Nagios Xi related queries

[RIDS_I2MP]

Hi Team,

A new project has come to us, we are willing to use Nagios XI for the monitoring purpose. We have a count of 5000 devices (servers and network devices to be monitored from Nagios). Please provide us best practice document if any. Below are few queries we have, please help us on the same.

Thanks in advance!!

1. Can we configure Nagios in cluster?
We want all the servers and devices to be monitored 24*7. If in case Nagios server goes down, other should be able to monitor all the servers. So is there anything like active-passive or active-active configuration?

2. For monitoring 5000 servers and devices, how many Nagios nodes should be used in order to maintain smooth functioning of Nagios.

3. Please let us know the system configuration as well for Nagios server.

4. Please let us know if Nagios would work best for Physical servers or VMs?

5. What all network devices related parameters we can monitor using nagios XI?

6. Can we do storage device monitoring (eg. Netapp) through nagios XI.

7. Can we do agent installation on Windows and Unix servers using softwares like sccm or Ivanti?

8. Can we monitor hardware as well using Nagios XI?

9. At the same time, if more than one user having Admin access with different credential make changes on same thing?

[benjaminsmith]

Hello,

That''s some good news. Good luck with the project. I will try to answer your questions the best I can but feel free to let me know if you need clarification on anything.

1. "Can we configure Ngaios Xi in a cluster?"
Not necessary since it's not a native cluster application like Log Server. That said, there are a number of ways to achieve high availability. The most sophisticated would be setting up a DRBD cluster using the solution provided by LinBit.

For more information:
How To Achieve High Availability

2. "For monitoring 5000 servers and devices, how many Nagios nodes should be used in order to maintain the smooth functioning of Nagios."
We always recommend setting up an additional server after 20,000 check and services.

3. "Please let us know the system configuration as well for Nagios server."
Can you provide some detail here, would this be for configuration of host or service checks?

4. "Please let us know if Nagios would work best for Physical servers or VMs?"

A physical server is recommended for large systems (e.g 20k), otherwise, using a VM is probably the way to go as it's easier to manage.
https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... ios-XI.pdf

5. "What all network devices related parameters we can monitor using nagios XI?"
For a switch or router, status and input/output rates. Here's a short video on using the switch and router wizard.
https://youtu.be/iFNij0mkwm8

6. "Can we do storage device monitoring (eg. Netapp) through nagios X"
Yes. There are a number of plugins on the Nagios Exchange for monitoring NetApp.
https://www.nagios.com/solutions/netapp-monitoring/
https://exchange.nagios.org/directory/P ... NAS/NetApp

7. "Can we do agent installation on Windows and Unix servers using software like sccm or Ivanti?"
Likely, but we do not have any published guides agent installation with sccm or Ivanti.

8. " Can we monitor hardware as well using Nagios XI?"
Yes. I would recommend searching the interface for a suitable wizard and if that's not available search for a plugin on the Nagiso Exchange.

https://exchange.nagios.org/

9. "At the same time, if more than one user having Admin access with different credential make changes on same thing?"
Nagios XI is fully multi-tent and supports multiple users.

https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... ios-XI.pdf

[jdunitz]

1. Can we configure Nagios in cluster?

You can, with a few caveats. Nagios XI isn't directly cluster-aware, but there are ways to configure it to do what you're talking about.
Have a look at this: https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... ios-XI.pdf

2. For monitoring 5000 servers and devices, how many Nagios nodes should be used in order to maintain smooth functioning of Nagios.

It really depends on how many things you're monitoring on each of your 5000 devices. Typically, people monitor 5-10 things per device, e.g., disk space, CPU, memory, a few things related to the applications running on each machine, etc. So, with 5000 machines, that could turn into 20000 to 50000 data points pretty easily. In that case, you're going to want at least two Nagios nodes to be able to handle all that data. Ideally, in this case, you'd run Nagios on phyiscal hardware, or very fast VM's.

3. Please let us know the system configuration as well for Nagios server.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but generally speaking, the system requirements are fairly modest by today's standards. Your 5000-device setup is going to be more than the minimum recommended requirements, for sure. What you need depends on your individual requirements, but I can give you a general idea.
You should expect to need 8-16GB of RAM and 2-4 CPU's of typical speed (3-4 GHz), as well as 500-1000GB of storage (more if you want to keep data for a longer amount of time).
https://support.nagios.com/kb/article.p ... ategory=83

4. Please let us know if Nagios would work best for Physical servers or VMs?

They each have their own advantages. High-availability can be easily set up with VMs, but you might get better overall performance on phyiscal hardware.

5. What all network devices related parameters we can monitor using nagios XI?

Anything SNMP and MRTG can tell you, Nagios can monitor and alert you about.
https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... uters.html
You might also like to know that there is a separate product, Nagios Network Analyzer, which can tell you a lot more about network traffic flows, security-related information, and bandwidth utilization.
https://assets.nagios.com/handouts/nagi ... -Flyer.pdf

6. Can we do storage device monitoring (eg. Netapp) through nagios XI.

You certainly can! https://www.nagios.com/solutions/netapp-monitoring/
...and there are a bunch of plugins for specific cases:
https://exchange.nagios.org/directory/P ... NAS/NetApp

7. Can we do agent installation on Windows and Unix servers using softwares like sccm or Ivanti?

If you've packaged your agents, yes.

8. Can we monitor hardware as well using Nagios XI?

If you mean things like fan speed and temperature and disk failures and whatnot, yes. There are plugins that can gather information from ILOs, Remote Insight, IPMI, XSCF, etc.
https://exchange.nagios.org/directory/P ... ironmental

9. At the same time, if more than one user having Admin access with different credential make changes on same thing?

Once you've hit edit on an object, it'll be locked until you hit save. At that point, the other admin could make changes to the same item.

I hope this information has helped you!

[RIDS_I2MP]

Thanks for your inputs!!

We will get back to you if any other information is required.

[benjaminsmith]

Thanks for your inputs!!

Sounds good.

Just let us know if you have any other questions.

[RIDS_I2MP]

Hi,

Just one more query.
Please let us know which OS is best to work as Nagios server.

[scottwilkerson]

Hi,

Just one more query.
Please let us know which OS is best to work as Nagios server.

For Nagios XI, I would highly recommend CentOS 7

[RIDS_I2MP]

Hi,

If two servers have same IP & hostname and both have connectivity through VPN, so can we configure both server with Nagios Server?
We have prod and DR servers with such configuration.

Thanks

[jdunitz]

Before I can really answer your last question, I need to understand how you're asking it, because it can be interpreted at least a couple different ways.

Do you have two replicated sites with the same IP range, and one of them fails over to the other, and you have a single Nagios server that will be monitoring both of them?

or...

Do you have two replicated sites with the same IP range, and each of them has its own Nagios server that will be monitoring just that site?

There are different concerns with each of these.
It's quite possible that you have some other variation of this that I haven't thought of.

TwoDR-Scenarios.png