Nagios Xi Routine Upgrades

[FrontlineIT]

Hello,

We recently upgraded all our Nagios XI instances to version 5.4.5. In addition to this maintenance, what other updates should we be applying on a routine basis to make sure everything is up-to-date with Nagios? For example, we are running NSClient++ version 0.3.9.328. Should this client be updated across the board as well? We are trying to get a better idea on what components of Nagios need to updated routinely so we aren't dealing with any legacy software and bugs that may have been fixed in later versions.

Thanks!

[lmiltchev]

With the Nagios XI upgrades, the wizards and components are also upgraded. Also, we are planning on upgrading NagVis in XI 5.5.0. As far as agents, NSClient++ 0.3.9 is quite old. You can continue using it if it works fine for you, depending on what kind of checks you are performing. At one point, you may consider upgrading NSClient++ to 0.4.4 or higher. Keep in mind that configs will be different. Save the old one in a separate location (just in case), prior to the upgrade.
If you use NRPE to monitor Linux boxes, keep in mind that our official installer currently includes ver. 2.15. There a newer version out - 3.1.1, which I expect to be included in our official installer sometime soon. Let us know if you have any more questions.

[FrontlineIT]

Thanks for the quick response!

After looking at the NSClient++ versions on https://www.nsclient.org/download/ would you recommend upgrading to 0.5.0.62 which looks to be the latest version available? Just want to make sure there are no known bugs or issues before upgrading.

Also, as our company grows we are looking to create a global standard NSC.ini file that can be used across all servers to make things more manageable so that we don't have individual NSC.ini files with different configs all over to the place. It will include all the configs and external script check commands that are currently being utilized by each server's local NSC.ini file across our environment. We'd also have all the needed scripts in the c$\Program Files\NSClient++\scripts folder. We are heading this route because we are starting to manage everything at the Chef level and when rebuilding or spinning up new servers, the NSClient++ will be automatically installed with the standard NSC.ini file we created along with the standard scripts folder. My question is have you seen others go this route? If you have, have there been any issues? We are simply trying to make the NSClient++ and all that's included with it more manageable by simply having a single point to go to for making changes/additions/removals. Chef will detect the change and automatically push it out to all our servers.

[tgriep]

If you do upgrade NSClient, the format of the ini file changed drastically as well as it is called nsclient.ini and not nsc.ini.
I have heard mixed results in doing an in place upgrade from 3.9.x to the latest, sometimes the ini file is missing entries afterwards, and it will not work.
The cleanest way to upgrade, it to remove the old version, delete the Program Files folder, install the new NSClient++ and replace the ini file with a known working copy.
That way you know it works for you.

We recommend the NSClient++ v0.4.4.23 as it seems to work and haven't heard of and bugs with it so far.