Nagios NRPE agent and agentless (SNMP)
Nagios NRPE agent and agentless (SNMP)
We have Nagios XI servers (2014R2.7) and NRPE agent (v2.15) on RH6.x. We are also considering to use agentless method (SNMP) to monitor some projects. I like to see a comparison between Nagios NRPE agent method and agentless method (SNMP) in terms of what they can do. Do you have such a document available? Where can I find it? The Linux SNMP Wizard from the Nagios XI web interface gives me some idea for agentless. Thanks!
Re: Nagios NRPE agent and agentless (SNMP)
Technically speaking, SNMP isn't agentless. You are still requesting information from the SNMP daemon, which is the agent in this case. It just tends to be installed by default on a lot of networking gear, so the lack of a setup process makes it feel agentless.
In terms of what they can do, SNMP is mostly limited by what the SNMP agent exposes about the machine, and it most cases you can't change that too terribly much. NRPE allows you to run just about any script that you want, but it doesn't always install on every OS+version combination, and it almost certainly does not install on a router/switch. My advice has always been to use SNMP for switches and routers (or other network devices), and to use NRPE just about everywhere else.
In terms of what they can do, SNMP is mostly limited by what the SNMP agent exposes about the machine, and it most cases you can't change that too terribly much. NRPE allows you to run just about any script that you want, but it doesn't always install on every OS+version combination, and it almost certainly does not install on a router/switch. My advice has always been to use SNMP for switches and routers (or other network devices), and to use NRPE just about everywhere else.
Former Nagios employee