NSClient++ and monitoring Windows cluster or NLB clusters?

[PhilG]

Hello:
I have now installed NSClient++ on the majority of my Windows servers. I have not installed NRPE plug-ins, though.
I have configured those Windows servers in Nagios XI with the Windows Server Wizard, and they are appear to be monitoring fine at this time.

Problem: How can I monitor a Windows cluster (Exchange) and a NLB cluster (we have at least 2 sets of these, 1 pair of Windows servers is configured as an IIS webserver NLB cluster)? Is there a way to do this without going back and having to reconfigure NSClient++ to install NRPE plug-ins or reinstall the agent? If so, how, please?

[lmiltchev]

I assume you are planning on using check_nrpe + custom script with NSClient++. You can always enable the NRPE and External Scripts modules in the nsclient.ini file, and restart the NSClient++ service so that changes can take effect. You don't need to reinstall the agent.

[cmerchant]

Here is the "Enabling the NRPE Listener In NSClient++" doc for version 0.4.x:

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... ios-XI.pdf

[PhilG]

Here is the "Enabling the NRPE Listener In NSClient++" doc for version 0.4.x:

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... ios-XI.pdf

We are using NSClient++ 0.3.9 since I read in a couple of forum posts that there may have been some issues with using 0.4.x.

FYI: The PDF you provided references:
"Note: This document is for version 0.4.x of NSClient++. For version 0.3.x of NSClient++ see:
http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... Client_pdf
"
and when I clicked on the link it went back to "http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... _0.4.x.pdf"

[WillemDH]

Hey,

I'm using 0.4.1.105 and I'm not really having any issues the last 1.5 years. Just my thoughts of course...

Grtz

[PhilG]

Hey,

I'm using 0.4.1.105 and I'm not really having any issues the last 1.5 years. Just my thoughts of course...

Grtz

Wish you would've had this posted prior to my already manually installing to 163 Windows servers since we don't have a functioning SCCM server.

[lmiltchev]

You can check out this document:

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... ios-XI.pdf

In my opinion, both, the 0.3.9 and 0.4.x versions of NSClient++ work in general, but both have some (different) issues. I guess, stick to the one you have installed.

[WillemDH]

Hey PhilG,

Really sorry for that. Maybe I can make it up to you by referring you to https://github.com/willemdh/nagiosxi_au ... _framework It contains some script you could use to install / upgrade NSClient with. It's not really documented and I did not release it on the Nagios Exchange yet, as there are just too many possible issues (for example UAC, Firewall, security considerations, ...) and I'm a bit busy atm with some other projects.

But you should be able with the help of a Windows Gateway to make a quick action to install / upgrade NSClient. Link the quick action through Bash to the request install script which should be able to call the install script on the remote host where nsclient should be installed. The NSclient service on the Gateway need to run with an account with admin permissions on the remote Windows hosts..
Once you got that set up, you can make a Bash script that gets all hosts of a hostgroup where you put all the Windows hosts in and update them all sequentially and automatically. The only thing you will need to do is write one more Powershell script to update the nsclient.ini. I have that script, but it contains too many sensible info, so I can't put that on Github yet, it also makes connection with our SQL Inventory db to get realtime event exclusions, so in order to work you would need a sql db with identical tables as we have etc.

Grtz

Willem

[slansing]

Awesome information for future reference Willem, thank you for putting the time into this, I'm going to have to test it out. Hopefully something here can be of help to @PhilG.

[PhilG]

Hey PhilG,

Really sorry for that. Maybe I can make it up to you by referring you to https://github.com/willemdh/nagiosxi_au ... _framework It contains some script you could use to install / upgrade NSClient with. It's not really documented and I did not release it on the Nagios Exchange yet, as there are just too many possible issues (for example UAC, Firewall, security considerations, ...) and I'm a bit busy atm with some other projects.

But you should be able with the help of a Windows Gateway to make a quick action to install / upgrade NSClient. Link the quick action through Bash to the request install script which should be able to call the install script on the remote host where nsclient should be installed. The NSclient service on the Gateway need to run with an account with admin permissions on the remote Windows hosts..
Once you got that set up, you can make a Bash script that gets all hosts of a hostgroup where you put all the Windows hosts in and update them all sequentially and automatically. The only thing you will need to do is write one more Powershell script to update the nsclient.ini. I have that script, but it contains too many sensible info, so I can't put that on Github yet, it also makes connection with our SQL Inventory db to get realtime event exclusions, so in order to work you would need a sql db with identical tables as we have etc.

Grtz

Willem

Thanks, Willem. Yes, there are issues with UAC and prompting for user intervention when it's running and when I'm trying to install manually. Very frustrating and a time waster.

Since the link you provided displays several files, I'm assuming that I would need all the files, but which one would I need to run?