distributed Monitoring Questions

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Tony.DSTech
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Distributed Monitoring Questions

Post by Tony.DSTech »

We are setting up to start monitoring all of our local business customers. I have a decent grasp of how to get Nagios to do what checks I want and make them work the way I need them to.

My issue is with the actual Distributed monitoring parts. How are others doing it? What programs are you using? Like most of us, my customers run almost exclusively Windows boxes.

I have a plan for how to get a Nagios server into each of my client's sites, but I am stuck on deciding and learning the different options. I like the idea of MNTOS, as it would be easy for a layman like my dispatcher to see an issue and warn me to check when something flashes big and red. Mod Gearman seems really useful and popular. NSCA has been developed for a while and seems like a possible option to avoid poking holes in my firewalls.

Generally I'm the lowest man on the totem here, still learning a lot about business IT, and I'm trying to. Any ideas, hints, places to look, or books would be helpful. Thanks for any and all help.


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Re: Distributed Monitoring Questions

Post by Box293 »

Tony.DSTech wrote:I have a plan for how to get a Nagios server into each of my client's sites, but I am stuck on deciding and learning the different options
If you have a Nagios server at each of your client sites then it really comes down to what you want to monitor on the Windows boxes.

If you want to do it agentless then check_wmi_plus is a good start.
However as soon as you want to run a custom check on a server then you'll need some sort of agent. NSClient++ works pretty well.

If you want to monitor all of these Nagios instances from one location then you could look at Nagios Fusion which allows you to see multiple instances from one pane of glass.
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Tony.DSTech
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Re: Distributed Monitoring Questions

Post by Tony.DSTech »

Thanks, but I was more looking for a solution that was cheap or free. We are a very small computer shop. Could consider Fusion after growing some, but at the moment we just can't cover the costs. I do have a working knowledge of NSClient++ and will be using it on the majority of systems as we will be monitoring Action Center.
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Re: Distributed Monitoring Questions

Post by abrist »

If you are installing nagios core servers at all of your clients' locations, you could just push checks from those core servers to a central server with nsca/nrds.
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Tony.DSTech
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Re: Distributed Monitoring Questions

Post by Tony.DSTech »

I was looking at NSCA. Would that be a better option than MNTOS? Also can anyone recommend a good Nagios book so that I have some study material. Google is great, but reference material isn't a bad idea.
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Re: Distributed Monitoring Questions

Post by slansing »

Well, NSCA will be pushing check results to your main XI server, which will then house passive results from your checks. MNTOS generally achieves the same from a viewing standpoint, but queries the Tactical overview pages of all of your servers, and dumps it into a page drawn on that data dumped into XML. I'm not sure what the performance or speed implications are when comparing the two but they are likely to be pretty close, the only thing is, you do have to take into account latency and processing of the NSCA passively pushed data. Of course, you will have some degree of latency with MNTOS as well, they would ideally both need to be tested to figure out which works best for you.
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Re: Distributed Monitoring Questions

Post by Tony.DSTech »

I'm willing to test, as this will not be rolled out for a few months. I'm learning this system as much as I can in order to make this work and keep it up after institution. Anyone suggest a good book for it? I just want one that is current and will allow me to learn a little more in depth than trial/error.
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Re: Distributed Monitoring Questions

Post by eloyd »

I can recommend a good consulting company that could help you if you wanted. See my signature below. :-)
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Re: Distributed Monitoring Questions

Post by slansing »

There are several books available that cover Nagios from the basics to more advanced configurations, I don't believe there is one that covers Distributed Monitoring only. An excellent book is "Instant Nagios Starter" by Mike Guthrie. You can also take a look at some of the self paced and live training options here:

http://www.nagios.com/services/training
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Re: Distributed Monitoring Questions

Post by Tony.DSTech »

Sorry I didn't clarify. This is what I wanted, not a book specifically for this problem. I'm trying to learn from scratch and a basic knowledge of Linux and just want some reference material. Thanks for the input and I will be picking that book up soon.
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