I am new to Nagios and am trying to understand how I should use Nagios to group things by business application. I think it will be with either HostGroup or ServiceGroup but I am having difficulty understanding the intended purpose for these two grouping constructs. I will add here that in our previous monitoring tool the term 'Service' is used to identify a group of checks related to one defined business application. I think 'Service' in Nagios is not the same.
We will likely have many business applications monitored with Nagios and we would like to view status by business application. In addition these applications are each typically part of an application family so a parent-child type of relationship and grouping would be desirable if there is a way to do that.
Is it proper to group each application, and all the 'things' that make up said application using the "HostGroup" mechanism or should I be using "ServiceGroup" to do that? If it is appropriate to use HostGroup to define the applications, then what is the purpose of ServiceGroup?
How to Group by Application
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slansing
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Re: How to Group by Application
Hey, first of all welcome to the Nagios community!
As far as the "what are" host/service groups please visit these links:
Hostgroups: http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/ ... #hostgroup
Servicegroups: http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/ ... rvicegroup
In their most basic form they are exactly what you are looking for, a grouping of hosts or services used to simplify finding related hosts and services. I would also take a look at the "Business Process Intelligence addon" located at the link below:
http://exchange.nagios.org/directory/Ad ... 29/details
The standard grouping convention is as follows:
Hostgroup: --> A group of hosts involving a similar infrastructure need i.e "The North Central Datacenter"
Servicegroup: --> A group of services which could be tied together in a logical format i.e "The North Central Datacenter - Rack #1 Swap Space"
As far as the "what are" host/service groups please visit these links:
Hostgroups: http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/ ... #hostgroup
Servicegroups: http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/ ... rvicegroup
In their most basic form they are exactly what you are looking for, a grouping of hosts or services used to simplify finding related hosts and services. I would also take a look at the "Business Process Intelligence addon" located at the link below:
http://exchange.nagios.org/directory/Ad ... 29/details
The standard grouping convention is as follows:
Hostgroup: --> A group of hosts involving a similar infrastructure need i.e "The North Central Datacenter"
Servicegroup: --> A group of services which could be tied together in a logical format i.e "The North Central Datacenter - Rack #1 Swap Space"
Re: How to Group by Application
I find the servicegroups mostly useful for display purposes, neat grouping etc. They are useful for some specific objecttricks: http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/ ... ricks.html
Though in implementation, I find nesting hostgroups to be the better solution for most organizational structures. But once in a while you have a few services that do not exclusively "belong" to one or more hosts, but spread out on a number of boxes sharing load with other services.
EDIT: Another good point is to remember hosts can belong to more than one hostgroup. So you could have a hostgroup for a geographic location, a rack location, web-services, database services, etc. One box could belong to all of these. Just watch out if you start attaching checks to hostgroups, you can end up with the same check running multiple times on a box if it inherits the check from multiple hostgroups.
Though in implementation, I find nesting hostgroups to be the better solution for most organizational structures. But once in a while you have a few services that do not exclusively "belong" to one or more hosts, but spread out on a number of boxes sharing load with other services.
EDIT: Another good point is to remember hosts can belong to more than one hostgroup. So you could have a hostgroup for a geographic location, a rack location, web-services, database services, etc. One box could belong to all of these. Just watch out if you start attaching checks to hostgroups, you can end up with the same check running multiple times on a box if it inherits the check from multiple hostgroups.
Former Nagios employee
"It is turtles. All. The. Way. Down. . . .and maybe an elephant or two."
VI VI VI - The editor of the Beast!
Come to the Dark Side.
"It is turtles. All. The. Way. Down. . . .and maybe an elephant or two."
VI VI VI - The editor of the Beast!
Come to the Dark Side.
Re: How to Group by Application
what about a sub group below the main Host Group ?
how will you define that.
you basicly want to have a main group that gets broken down based on the purpose & services rendered by that respective server.
how will you define that.
you basicly want to have a main group that gets broken down based on the purpose & services rendered by that respective server.
Re: How to Group by Application
Populate your parent hostgroup with other hostgroups that are populated by hosts. . .
The system is flexible enough to accommodate most network hierarchies.
The system is flexible enough to accommodate most network hierarchies.
Former Nagios employee
"It is turtles. All. The. Way. Down. . . .and maybe an elephant or two."
VI VI VI - The editor of the Beast!
Come to the Dark Side.
"It is turtles. All. The. Way. Down. . . .and maybe an elephant or two."
VI VI VI - The editor of the Beast!
Come to the Dark Side.