A/V Monitoring Options

This support forum board is for questions relating to Nagios Fusion.
Post Reply
DennisSSebasiStephen
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun Feb 13, 2022 1:29 am

A/V Monitoring Options

Post by DennisSSebasiStephen »

I was wondering if anyone has experience with different monitoring services for specifically Crestron gear, but also for other A/V devices too (Audio Processors, Amplifiers, Telepresence etc.).

We currently have Nagios that mainly monitors our Audio Processors, Amplifiers, Crestron Processors and Crestron Switchers. Currently we just monitor if the device is pingable or not. With Nagios we are able to easily create tickets to ServiceNow, our IT Ticketing System.

I was thinking about using SNMP within each processor program to monitor every device that program uses (TCP/IP devices, Cresnet devices, DM Endpoints (TX, RMCs), Fusion Status, EICs, Switchers and Cards). Re-programing all of our programs will take a very long time, so I was wondering everyone's thoughts on this. What's the smartest route? Is this over kill? My thought is if we are going to do this, we should go all the way and do everything.

Nagios currently does not have the best UI/Setup for what we are trying to do. It can work a more user friendly option would be preferred.

One hesitation to using Fusion to monitor all of these devices is that it is not able to easily create tickets within ServiceNow. We are able to make it automatically create a ticket, but that is not always helpful since there is often false-positives (Unplugged podiums, maintenance, scheduled power-outages, etc.).

Any thoughts, tips or suggestions are welcome. Thanks, all
User avatar
swolf
Developer
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2017 9:48 am

Re: A/V Monitoring Options

Post by swolf »

Hi @DennisSSebasiStephen, thanks for reaching out.

I'm not sure that Fusion is the right choice for doing this kind of monitoring - Fusion is mostly a way to get a consolidated view of all of your other monitoring systems. To do the actual monitoring, you would still need Nagios XI and Nagios Core servers scheduling the checks and managing the configuration. Fusion would only come in when you want to manage multiple servers, but even then it's primarily giving you an executive view, not handling mass configuration or anything like that.

If your A/V gear supports SNMP, that's probably the most flexible way to move forward. If you have to do stuff in bulk, I would tend more toward using the API - it shouldn't be too hard to set up a python script that reads in a CSV file of device types/addresses/credentials and configures your desired SNMP checks on the XI server.

As far as false positives go, I would look into setting up downtime in Nagios XI. If you have some other system where you specify maintenance windows or schedule power outages, there should be some way to export that event and then ingest it via XI (most likely using the system API).
As of May 25th, 2018, all communications with Nagios Enterprises and its employees are covered under our new Privacy Policy
Post Reply